Matthias Müller-Prove

Interaction Design
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Vision and Reality: Menu Image Map

3.2.2 Three Stages of Human

Development
in Vision and Reality of Hypertext and
Graphical User Interfaces
Jean Piaget spent his life working with children to figure out how they learn. His
theory of learning explains why children of different age take a different approach
in learning a new topic. Piaget argues that human development proceeds in a
sequence of stages. The presentation here follows Alan Kay’s paper A Personal
Computer for Children of All Ages [Kay 72a], respectively his essay User Interface:
A Personal View [Kay 90].

The sensorimotoric stage covers about the first 1 1/2 years. During this period the
child’s behavior is mainly based on reflexive actions. The child can distinguish
between objects. The sensorimotoric stage is followed by the preoperational stage
that lasts until four years. Speech starts. The child develops an understanding for
size of objects, but volume and mass is still out of reach. The child plays and
touches the objects physically. Between the age of four and eight comes the
concrete operational or visual stage. The child paints images. Trial and error is the
way how the child explores the world in this stage. The forth and final stage of
development is the formal or symbolic stage. It is characterized by logic, hypothesis
and deductions, theories, and thinking in abstractions.

Jerome Bruner, also a psychologist, has repeated many of Piaget’s experiments and
confirmed the results. But he concludes a more far-reaching theory than Piaget’s
stage model of human learning. He structures cognitive abilities into a set of
mentalities. The three main areas are the enactive, the iconic, and the symbolic
mentality. To each mentality he finds a corresponding stage in Piaget’s model. The
early playful stage matches the enactive mentality. With David C. Smith’s words,
«Learning is accomplished by doing. A baby learns what a rattle is by shaking it. A
child learns to ride a bicycle by riding one» [Smith 93]. The phase until about eight
years is dominated by the iconic mentality. «Learning and thinking utilizes pictures.
A child learns what a horse is by seeing one or a picture of one», says Smith [Ibid.].
The logic and formal stage is in accord with the symbolic mentality.

The main conclusion drawn from Piaget’s and Bruner’s work is, that it doesn’t make
any sense to try to teach abstract mathematical concepts to children before they have
reached the third stage of formal and symbolic reasoning. In consequence Seymour
Papert’s design of the programming language Logo is mainly driven by insights of
Piaget’s and Bruner’s theories – as portrayed in Mindstorms: Children, Computers,
and Powerful Ideas [Papert 80]. The concept of the turtle attracts children
immediately because it is well designed to fit into the first stage of curiosity and
play and at the same time the second stage of visual and iconic thinking as the turtle
is used to draw images.

During the video lecture Doing With Images Makes Symbols: Communicating with
Computers [Kay 87] Alan Kay points out that mentalities of human cognition do
not supersede each other. If a new stage unfolds the previous stage remains active. It
is a layered model of learning for children as well as for adults. Although adults
tend to neglect the early stages as childish. This turns out to be imprudent, because
the relation between practical experience, and a more figurative, iconic thinking on
the one hand and logical reasoning on the other hand is the vivid source for creative
thought. This is illustrated with a quote from Albert Einstein. His introspective
description of how he thinks harmonizes in remarkable manner with Bruner’s model
of mentalities [Smith 93]:** Smith took the quote from Jacques Hadamard’s book
The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field, Dover Publications, New
York, 1945, p. 142-143.

The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem
to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities
which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more
or less clear images which can be ’voluntarily’ reproduced and
combined. […] This combinatory play seems to be the essential feature
in productive thought–before there is any connection with logical
construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be
communicated to others. […] The above mentioned elements are, in my
case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other
signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when
the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be
reproduced at will.

Einstein even refers to the enactive physical layer – «some of muscular type» – that
plays an important role for his process of thought.

Software design should consider to serve all mental layers. The desktop metaphor
and WIMP graphical user interfaces are successful, because they offer direct
manipulation of content that corresponds to the visual and physical layer. Icons and
pull down menus are used to convey abstract concepts of directories and algorithms.
Kay’s slogan «Doing with Images makes Symbols» [Kay 90, p. 196] wraps up
Piaget’s stage model, Bruner’s mentalities and their application for user interface
design.

The mouse is a physical extension of the hand to touch and manipulate icons and
windows on screen. They are graphical representations for otherwise abstract
concepts. Alan Kay’s programming language Smalltalk can be used to formulate
ideas of all kind, to express relations between those ideas, and to logically infer new
facts. Tab. 3.2 gives a summary of the three models.

Doing with Images makes Symbols

kinesthetic /
Piaget’s stages visual symbolic / formal
sensorimotoric
Bruner’s
enactive iconic symbolic
mentalities
Kay’s interface
mouse icons, windows Smalltalk
design
 recognize, tie together long
know where you
compare, configure, chains of reasoning,
are, manipulate
concrete abstract

Tab. 3.2 Doing with Images makes Symbols

> Table of Contents

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Vision and Reality of Hypertext and Graphical User Interfaces
(122 pages, 31 figures, 3 tables).

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Incomming Links

VIS242. Theories of Media and New Media, University of California, San

Diego

Legend: link outside this site

Modified: 8/23/06 Computer Hisotry, Alan Kay, AlanKay