Building Documentation Into the Interface : A Cognitive Theory

As documentation is more and more built directly into the interface, and as technical communicators move into areas of interface design and usability, it is important to have a theoreticaij%amework within which to make decisions about what kind of information should be conveyed at any moment. Although it is possible to design highly usable systems baaed on intuition alone, there area set of basic cognitive principles which tied design. Designs which violate these principles are likely to cause users problems. These principles are also useful in predicting how designs will perform.