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Dissertation Information for Parto Dehdashti

NAME:
- Parto Dehdashti

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- Drexel University (USA) (1989)

ADVISORS:
- Gary Wayne Strong

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Guy Garrison
- Howard D. White
- Elliot Cole
- Wayne Zachary
- Thomas J. Hewitt

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: A study of mental models through communication between users and advisors solving software manipulation problems

Abstract: This research focuses on mental models, as defined by Norman (1983), using analysis of face-to-face communication between users and advisors. The premise of this research was that congruence between the advisor's understanding of the user's views (advisor's meta model) and the user's mental model would contribute to obtaining a solution to the user's software manipulation problem. Four components of software, as defined by Riley (1986), objects, actions, syntax, and semantics, were represented by a set of terms to measure the congruence. The user's judgement of the relevance of the terms to the problem and solution was compared with the advisor's meta model of the relevance of the terms. The resulting congruence index was then compared with the user's satisfaction which was determined from the user's responses to interview questions. No statistically significant relationship was detected between the congruence measure and user satisfaction. Although the users that were involved in the congruent interactions were mostly satisfied, users involved in incongruent interactions were still partially satisfied, indicating that the congruence was helpful but not necessary. Regression analysis showed that congruence in combination with advisor's expertise better explained the user's satisfaction. Analysis of conversation transcripts indicated that although users may have considered problems solved, many had not learned from the interaction with the advisors. Furthermore, the user's learning varied by the level of congruence of the advisor's meta model with user's mental model, indicating the importance of user's learning in the advising process. Types of software manipulation problems and the use of four components of software were incidentally studied. One set of results indicated that although procedure and internal operations categories, as defined by Alty and Coombs (1981), explained problems most often, novice users encounter problems that were still too complex to be defined in simple categories. Another set of results indicated that a structure existed among the four software components that included objects as the center of the user's mental model of the software, and syntax as the component most discussed in interactions. Qualitative and quantitative analysis together contributed to a better understanding of mental models in face-to-face

MPACT Scores for Parto Dehdashti

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:02:42

Advisors and Advisees Graph