The Σ- concept

Abstract

The "User's Conceptual Model" (UCM) plays an important role in determining the behaviour of a user at the user-computer interface. In this paper I consider a small well-defined group of users of computer systems - those who know some general-purpose programming language. Such users have a conceptual model of their own (favourite) "programming language as a problem-solving tool". Using the problem to compute the inner product of two vectors in E n as a starting point, I develop that which I have called the Σ- concept and show how it fits into a formal model of the UCM of the "programming language as a problem-solving tool".