@misc{398,
  author = {Michael Nilan and Anuradha Mundkur},
  title = {Structuring Virtuality},
  abstract = {The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of an empirical procedure for generating user-based cognitive and social cognitive models of tasks/problems/contexts that can be employed to create readily navigable link structures for virtuality-mediated communication and collaboration purposes. Employing a natural language, user-based method, this study describes patterns found across 128 interviews where respondents were describing their cognitive movement in the form of steps taken during an interactive E-Commerce situation. Employing these patterns, we analytically develop a model of E-Commerce as a series of logically necessary steps over time. The resulting model illustrates the utility of individual cognitive and social cognitive patterns to structure virtuality as a series of interactive links associated with particular tasks/problems/contexts. Logical structures derived in this manner have the additional strength of requiring no {\textquotedblleft}training{\textquotedblright} of users because they already recognize the inherent linguistic, temporal and functional relationships. As an added benefit, the model of E-Commerce generated in this study has concrete practical implications for web site design and evaluation.},
  year = {2007},
  booktitle = {Virtuality and Virtualization},
  journal = {Virtuality and Virtualization},
  pages = {53 - 66},
  doi = {10.1007/978-0-387-73025-7_6},
  language = {eng},
  key = {398},
}