baroque figure

Emery Snyder
 
74 E 7th St., apt. E1
New York  NY  10003
tel. (212) 388-9511
emery_snyder@post.harvard.edu

 

I study how people glean or create meanings from contextual clues and patterns. Such cognitive parsing usually calls upon implicit and embedded as well as explicit information. It occurs in performing a task, knowing how to act in a social situation, figuring out the genre of a poem, or conversing in a natural language. More structured tasks interest me the most: how do people go about navigating a piece of writing or music, or a computer interface? How do they carry out a large goal by performing a series of more specific actions?

The tools I use were developed in the research projects called linguistics and cognitive science, which I see as part of a long-term project including classical rhetoric, narratology, Russian formalism, and Czech structuralism.

I currently work in the field of web-site and software design. I research people's goals, strategies, behaviors, and mental models to write requirements for websites or software. Then I work with the rest of a team to ensure that the finished product (and its documentation and training) allows them to work easily given their habits and needs. The other part of my job involves figuring out how the site's information is organized and how users will move through the site. I also do translations into English from German and French, and some technical design and instructional design. My professional site for information architecture, software requirements, and translation has moved to: http://www.emerysnyder.com.

If you want to find something I wrote or have any questions, please email me. Thank you!