WE: A Writing Environment for Professionals,

Technical and scientific professionals are writers. Regardless of title or job description, they write. We are developing a comprehensive Writing Environment (WE) for this application. In describing this system, we will emphasize five key concepts: The system is based on a cognitive model for written communication; The system is highly visual; The system was prototyped in Smalltalk and then ported to Objective C; The system will be used a series of cognitive experiments; and the system can be extended to other applications. The emphasis placed on cognitive aspects in this description probably needs more explanation. WE is one instance of an increasingly important kind of software that provides users with an environment in which to think or with functions that supplement human cognitive skills. To be successful, these intelligence augmenting systems must reflect the cognitive processes of the people using them.