This instrument is for use in facilitating formative assessments and insights of existing or envisaged complex interactive systems. By complex interactive systems, we mean systems where the idea of direct manipulation is inappropriate due to the presence of intermediate interactive notations designed for manipulating domain information. 

The instrument was initially motivated by operational interpretations of the Cognitive Dimensions framework (Green, 1998; Blackwell, et al. 2001, Blackwell and Green 2000), and subsequent validation work (Roast and Khazaei, 2006) and experiences of applying the approach (Roast et al., 2013).

References

Blackwell, A.F., Britton, C., Cox, A. Green, T.R.G., Gurr, C.A., Kadoda, G.F., Kutar, M., Loomes, M., Nehaniv, C.L., Petre, M., Roast, C., Roes, C., Wong, A. and Young, R.M. (2001). Cognitive Dimensions of Notations: Design tools for cognitive technology. In M. Beynon, C.L. Nehaniv, and K. Dautenhahn (Eds.) Cognitive Technology 2001 (LNAI 2117). Springer-Verlag, pp. 325-341. 

Blackwell, A.F. & Green, T.R.G. (2000). A Cognitive Dimensions Questionnaire optimised for users. In A.F. Blackwell & E. Bilotta (Eds.) Proceedings of the Twelth Annual Meeting of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group , 137-152.

Green, T. R. G. (1989). Cognitive dimensions of notations. In People and Computers V, A Sutcliffe and L Macaulay (Ed.) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, pp. 443-460.

Roast, C. and Khazaei, B., An Investigation into the validation of formalised Cognitive Dimensions Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems (DSVIS), July 2006, Springer Verlag.
 
Roast, C., Dearden, A. and Uruchurtu, E. (2013) Formative evaluation for complex interactive systems. In:Proceedings of the 6th Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction (CLIHC 2013), Springer Verlag.