About Categorization

This is a series of blog posts about the learnings and discoveries I made while studying Cognitive Psychology at the University of Berkeley, California. It will introduce you to the basic concepts of human cognition; attention, memory, categorization, semantic organization, language, problem solving and decision making.

Marc-Oliver
Jul 25, 2017 · 6 min read

Part One

Let’s assume, that I am an Art Expert on a ‘hobbyist’ level and my friend just recently introduced me to this American artist, named Douglas Huebler. She showed me one of his early works from the 1970’s and described it as one of his most famous ‘art pieces’ — at least, that is the description and initial (category-) label my friend used.


Part Two

My wife got me this beautiful guitar from Canada for my last birthday and I immediately wanted to learn how to play it (tip: Create a learning routine that fits into your daily life, otherwise, you will never pick it up.). On the first day, I practiced until my fingers hurt. I mostly looked up videos on Youtube and found three types of videos. The first category was concerned with teaching you how to learn notes (superordinate level) and how to apply or follow some rules of music composition. The second category dealt with teaching you the basics of playing a guitar — a string instrument (basic level). The third video category went straight into teaching you how to play specific songs on a guitar, as a beginner (subordinate level). My early conclusion was that learning to play a guitar is certainly both rule based and attribute based. If you want to play along, you not only need to follow the instructions but also need to follow the rules of the melody. If you want to play the right tone, you need to make sure you learned the attributes or features of a certain tone and finger-grip.


  • Douglas Huebler’s art object, in Lucy Lippard, “The famous six years — The dematerialization of the art object”, 1970.[Link]
  • Stephen K. Reed, 2012 [Link]

The Versatile Designer

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Marc-Oliver

Written by

Senior UX Manager @Appnovation, Canada. Writes about Cognitive Psychology, Behavioural Economics & Platform Design. Creator of https://axurewidgets.com.

The Versatile Designer

The hidden stories every product designer should know about markets, products & consumer behavior.

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