In their role as tools, the goal of computing products is to make activities easier or more efficient to do (for example, math calculations or text manipulation), or to do things that would be virtually impossible without technology (such as tracking the location of a package you've sent or comparing a partial fingerprint with the thousands of criminal fingerprints on file).

Wir nutzen den Computer als multifunktionales Werkzeug und Informationsmedium, als "Hand- und Kopfwerkzeug", das unsere Arbeitsmöglichkeiten (etwa im Bereich der Textentwicklung) erweitert, uns aber nicht das Denken abnimmt, sondern im Idealfall durch schnellen Zugriff, durch enorme Speicherkapazitäten und durch Anschaulichkeit (Diagramme, Multimedia, Simulation) unsere Informationsbasis erweitert und verschiedene Lerntypen anspricht (verbal, visuell).

There is an old saying that goes something like this: If a person has only a Hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Indeed, a person 's perceptions and models of the world are strongly shaped by the objects that exist in the world. The same is true for computational Systems. The way people interact with (and think about) a computational System depends strongly on the objects that compose the System. If the objects are well chosen for the intended task, even novices will use the System productively. If the objects are not well chosen, even experts will struggle.