Cognitive engineering is an

interdisciplinary field Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...

that applies principles from

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...

cognitive neuroscience Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the Biology, biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental ...

, and

human factors Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors eng ...

to design and develop engineering systems that effectively support or enhance human

cognitive process Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ima ...

es. The field emerged in the 1980s when

Donald Norman Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially '' The Design o ...

and others recognized the need to better understand how humans interact with complex technological systems. Unlike traditional

engineering design The engineering design process, also known as the engineering method, is a common series of steps that engineers use in creating functional products and processes. The process is highly iterative – parts of the process often need to be repeat ...

approaches that focus primarily on physical and technical aspects, cognitive engineering emphasizes understanding the

mental model A mental model is an internal representation of external reality: that is, a way of representing reality within one's mind. Such models are hypothesized to play a major role in cognition, reasoning and decision-making. The term for this concept wa ...

decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...

processes,

attention Attention or focus, is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is the selective concentration on discrete information, either subjectively or objectively. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembe ...

, and

information processing In cognitive psychology, information processing is an approach to the goal of understanding human thinking that treats cognition as essentially Computing, computational in nature, with the mind being the ''software'' and the brain being the ''hard ...

capabilities of users. This user-centered approach aims to create systems that are intuitive, reduce

cognitive load In cognitive psychology, cognitive load is the effort being used in the working memory. According to work conducted in the field of instructional design and pedagogy, broadly, there are three types of cognitive load: * ''Intrinsic'' cognitive load ...

, minimize

human error Human error is an action that has been done but that was "not intended by the actor; not desired by a set of rules or an external observer; or that led the task or system outside its acceptable limits".Senders, J.W. and Moray, N.P. (1991) Human Er ...

, and optimize overall human-computer interaction. Cognitive engineering methods include

task analysis Task analysis is a fundamental tool of human factors engineering. It entails analyzing how a task is accomplished, including a detailed description of both manual and mental activities, task and element durations, task frequency, task allocation, ...

, cognitive work analysis,

cognitive modeling A cognitive model is a representation of one or more cognitive processes in humans or other animals for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. There are many types of cognitive models, and they can range from box-and-arrow diagrams to a se ...

usability testing Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. It is mo ...

, and various forms of user research.

History

It was an engineering method used in the 1970s at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, focused on how people form a

cognitive model A cognitive model is a representation of one or more cognitive processes in humans or other animals for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. There are many types of cognitive models, and they can range from box-and-arrow diagrams to a se ...

of a system based upon common metaphors. As explained, by Joseph Henry Condon: According to Condon, the ideas of cognitive engineering were developed later than, and independent from, the early work on the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

operating system.

Don Norman Donald Arthur Norman (born December 25, 1935) is an American researcher, professor, and author. Norman is the director of The Design Lab at University of California, San Diego. He is best known for his books on design, especially '' The Design o ...

cited principles of cognitive engineering in his 1981 article, "The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid." Norman criticized the

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

of Unix as being "a disaster for the casual user." However the "casual user" is not the target audience for UNIX and as the Condon quote above indicates, a high level of user interface abstraction leads to cognitive models that may be "totally erroneous."

References

{{reflist Bell Labs Human–computer interaction

History

See also

References