Cognitive Engineering

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An interdisciplinary approach to the
development of principles, methods, tools, and
techniques to guide the design of computerized
systems intended to support human
performance.
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User-centered design

The questions that drive design include the
following:
 What
are the goals and constraints in the application
domain?
 What range of tasks do domain practitioners perform?
 What strategies do they use to perform these tasks
today?
 What factors contribute to task complexity?
 What tools can be provided to facilitate the work of
domain practitioners and achieve their goals more
effectively?
from: Roth, E. M., Patterson, E. S., & Mumaw, R. J. Cognitive Engineering: Issues in User-Centered System Design. In
J.J. Marciniak, Ed. Encylopedia of Software Engineering (2nd Edition). NY: John Wiley and Sons.
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the “cognitive systems triad”
Factors in the external
world/task domain:
• Goal-means structure
• Complexity of task
elements
• Hazards
• Constraints on actions
• Temporal dynamics
• Coupling between
systems
• Uncertainty and risk
Field of
Practice
Factors with human and
machine agents:
• Human Information
Processing
• Perceptual characteristics
• Memory and attention
characteristics
• Basis for skill and
expertise
• Sources of error
• Communication and
coordination
• Human-Human
• Human-Intelligent system
Artifact
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Factors with artifacts and information representations:
• Mapping to domain goal-means structure
• Visual Form
• Directability / Gulf of execution
• Observability / Gulf of evaluation
3
An example

Part 1:
 Look
1
2
at the following list of numbers:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
 You
and your partner take turns selecting a number.
 Once a number is selected it cannot be chosen again.
 The first one to get any 3 numbers that total 15 wins.
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Example (cont.)

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Now let’s do this again, but looking at the
following arrangement of the numbers:
8
1
6
3
5
7
4
9
2
5
Modeling this with the cognitive triad:

In the space below, identify the specific factors
of the agent, artifact, and world that affected the
performance on this task …
Field of
Practice
Artifact
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