1ISE 412

Cognitive Engineering An interdisciplinary approach to the development

of principles, methods, tools, and techniques to guide the design of computerized systems intended to support human performance.

2ISE 412

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.

3ISE 412

the “cognitive systems triad”

Factors with artifacts and information representations:• Mapping to domain goal-means structure• Visual Form• Directability / Gulf of execution• Observability / Gulf of evaluation

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

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

World Agent

Field ofPractice

4ISE 412

An example Part 1:

Look at the following list of numbers:

1 2 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.

5ISE 412

Example (cont.)

Now let’s do this again, but looking at the following arrangement of the numbers:

8 1 6

3 5 7

4 9 2

6ISE 412

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 …

Artifact

World Agent

Field ofPractice