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. ISE 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. ISE 412

the “cognitive systems triad” 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 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 Artifact World Agent Field of Practice Affordances Strategies Demands Factors with artifacts and information representations: Mapping to domain goal-means structure Visual Form Directability / Gulf of execution Observability / Gulf of evaluation ISE 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. ISE 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 ISE 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 of Practice Affordances Strategies Demands ISE 412