1. Ergonomics/Human Integrated Systems (Project 02)

2. Objectives: To fit the job to the human need to understand the human.
Psychology students should understand human behaviour.
Important to understand social behaviour as this can impact on performance and health – e.g. motivation, attitudes etc...
Important to understand cognition, perception, information processing and memory.
Underlies ability to do task – affected by social issues.

3. Human Cognition
Cognition is a term for the mechanisms we use to perceive, think and remember.
We perceive, process and respond.
Theory Lab based, not in applied context.
Tasks that are incompatible with our cognitive functions can lead to:
Poor performance
Stress
Errors – medical errors.
Disasters – 3 mile island.

4. Cognitive Factors Psychomotor Skills Sensory and perceptual skills
Attention
Learning and memory
Language and communication
Problem solving and decision making
All relevant to task performance
Examples?

5. Cognitive Characteristics
Each factor has characteristics
A person must be able to physically reach the controls of a machine
Technology should not exceed our cognitive limits.
Understanding human cognition can inform task design or ability to do task.

6. Exercise - Limits Think of physical limits that affect task design?
Think of psychological limits – how do they affect tasks? Are they as clear?

7. Understanding Cognition
Not enough to consider cognitive characteristics of user
Interaction between humans and devices requires two-way exchange of information.
Need model of task or device, ie outputs and inputs - Context
Need model of the user’s cognitive processes and behaviour - Competence
Can then understand what can and cannot be expected of users - Performance

8. Considering Human Performance
Competence (Users Cognitive Characteristics):
What the person can do
What the mind can compute
Performance:
What the person actually does
What mind computes in a given context
Context (The workplace, environment etc.):
How contextual factors affect information processing, response selection etc.

9. Example
User may have mental capacity or competence to use a mobile phone and drive a car.
Performance of phone use and driving (the output of cognition) can be measured.
Performance of either task affected by contextual factors.
Context includes weather, time, mood?
Or phone conversation may be more complicated.
Or the task more complicated.
In these situations the task may exceed the mental capacities.