Cognitive ergonomics

The cognitive ergonomics is one of the fields of the Ergonomie. It makes opposition to the physical Ergonomie which treats the whole of the human physiological factors (postures, activity, accessibility, etc)

Ergonomie: Adaptation of a product or a situation of work to a Cognitive user
: Relative to the great functions of the spirit (perception, language, memory, reasoning, decision, movement…).

Cognitive ergonomics is thus the study of the Interface of a product which implies the use of the spirit of the man.

History

Ergonomics already exists since 1949 and starts to be controlled when in 1982, with the increasingly generalized use of the Ordinateurs, the first European Conference in Cognitive Ergonomics proceeds with Amsterdam under the impulse of Thomas Green and Gerrit Van Der Veer inter alia.

This new discipline will know an increase proportional to the rise in the use of the computers and computerized interfaces. Gradually, when electronics or data processing was imisse in the products, cognitive ergonomics takes its place.

Today, the stake is of size. A product (produced household, automobile, Internet site…) not satisfying the customer in cognitive ergonomics, and it is a risk of no sale or fall of influence of a mark.

To include/understand the Man

To manage to include/understand how functions cognitive ergonomics, it is necessary to know the Homme. It should be known that the Cerveau of the man can go at a computing speed of 0.001s, whereas a processor of computer can go until 0.000000001s for the same calculation.

But the advantage of the Man is that it is able to work in parallel where the computer works into sequential. It can play on its Sensibilité when the computer manages the monitoring. The man has capacities of Perception and decision making whereas the computer can treat only the routine and the Protocole.

The question of the Automatisation of system thus makes enter concerned this cognitive ergonomics. In addition to the physiological facilities of use of a product, it is important that the user or the operator is not in extra work, or into undercharged of work.

Indeed, a station, on which the routine and the uselessness of competence appear, can prove to be dangerous for the operator (monitoring or Quality control for example). It is good to note besides that the routine is often the cause number one of the Human error.

The cognitive Paradigme can explain the following principle:

The brain receives signals of the sensory Récepteur (seen, hearing, will odora, touch, taste, Extéroception, Proprioception, Interroception and Nociception), which it transmits to a processor, which exchanges with the box memory. Then this information is transmitted to the effector which can act consequently.

Indeed, the brain consists of 3 subsystems of data processing:

the Perceptive subsystem
the Cognitive subsystem
the Driving subsystem

To err is human and must be taken into account when designing product whatever it is.

Applications of cognitive ergonomics

Sources

"Cognitive ergonomics, a necessary compromise enters of the approaches centered on the machine and the approaches centered on the homme" - Jean-Michel Hoc - CNRS - UVHC, LAMIH, PERCOTEC - http://www.ergonomie-self.org/rechergo98/html/hoc.html

"Cognitive Ergonimy and Industriel" Design; - Florence Tyndiuk - UTBM, ERCOS

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