Cognitive Ergonomics

Dr. Manish Kumar Asthana

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand
Lecture-1

Introduction to Cognitive Ergonomics-I

Hello everyone, I am Dr. Manish Kumar Asthana going to take this lecture on Cognitive
Ergonomics. Today's lecture is on to introduce you to Cognitive Ergonomics. Before I begin
with, I give you an course outline. Week 1, we will be talking about Introduction to Cognitive
Ergonomics, Human Cognitive Abilities and Skill.

Week 2, Human-Computer Interaction, Usability. Week 3, we will talk about Human Error
Theory followed by Cognitive Safety and Risk Management. In this 4-week course structure,
you will be learning about the cognitive ergonomics, the relevance and importance of cognitive
ergonomics in day-to-day life. Today what we are going to talk about is Cognitive Revolution.

Cognitive Revolution started in the year of 1950, soon after World War II. During the World
War II, what we researchers, scientists and engineers observed is that increasing technological
advancement, lot of heavy machineries were being built and the human beings were incapable
to handle such machines, lot of human errors, lot of human failures were happening. It has
been noticed that human were facing lot of challenges, not because they lack necessary skills
and abilities. However, the machine, the system has not been designed according to their
physical stature. Over the period of time, the field of ergonomics has evolved and it has come
to our understanding that the lot of different multidisciplinary approach has been taken up
forward to understand the human need and to provide the support in this domain.

Three important things which has occurred in this cognitive revolution is that advancement in
engineering, computer science, language. Secondly challenges from the World War II, where
the people were facing lot of challenges to handle the machinery. As you can see in the graphic
on your right-hand side, the man handling a tank, he has to localize, he has to navigate, he has
to target his enemy. But the space has been so compact that his physical space is so limited
that he faced lot of restrained behavior is there. This restrained behavior for a period of time,
over a period of time build stress in the body and this physical stress ultimately affects the
cognitive stress.
What do we mean with cognitive stress is that his attentional demand will increase, memory
demand will increase, perceptual demand will increase. So physical stress ultimately start
influencing his cognitive demands. Not only in this right-hand cartoon, but you can also see
in your left-hand cartoon, the picture is from a cockpit. What do we see in the cockpit is that
lot of control buttons and panels are there. What people observed during World War II is that
lot of human errors, lot of plane crashes were happening.

They were not able to understand why this plane crash is happening with the pilots. Not only
people were losing the human lives, but also billion dollars machines were being compromised
at each and every time when pilot is taking off or landing. Very soon they realized that there
is a problem in the display. What is the problem in the display? As you can see on your screen,
there are two buttons simultaneously related to, placed closely to each other. One button which
is on left hand side is the flying gear.

Another button which is a little bottom on your right-hand side is the landing gear highlighted
in red. So, every time when a pilot has to take off the plane from the ground, he has to take the
flying gear. When he has to put the plane down on the ground, then he has to press the landing
gears. But the span of time when he has to make such decision is very less. Under normal
circumstances, people can make such decision easily.

But at the time of a stress, at the time of war, it is very challenging. In few seconds, you have
to land, you have to refuel and then again you have to be in the sky to fight your enemy plane.
And then in few seconds, you have to land your plane, you have to come down again and find
a shelter. While making such decision, pilots were making lot of human errors. As a mixing
up the gears, the crashes were happening more often.

So, the designers, the engineers realized that there is a need to change the display and then
they changed the display and the accident rate came down to minimal. However, these are the
two simple case studies which I showed you. There are some several such case studies which
are present in our day-to-day life. From the time we prepare our coffee to the time we are
standing in a traffic light to the time when we are taking a lift to reach our office and to the
time when we are driving back home. At several places, we are using our cognition and the
efficiency performance is at stake.

This is what is more relevant in the domain of cognitive ergonomics. The demand of cognition
and how the efficiency, performance and safety is dependent on our cognitive skills and
abilities. As I was telling you earlier that the demand of cognition day to day life is very high.
So, as you can see in this cartoon, when a teacher has to cross the road along with students, the
driver waiting so that the people can cross the road, the traffic police is standing and observing
that there should be a safe passage provided to the teacher along with the students and the cars
should take a halt, should take a stop at the red light. Each and everyone is doing its own
cognition at its own level.

If any failure will happen, then the casualty is likely to happen. What are the cognitive skills
and abilities is being involved here if you see recognition, recognition of traffic light,
recognition of traffic police, recognition of red flag which means that there is a, there should
be stop. Recall what those signs, signages mean. Reasoning when I have to stop and when I
have to proceed.

Problem solving. How to solve this problem of crossing the road? During crossing the road,
I have to take zebra crossing or I can cross at any place. Language. What does stop means?
Which does not only involve the verbal communication, but non-verbal communication also.
And then the decision making. So, stopping at signal when it is red and starting a car when the
signal is turning into orange and orange turning into green.

Such information we will, we have observed and we have seen that in recent years, people
have started to use cognition at each and every level and even they have tried to practice at
each and every day to make it better and better. With such understanding, we understand one
thing that our lives is around cognition. Recognition, recall, reasoning, problem solving,
decision making at is present at each and every level and cognition is a very complex in nature.
Though some, for some people it is easier, but for some people it is very complex. Our
objective is to understand the layers of complexity so that we can enhance the efficiency,
performance and safety.

But before that, I think it is important for us to understand the origination of cognitive
ergonomics. Cognitive ergonomics is comprised of two words, cognitive and ergonomics. It
is very important for us to first understand the cognition and or cognitive. The cognitive
discipline came into existence in the year of 1956, soon after World War II, when people
realized the importance and relevance of human beings. The machines should be designed as
per the need of the worker.

The system should be designed as per the need of the user. So, the user can be of different
gender and can be of different age. Over period of time, we have understood the significance
and relevance of user need. So, in the year 19, approximately 19, roughly 1956, when a group
of scientists in MIT were sitting and having a discussion, then they realized that the discipline
like psychology, which studies the human behavior is not being capable enough to address and
understand the phenomena like language, building, production and understanding. Along with
that, what is happening when people think of a word like apple and a word like shoe, which
part of the brain is responsible in the generation, in the production of these two letters, which
part of the brain is responsible to distinguish the visual representation of these two words, apple
and shoe.
 Human behavior studies were being studied, studying the result of the behavior, but not
basically what is happening inside the human mind, which is like a Pandora box. Hence, the
researchers and scientists, they came together and understood that there is a need for a
discipline, which can understand, which can address the underlying neural mechanism for such
behaviors, which can help us in understanding how do we do the distinction between the two
stimuli, the two pictures, two objects and our biasness towards it. Hence, the four disciplines
came all together like philosophy, language, anthropology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence
and psychology. This multidisciplinary field is known as cognitive science. So, this cognitive
science help us in understanding the human cognition, providing perspective from different
disciplines.

With the help of cognitive science, we may be able to understand that how humans are making
distinction between different type of materials and objects. Like as you can see on your screen,
mechanical waste, chemical waste and e-waste are different. How these different ways people
identify, how do people make such distinction and once these distinctions are being made, then
what decision has to be taken up. There are several stages involved in these simple processes.
So, when the stimulus is there, we pay attention to what kind of waste it is it, with the help of
perception, visual perception, auditory perception or any other type of sensory perception.

Once our perception provides us this information, then we pay attention to which waste we
have to pay attention to first, like the chemical waste, mechanical waste or e-waste. So thought
processes start, decision making has to be made and accordingly we make a response towards
this. Now this is a very simple, these stages are very simple. It seems we have oversimplified
this process. But human mind, human cognition is more complex than this.

It is very dynamic, it is very rapid, it is very fast. Every second we are making a decision,
what to say, how to say, what not to say. Such decisions can be simplified under different
context and can be very complex under different context. So, there are multiple cognitive
processes are happening at the same time. However, to some processes we pay more attention
than the others.

It is important for us now to just do a set of revision, what we have understood in the previous
slide. Cognitive revolution was the, led the foundation towards the understanding of how
cognition came into existence and why it is important because of the failure of human
machinery system, lot of errors, lot of accidents. People understood that the perceptual
processes might be a challenge. And then this cognitive revolution led to the foundation of
cognitive science which ultimately made an attempt to reveal the human cognition which is
complex in nature into a simpler form, the stages of cognitive processes. Let me take you
forward and explain it to you, what is cognitive ergonomics now? If and what does it mean?
As I explained earlier to you, what is cognitive science, a multidisciplinary discipline which is
providing us an insight to explain us how the cognition starts and how cognitive processes
work.

Cognitive ergonomics is comprised of two words cognition, cognitive and ergonomics.

Cognitive word is coming from the word cognition which means the mental processes of
knowing including the aspects of awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment. How do
people understand? How do people process information, the recollection of information?
Imagine a situation when somebody ask you, what is the taste of a vanilla? What is the taste
of an apple? In such way the human cognition recollects information which we have stored it
in our past. If you have experienced the taste of apple, it will be very easy for you to describe
and explain. However, if you have not experienced the taste of the apple, then it may be little
difficult for you to explain.

So this processes is the mental processes where different type of cognitive processes are
involved. The ergonomics on the other hand is the study of work. The study of work, the laws
of work and the law and the study of ergonomics pays more attention to these three major goals.
One it enhances the performance, increases the safety and increases the user satisfaction.
Performance and efficiency is a part of any cognitive processes.

Based on performance and efficiency, we decide if a person is capable enough to solve a

problem. Knowing the fact how he can enhance the safety and also the processes should be
satisfied. So, when we combine these two terms together, cognitive and ergonomics together,
we understand that it is a mental processes such as perception, memory, reasoning and motor
response as they affect the interaction among the human and other elements of a system. When
we talk about a system here, we mean the machines. But it can also be seen as an environmental
system, a social system.

A system can be broadly seen a large body. But during this course work, we will be trying to
address the machines or either the computer system. And that is why in one segment, we will
be talking about the human computer interaction, okay. So cognitive ergonomics is concerned
about the mental processes and how they affect the interaction to study the interaction between
the human and other elements. So, we should be asking to ourselves this question, why should
we study cognitive ergonomics? If ergonomics is talking about the performance, safety, user
satisfaction, that much should be enough for us to understand the system itself and how the
humans are interacting with the system. But the bigger question here is that what type of
cognitive processes are involved? What type of cognitive processes are helping a person to
enhance the performance and efficiency? What type of cognitive processes is helping a person
to increase the safety? What type of cognitive processes is helping a person to increase user
satisfaction? Parallelly, there are n number of cognitive processes happening.
 From task to task, these processes vary. From task to task, these cognitive processes
contribute differently to enhance the performance, satisfaction and the safety. So, the cognitive
ergonomics where the user interface design, modeling of the users system, problem solving,
learning, system design, especially the design of the automation system is important. Who is
handling the system? The humans. The humans are the users. The user can be naive,
intermittent or an expert.

When the users are of different type, then the system cannot be one. The system should be
modeled according to the user and its need. We also know that the user comes from different
gender. The user comes from different age. Accordingly, we have to design a system which
can support the need of the user.

How a performance and efficiency can be enhanced if the user faces lot of challenges? Hence,
the design of automation has to consider the type of user which is involved. Hence, cognitive
ergonomics may help us in the reduction of negative situation. If these negative situations,
unpleasant events will be avoided, then the performance will increase, the safety will increase.
Along with that user satisfaction will be there. Imagine a scenario, your grandmother is
handling a mobile phone for the first time.

Now the mobile phone, when it came, it came with a keypad. Now the keypad has been
replaced with technology, the advanced technology, the Android, the smart phones, the
touchpad is there. You touch and then in your palm you can handle everything, you can order
any product, you can order food, you can book your tickets, which was not the case 20 years
ago. With such advancement in technology, our users are still having moved to another level.

They still face lot of difficulty to handle. Mobile banking is another big nightmare for the
elderlies. So, these nightmares, how to overcome these nightmares? Have we designed the
system as per the need of the elderlies? We have made the system more sophisticated, but we
haven't understood really how well our users are using it. So, we have started providing them
with a manual, the help manual, which can help the user to handle the device. However, still
the manual fails to provide any assistance to these elderlies. But can we design a system in
such a way that the system itself provides an aid to the user? To have such design, first we
have to understand how the cognitive processes work.

What are the demands of cognition, required? The demand of cognition in handling a car, the
demand of cognition in handling a TV control remote or the demand of cognition in handling
a mobile phone are all different and they are distinct from each other. They may be similar, but
they are distinct from each other. So cognitive ergonomics may help in these cases to reduce
the negative situation, such as identification of the negative situation. What are the challenges?
What kind of perceptual challenges the elderlies are facing? What kind of attentional
challenges elderlies are facing? What kind of perceptual challenges a child is facing? What
kind of challenges a grown-up is facing while driving a car? Is he or she able to identify and
see the navigation system? Is he or she able to identify the road signs? So, identification of
negative situation can only be understood if you understand the human cognition well. Then
secondly, how well are we defining the problem and its consequences? The traditional remote
system is having lot of buttons on the remote control.

The elderly, are they able to understand what each and every button means? The real
challenge is the selection of the button. To turn on and to turn off, it is easy because on a remote
control that button is red in color. But rest of the buttons are more confusing. To provide more
does not mean that it is good, but it actually to provide more features is involves complexity to
a system. The handling of a system should be easy and this is what these days modern
technology is paying attention to.

Some of those products which you see, which the designers are designing are designing for
the uses, the type of uses. So, the inclusive design is of prime concern these days. But are we
able to identify the problem? That is the second concern which cognitive ergonomics
addresses. It addresses how well we understand the problem and its consequences. Thirdly,
and the last point is to prescribe in avoiding or in reducing the impact.

To prescribe, to provide a solution what can do, what one can do to avoid such situations. We
need to study and investigate such aspects in detail and several human experiments and human
studies are required in this area. More than this, I think what is more important in the discipline
of cognitive ergonomics is how human mind really works under different social context and
environmental situations. Such as a worker working in a nuclear power plant or a worker
working in a farm or a worker working in an operation theatre.

A nurse is very different from a nuclear scientist. A nuclear scientist is very different from a
farmer. A farmer is very different from a firefighter. A firefighter is very different from a
teacher. However, what they all share is the cognition. The way they perceive things, the way
they pay attention to, the way they recollect the information, the way they integrate the
information and take a decision making.

Taking a decision, it may be a very simple task, but it involves lot of cognitive processes. So,
what did we learn today from today's lecture is how the cognitive revolution laid the foundation
of human cognition in the discipline of ergonomics. The ergonomics were the laws of work,
people pay attention to performance, user satisfaction and safety. How human cognition like
perception, attention, decision making, memory may contribute and help the user, the human
beings to perform better under a stressful condition, to enhance the safety and bring user
satisfaction. What we also learned is that different types of users like elderly or young person
face different challenges.
 What we also learn that performing a simple task like crossing a road or driving a car involves
human cognitive complexity. Cognitive ergonomics is going to address that how people
working under different contextual systems can enhance their performance, safety measures
and user satisfaction by enriching their understanding about human cognition. It may also help
us in redesigning, remodeling the human machine system. It may also help us to enhance the
system for the genderless and ageless community.

With this I would like to say thank you and see you next week. Thank you.