Cognitive ergonomics

Cognitive ergonomics is a scientific discipline that studies, evaluates, and designs tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems and how they interact with humans and their cognitive abilities. It is defined by the International Ergonomics Association as "concerned with mental processes, such as perception, memory, reasoning, and motor response, as they affect interactions among humans and other elements of a system. Cognitive ergonomics is responsible for how work is done in the mind, meaning, the quality of work is dependent on the persons understanding of situations. Situations could include the goals, means, and constraints of work. The relevant topics include mental workload, decision-making, skilled performance, human-computer interaction, human reliability, work stress and training as these may relate to human-system design." Cognitive ergonomics studies cognition in work and operational settings, in order to optimize human well-being and system performance. It is a subset of the larger field of human factors and ergonomics. Cognitive ergonomics (sometimes known as cognitive engineering though this was an earlier field) is an emerging branch of ergonomics. It places particular emphasis on the analysis of cognitive processes required of operators in modern industries and similar milieus. This can be done by studying cognition in work and operational settings. It aims to ensure there is an appropriate interaction between human factors and process's that can be done throughout every day life. This would include every day life such as work tasks. Some cognitive ergonomics aims are: diagnosis, workload, situation awareness, decision making, and planning. CE is used to describe how work affects the mind and how the mind affects work. Its aim is to apply general principles and good practices of cognitive ergonomics that help to avoid unnecessary cognitive load at work and improves human performance. In a practical purpose, it will aid in human nature and limitations through additional help in information processing.