We discuss two main possible reasons for the surprisingly modest visibility of the concept of cognitive ergonomics in both the research and application literature, and suggest remedies. First, when using this concept, we should be more explicit about the human cognitive limitations and abilities and their role in human-system interaction. Second, the field of cognitive ergonomics should also place more emphasis on the cognitive aspects of the socio-technical context part of human factors. Although the focus of ergonomics, and human factors, is on human-system interaction, it is essential to understand that one piece of this puzzle is a constant and the other is constantly changing. Human cognitive functions and information-processing principles and their underlying brain structures have remained approximately the same for at least 30 000 years. In contrast, the current era of digitalization, automation, robotization, and big data has brought, and will continue to bring, changes that also affect the cognitive demands of the sociotechnical context.1
Despite 40 years of cognitive ergonomics, surprisingly few articles use this concept. When searching for ‘cognitive ergonomics’ or just ‘ergonomics’ in the Human Factors, the Ergonomics, and the Applied Ergonomics journals, only 9 out of 79, 69 out of 776, and 89 out of 1313 documents concern specifically cognitive ergonomics rather than any ergonomics, respectively. In the whole Web of Science, ‘cognitive ergonomics’ is present as a topic in 582 documents, which is relatively seldom if compared to ‘ergonomics’ that can be found as a topic in 8747 documents. However, it is evident that both practices and research do deal with cognitive ergonomics, but under different concepts and constructions, such as ‘human factors’, ‘human-centred design’, and ‘cognitive engineering’. When these are used together in a search (excluding ‘ergonomics’), there are 8475 topic matches in the Web of Science. In sum, whereas all documents 1 Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). referring to ergonomics and related fields total more than 17 000, the concept of ‘cognitive ergonomics’ is visible in the leading journals of our field in less than 170 documents. What is this concept and why is it relatively unpopular?
Ergonomics (or human factors) practices aim to ensure ‘appropriate interaction
between work, product and environment, and human needs, capabilities and limitations’,
as defined by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society [
We suggest that, in the future, the field of cognitive ergonomics should place more emphasis on the cognitive aspects of both the human and the socio-technical context parts of human factors in order to increase our contribution to productive and healthy human-system interaction. Cognitive ergonomics is a matter of cognitive factors. While the significance of cognitive factors increases with the development of digitalization, robotization, and artificial intelligence, also the field of cognitive ergonomics should expand its contribution and impact. 1.1
Although the definition of cognitive ergonomics provides a comprehensive list of
human cognitive functions, there is a need to describe human cognitive abilities and
limitations in more detail. What aspects and principles of cognitive functioning are relevant
when we study the interaction of human cognition with the socio-technical context?
Such knowledge already exists in the human factors field, but these theories and
examples are often associated with specific types of tasks and context, and very often with
high-demand safety-critical tasks and environments. For example, the very useful
concept of situational awareness [
The field of experimental and applied cognitive psychology offers a huge amount of
information on the limitations and capacities of the human cognitive system and the
factors that affect cognitive performance. For example, our capacity to rehearse and
process information in our short-term working memory is limited to 3–4 items [
It is not only the human part of human factors that requires a detailed description of cognition; we should also clearly describe the cognitive aspects related to the changing socio-technical context. In the definitions of (cognitive) ergonomics, the system parts interacting with the human parts are tasks, jobs, products, systems, organizations, and environments. It is essential to describe the cognitive demands of these systems and contexts, which cognition functions are required when we interact with a specific sociotechnical context, and whether some conditions are cognitively straining and likely to impair our cognitive performance.
Information and communication technology and artificial intelligence continue to
develop, which has provoked changes in all contexts and will continue to do so. In work
life, these changes can lead to job intensification and increase the cognitive demands in
work. For instance, a growing number of knowledge work tasks require working with
abstract knowledge and acquiring, creating and applying knowledge, as well as
continuous on-the-job learning [
We argue that the societal contribution of cognitive ergonomics will increase in the
future if we define both the cognitive human and the cognitive socio-technical context
in more detail and constantly update the relevance of new research findings from the
perspective of human–context interaction. In research, we need to apply the detailed
findings of cognitive psychology and demonstrate how cognitive limitations manifest
in conventional everyday tasks. Cognitive ergonomics can play a theory-building role
in providing applied cognitive psychology models that can handle complex everyday
tasks in which no single cognitive function is dominant, and in which different
functions work in concert [
As regards designing the socio-technical context, recognizing the changes in the
cognitive demands in the context allows the identification on the one hand, of the
possibilities they can provide in enhancing human cognitive performance, well-being, and
productivity; and on the other hand, the risks to cognitive performance and well-being
if the new demands exceed human cognitive abilities and capacities and lead to
cognitive failure or impair (occupational) safety and health [
We also need new methods that quickly provide us with a general overview of the
cognitive demands and cognitively demanding conditions in the new contexts and
within any task. Changes in socio-technical contexts now pertain to all fields – not only
the high-demand and safety-critical tasks that have previously been the focus of human
factors studies. Some excellent examples update our view of specific socio-technical
contexts, such as models that describe the complexity of interruptions in health care
and their consequences [
In sum, cognitive ergonomics is a field that can anticipate how the changing
cognitive context around us will affect the cognitive human; our performance and related
productivity, as well as well-being on individual, organizational, and institutional
levels. We suggest that the concept of cognitive ergonomics should be more clearly
defined as the part of human factors that focuses on the cognitive aspects of both the
human and the socio-technical parties, whose interaction is at the core of cognitive
ergonomics. The more we understand both parts of the equation, the more successfully
we can anticipate their interaction, which is also changing in line with the context
changes. For design, cognitive ergonomics should provide the means to model and
predict how the new products and applications to be developed would either support or
hinder human performance in this context. To the fields of work design and job crafting
[
I acknowledge comments on this position paper from my colleagues Teemu Paajanen and Teppo Valtonen, with whom I am co-developing methods for cognitive ergonomics and collaborating in various research and development projects at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. I am thankful to our multidisciplinary team for the interdisciplinary discussions that extend my view beyond the field of cognitive psychology.