Ergonomics

Vol. 51, No. 1, January 2008, 71–75

Cognitive ergonomics: a multidisciplinary venture

J.-M. Hoc*

CNRS, Research Institute in Communications and Cybernetics of Nantes, France

Each time we try to delineate what could be the future of science, we are tempted by
projecting our hopes, rather than predicting what could reasonably happen. However, the
truth is that the future will be what most of the relevant agents think it should be, as in
economics. This contribution will not constitute an exception to the rule. I only hope that
my projections are relevant to the further development of ergonomics and accepted by
other colleagues. In his 1962 paper, Bartlett expressed hopes that I almost entirely share.
Most of them are core concerns for ergonomics science. However, nobody can be
competent in every domain and my comments will mainly concern cognitive ergonomics—
an area to which I have devoted decades of research. Although I consider cognitive
ergonomics to be a multidisciplinary field, my point of view is that of a researcher in
cognitive psychology, only one of the basic disciplines contributing to the domain.
Over the past 40 years, rapid technological advances have driven cognitive ergonomics
development more and more. For example, the large field of human–computer interaction
(HCI) has successively tackled changes in technology, from simple text editors (the
Skinner box of HCI) to Web use. Acceptability, usability and learnability of interfaces
have been the focus of many HCI studies, reacting to new technology rather than
prescribing it. Computer science is at the centre of this study of static situations where
everything is fully controlled by natural and artificial agents. Virtual reality and the
Internet are typical examples of technology outpacing ergonomics. In parallel with these
developments related to the computerisation of white collar work stations, automation
was penetrating process control and transportation situations, triggering abundant studies
of complex dynamic worlds (Hollnagel et al. 1988). Human and automation relationships
led to the concept of human–machine interaction (HMI), covering a field where the
machine is less considered as an assistant to the human operator and more as an agent
with which the human should cooperate (Hoc 2000). Dynamic function allocation is one
of the main topics within this area. Control theory is one of the major sciences at the core
of this domain of dynamic situations, partially controlled by the agents.
Still nowadays, for its major part, the progress is technical and triggers ergonomics
research rather than following its recommendations. Most of the work devoted to virtual
reality is technical and loosely driven by ergonomics functionalities. It is the same for the
internet, which has developed without clear connection to ergonomics design principles.

*Email: Jean-Michel.Hoc@irccyn.ec-nantes.fr

ISSN 0014-0139 print/ISSN 1366-5847 online

! 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00140130701801124
http://www.informaworld.com
72 J.-M. Hoc

However, many interesting applications of these tools in professional training and practice
have opened the need for research. The tool creates the use and it is often a creative
principle. The replacement of the Roman notation of numbers by the Arabic one was not
caused by calculations on real numbers, but the reverse is probably true. Indeed, this state
of affairs is not the only way to relate ergonomics research to design. For example, Long
(1996) has argued for a long time that research should not exclusively adopt a ‘fit-for-
understanding’ purpose, but also a ‘fit-for-design’ one. In the latter case, the design
objective aiming at improving work efficiency imposes a well-defined target to research.
This kind of idea is very valuable for the improvement of existing work situations. In the
case of innovation, the fit-for-design purpose is possibly much more difficult to implement.
The future of ergonomics research would certainly become more relevant to design,
provided that it reinforces its multidisciplinary power.
If ergonomics research seldom precedes technological development, it should follow it
as soon as possible. A good way of synchronising engineering and ergonomics sciences is
probably the immersion of ergonomics research teams inside engineering science
laboratories. Several examples exist in Europe, but the best known initiative and probably
the oldest one is Urbana-Champaign (Illinois) where many prestigious ergonomists have
developed very valuable research in human engineering as well as trained many researchers
who have now spread this type of initiative within the HMI domain. The same is true for
HCI where several initiatives of the same kind are well known, for example in private
companies like IBM (T.J. Watson Research Center) or Xerox (Palo Alto Research
Center). Recently, some academic research structures have also facilitated the emergence
of such multidisciplinary laboratories with the support of cognitive science or
communication science development. In the future, ergonomics will be spread more and
more into various research structures and less confined within human sciences faculties.
This could be an encouragement to develop multidisciplinary research and to be more
relevant to design. The success of the tight interaction between scientific disciplines will
also be related to the capacity of ergonomics to maintain its unity and its originality.
The present state of ergonomics, following rather than preceding innovation, is
understandable by the fact that ergonomists, especially researchers, are seldom designers.
However, they do actually try to intervene as soon as possible in the design process and to
‘reduce the gap between potential and actual technological advance’ (following Bartlett’s
terms in his paper). For example, in the domain of in-car automation, many research
programs, at the European as well at the national level, encourage system designers to
collaborate with ergonomists as soon as possible upstream of the design process. Some
recent publications in the journal Ergonomics and in many other journals illustrate this
fact well, trying to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of many forms of driving support
which are currently far from being introduced in cars (lateral support: Hoc et al. 2006,
Ward et al. 2006; longitudinal support: Lee et al. 2007, Stanton and Young 2005, Young
and Stanton 2004; shared control: Griffiths and Gillespie 2005; or collision avoidance:
Maltz and Shinar 2004, Young and Stanton 2007). However, although design can trigger
valuable research development, very often it poses research questions that go far beyond
the concrete design problem. The fit-for-understanding purpose remains a productive one
if the dialogue is maintained between research and design.
One of the main difficulties of research in ergonomics is its relevance to future work
environments. At the research phase, the future situation is far removed from
contemporary work contexts. The main concern of ergonomics research is obviously
ecological validity (Hoc 2001), that is to say the relation between the situation under study,
more often than not artificial, simplified and abstracted for research purposes, and a class
 Ergonomics 73

of target situations where the results could be applied. It is already difficult to manage
ecological validity between contemporary situations, but it is much more difficult to
predict a future (real) situation, in order to produce an ecologically valid present (artificial)
one. Who was able to predict the Web revolution and its effect on many work situations?
For example, when a consistent research effort was devoted to database search engines
some tens of years ago, Google was obviously not considered! More generally, anticipative
research makes use of experimental participants who are often very different from the
future operators who might still be at school and who could end up working in a new
culture. As with many human sciences, ergonomics research knowledge is sensitive to
contextual factors, such as cultural or technological changes. During the past 20 years,
social approaches have penetrated cognitive ergonomics research. The future of cognitive
ergonomics is likely to reinforce this new balance between social and technical approaches
to work. A complementary reason is the increase in collective nature of work.
Bartlett was right when considering that, after a period of abstraction from concrete
work tools, technology would return to concrete interfaces. Cognitive ergonomics began
to integrate sensorimotor and routine activities into its research field, after a long period
devoted to symbolic information processing and problem solving. The need for several
cognitive control modes and for their interactions is widely recognised (Hoc and
Amalberti 2007). In-car automation is now trying to reproduce sensations that were
withdrawn from modern cars (for safety reasons) and that have proved to be necessary to
the driving task (Walker et al. 2006). Virtual reality or telerobotics are highly concerned
with the need of ‘natural’ interfaces. However, reality enhancement is an important topic
when reality is poor as regards action fulfilment. For example, head-up displays are
considered in cars, in order to improve visual perception. Some interesting applications
have been developed, in order to see cars in fog, with some drawbacks like the increase in
speed or attentional difficulties (Tufano 1997). The richness of human-machine interfaces,
which are no longer locked into symbolic representations, is likely to extend cognitive
ergonomics studies toward considering the whole human cognition without restricting it to
‘high-level’ processes.
The increase in focus on perception processes is undeniable, as well as the
predominance of decision-making over execution activities, which increases the need for
maintaining situation awareness (Patrick et al. 2006). Work flexibility imposes multi-
tasking and rapid changes in work situations. Furthermore, the coupling between diverse
work systems is increasing considerably. As a result, collective work and remote
communication have introduced the need for computer-supported cooperative work
(CSCW). The conception of a single operator facing a single machine has been adopted for
a long time in cognitive ergonomics. Nowadays, individual work activity can make no
sense, because it is tightly coupled with several persons or machines.
As a result of the tight coupling between numerous systems and of the need for
collective activity, information flow is also increasing and with it, temporal pressure as well
as stress, which are related to each other. More and more work activities are mainly
information processing activities. Even if natural sensations (e.g. the introduction of
emotion into machine capabilities) can be re-introduced into human–machine interaction,
this abstraction process of privileging information processing in human activities will be
the main feature of changes in the work situation. This will lead ergonomics to return to
traditional topics like stress, but it will also lead it to try new ways of rendering more
‘natural’ information processing situations.
Human–machine systems ergonomics is not new (Chapanis 1965), but the large variety
of machines penetrating work situations as well as leisure activities will reinforce this kind
74 J.-M. Hoc

of perspective. The pendulum movement between machine-centred and human-centred

design should lead the predominant position to adopt a design centred on the human-
machine system, in line with the concept of joint cognitive systems introduced by
Hollnagel and Woods (1983). As a matter of fact, in many situations the machine’s or the
human’s task are not really meaningful, but the human–machine task is. Furthermore, as
machines become more and more autonomous, the human operators can consider them as
cooperative agents and the human-machine cooperation framework would probably be
more and more relevant in the future (Hoc 2000). Usually, ergonomics and computer
science consider the machine as an operator support, whereas many machines are not
designed for fulfilling such a function. The reality could be the coexistence of human and
machine operators with a cooperation need. In aeronautics, the flight management system
(FMS) was not designed as a pilot support, but it is really an artificial agent with which the
human pilot must cooperate. One of the main goals of technology will be to develop more
cooperative tools, in order to avoid competitive situations between humans and machines,
which are not rare.
Ergonomics has focused its domain on the analysis of work situations. Certainly this
stress should be renewed, because more and more studies are devoted to real life
situations different from work situations. Product ergonomics is highly developed,
especially in cognitive ergonomics. This is due to the wide spread of ‘professional’
machines in domestic activities. Such an investment of ergonomics on popular products
is also useful for the understanding of work situations. As a matter of fact, when
people are acquainted with new tools at home, they can transfer interesting skills to
professional activities making use of similar tools. In other words, if technology was
peculiar to work situations, it is now spread over many contexts outside work. However,
the human science side of cognitive ergonomics must consider what is specific to work
situations beyond what is likely to be reduced to the interaction between humans and
technology.
Although ergonomics is considered by most ergonomists as a unique science, I think it
should be recalled that it makes use of knowledge coming from a variety of sciences.
Moreover, it can be a spring of new and basic knowledge for these sciences, especially
cognitive psychology for cognitive ergonomics. More dialogues could be promoted
between ergonomics and its founder sciences, in order to improve the mutual benefits of
the diverse contributions. Many examples of mutual enrichment can be found in the recent
past (e.g. psychology of reasoning with the introduction of pragmatic concerns,
psychology of planning with the opportunistic consideration of the plan as a resource
for action rather than a end in itself, situated cognition, etc.) and should be multiplied in
the future. F.C. Bartlett is one of the best examples of a researcher highly interested in this
kind of dialogue between cognitive psychology and cognitive ergonomics, especially well
known because of his theory of schema (1932).

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