Introduction

Cognitive systems engineering is an approach to the engineering of systems containing humans. Cognitive systems engineering aims to amplify and make more reliable the human capability to perform cognitive work, by integrating technical functions of subsystems with the human cognitive processes that they need to support. Cognitive work involves the cognitive activities of knowing, understanding, planning, deciding, problem solving, integrating, analysing, synthesizing, assessing and judging, as performed, for example, in military command and control, civil air traffic control, transportation, health care and video games.

This world-leading course teaches methods of cognitive analysis and cognitive design, and illustrates how they can be applied to enhance human systems effectiveness and safety within system development and acquisition. Experiential design exercises give delegates practical experience with these techniques. The course, while standing alone, complements PPI's 5-day Systems Engineering Course.

Who Should Attend This Course?

Anyone directly involved with analysis and design of Human Systems functionality or who develops sub-systems with which humans must interact. Additionally, managers who hire and task Human Systems analysts and designers or who must assess the overall potential of envisioned or existing human-centric systems.

Training Methods and Materials

Being an overview seminar, this course is delivered primarily in an interactive presentation format with exercises.

A specific but fictitious problem is posed at the beginning of the workshop. Exercises as relevant to that problem are introduced for each of the analytic tools covered in the workshop. These exercises progressively develop the cognitive work requirements for the system under consideration. The intent is to demonstrate how the suite of analyses discussed in the workshop contributes to a comprehensive treatment of cognitive work within the design and acquisition of a complex, socio-technical system.

Flash Presentation

View a Flash movie, delivered by Dr. Lintern, on the relationship between Cognitive Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering. This movie is a 25-minute summary of the 5-day course.

Cognitive Systems Engineering Training Objective

At the conclusion of this course, delegates are expected to:

• understand the concepts of cognitive systems engineering
• understand why a systematic approach to resolving human cognitive issues is important to capability and product development
• be familiar with the essential tools of cognitive systems engineering
• understand the criteria for applying particular tools to the variety of human systems issues encountered in capability and product development
• understand the critical contributions of the different tools
• understand how to identify and task cognitive engineering specialists, to ensure that they work effectively within the project team
• understand the range of techniques available for assessing the effectiveness of cognitive engineering outcomes.

Key Questions

This course introduces delegates to the analytic and design tools of cognitive systems engineering, and uses exercises to provide experience in applying the tools to human systems design efforts within systems engineering, over the system life cycle.

This five-day workshop covers two complementary frameworks for the analysis and design of cognitive work. The basic tools of each are described and then demonstrated to illustrate how they can be applied to enhance human systems integration within systems development and acquisition. Experiential design exercises give delegates practical experience with these techniques.

The scope of this workshop in the field of cognitive systems engineering complements PPI's 5-day course "Systems Engineering for Technology-Based Projects and Product Developments" (SE5D).

Cognitive Systems Engineering Course Outline

0. Introduction - What is Cognitive Systems Engineering?

1. Cognitive Systems Engineering in Context

• Systems Boundary Analysis for a selected system
• Develop functional and design requirements for the selected system
• Identify human systems integration issues with an emphasis on those related to cognitive work
• Reassessment of cognitive work issues for the selected system

2. Cognitive Task Analysis for Teams

• Overview
• Macro-Cognition
• Team Cognition
• Build a team-referenced Macro-Cognitive cheese wheel
• Applied Cognitive Task Analysis
• Build Cognitive Requirements Table
• Review

3. Cognitive Task Analysis for Individual Cognition

• Summary Review of Cognitive Task Analysis for teams
• Critical Decision Method & Naturalistic Decisions
• Knowledge Acquisition, Demonstration of the Critical Decision Method
• Build individual-referenced Macro-Cognitive cheese wheel
• Knowledge Acquisition, Critical Decision Method
• Build Decision Requirements Table
• Review

4. Decision Centered Design

• Principles of Decision Centered Design
• Decision Centered Design
• Cognitive Indicators
• Use Cognitive Indicators Evaluate design proposals from previous group exercise
• Review
• Summary Review of Decision Centered Design

5. Cognitive Work Analysis, Part 1

• Cognitive Work Analysis, Overview
• Structure and Function, Work Domain Analysis
• Build an Abstraction-Decomposition Space
• Work Organisation
• Build a Contextual Activity Map

6. Cognitive Work Analysis, Part 2

• Cognitive Transformations
• Build a Decision Ladder
• Cognitive Strategies
• Build a strategy diagram and strategy table
• Levels of Cognitive Processing
• Annotate the strategy diagram and strategy table
• Social Transactions
• Build a Social Transactions Matrix and a Transaction Network

7. Cognitive Requirements

• Review
• Summary Review of Cognitive Work Analysis
• Overview, compare Cognitive Task Analysis with Cognitive Work Analysis
• Requirements Analysis, review of PPI course SE5D
• Cognitive Requirements Analysis
• Requirements Parsing, review of PPI course SE5D
• Cognitive Requirements Parsing

8. Designing Cognitive Systems & Functional Interfaces

• Cognitive systems
• Design of a cognitive system
• Functional interface
• Design of a functional interface
• Verification and validation, review of PPI course SE5D
• Cognitive performance indicators for verification and validation
• Verification and Validation of Cognitive Solutions

9. Cognitive Systems engineering for the System Life Cycle

• Activities in the System Life Cycle, review of PPI course SE5D
• The Nature and Challenges of Cognitive Work in the System Life Cycle
• Human Systems Integration
• Application of cognitive systems engineering and human system integration to the System Life Cycle

10. Summary

• Cognitive systems engineering summarized
• Tailoring Cognitive systems engineering to specific activities or projects
• Getting the most out of Cognitive systems engineering methods
• Summary Review of Workshop
• Workshop Evaluation
• Wrap Up

About the Presenter - Dr. Gavan Lintern

Gavan Lintern earned his B.A. (1969) and M.A. (1971) degrees in experimental psychology from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and his Ph.D. (1978) in Engineering Psychology from the University of Illinois. He has worked in aviation-related human factors research at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (then known as the Aeronautical Research Laboratories), Melbourne from 1971 to 1974, and in flight simulation research on a US Navy program in Orlando, Florida from 1978 to 1985. He returned to the University of Illinois in 1985 to take up a position as a faculty member at the Institute of Aviation. In 1997 he returned to the Defense Science and Technology Organisation in Melbourne. He returned to the US in 2001 to take up a position with Aptima, Inc in Boston, USA and then moved to General Dynamics Advance Information Systems in Dayton Ohio in 2003.

View Full Gavan Lintern Biography

Cognitive Systems Engineering Training Links

Systems Engineering 5-Day Course, Presented by Mr. Robert Halligan

What is the relationship of Cognitive Systems Engineering to Systems Engineering?

Download a comprehensive paper on the role of CSE in SE (pdf, 340kB)

Systems Engineering Newsletter

Systems Engineering FAQ

Cognitive Systems Engineering Course Schedule