Ergonomia degli artefatti cognitivi

Abstract

People an work and in everyday life interact with different types of artifacts, that is tools that mimic and integrate human skills: technological artifacts that mimic physical human skills; organisational artifacts that mimic the human capacities to distribute in time and space activities toward a given goal; cognitive artifacts that mimic human abilities in information processing, reasoning and decision making; integrated artifacts, based on computer technology, where all the previous artifacts are embodied in only one system.The design of the interaction between humans and technological artifacts has been the earlier field of interest of ergonomics. Later, this approach has taken into consideration also the mutual relationships among technological and organisational artifacts and the humans. Cognitive ergonomics is a recently developed branch of ergonomics devoted to study and design the interaction among cognitive and integrated artifacts and humans both at work and in everyday life. It is centered on how to reduce the costs humans have to pay in bridging the gulf between their intentions and the physical actions required to interact with any artifact and the gulf between the physical variables displayed by artifacts and the cognitive interpretation and evaluation of them in relation to the humans’ aims and needs. The paper illustrates how these gulfs analyzed and low-cost solutions can be found and implemented.