Presentation
A Crash Course on Cognitive Ergonomics in Health Care
DescriptionDespite researching, testing, and designing cognitive tools for use by healthcare providers, patients and caregivers, many Healthcare Human Factors practitioners have never taken a university-level class in cognitive psychology or cognitive science. Moreover, while much of the material in those traditional classes is useful to Human Factors (HF) practitioners, some of it is not. This workshop provides a crash course on how the mind works, separating the HF wheat from the chaff. It addresses human cognitive capabilities and limitations, as well as their implications for design. Rather than attempting to provide an exhaustive treatment, it focuses specifically on cognitive characteristics that impact design the most, as well as some methods and applications that are highly relevant to healthcare researchers.
Topics to be covered include:
• Sensation and perception
• Including bottom-up and top-down processing, the human visual system, effects of stimulus properties (e.g., context, size, contrast, visual angle), color perception and deficiencies, and Gestalt principles of perception
• Cognitive resources or capacity
• Including the measurement, interpretation, and practical use of a variety of metrics for cognitive workload (subjective, behavioral, and physiological)
• Attention
• Including the automatic and volitional control of attention, change blindness, expectancy, saliency, conspicuity, distraction, and multitasking or task-switching
• Working memory
• Including capacity limitations and methods to accommodate such limitations
• Long-term memory and learning
• Including the basic structure of memory networks, prospective and retrospective memory encoding (learning), storage, and retrieval, memory decay or forgetting, and positive and negative transfer effects
• Judgment and decision making
• Including human error, mental heuristics, and their implications for real-world decision making, likely to be the context for an in-depth case study related to notable incidents in the healthcare field (e.g., the RaDonda Vaught conviction)
We will discuss and apply these concepts with respect to how practitioners can accommodate fundamental human limitations in real-world design processes, as in the context of a product’s risk mitigation measures, controls, feedback, user interfaces, information displays, information architectures, and the overall design of medical devices, applications, and instructions for use. Our central goal is for participants to walk away from the workshop with a “nuts and bolts” understanding of human cognitive capabilities and limitations, as well as their implications for good design and research in healthcare. Additionally, they will understand the reasoning behind many of the most important heuristics and guidelines in the design of user interfaces, enabling them to generalize from current guidance for current products to new design challenges.
Topics to be covered include:
• Sensation and perception
• Including bottom-up and top-down processing, the human visual system, effects of stimulus properties (e.g., context, size, contrast, visual angle), color perception and deficiencies, and Gestalt principles of perception
• Cognitive resources or capacity
• Including the measurement, interpretation, and practical use of a variety of metrics for cognitive workload (subjective, behavioral, and physiological)
• Attention
• Including the automatic and volitional control of attention, change blindness, expectancy, saliency, conspicuity, distraction, and multitasking or task-switching
• Working memory
• Including capacity limitations and methods to accommodate such limitations
• Long-term memory and learning
• Including the basic structure of memory networks, prospective and retrospective memory encoding (learning), storage, and retrieval, memory decay or forgetting, and positive and negative transfer effects
• Judgment and decision making
• Including human error, mental heuristics, and their implications for real-world decision making, likely to be the context for an in-depth case study related to notable incidents in the healthcare field (e.g., the RaDonda Vaught conviction)
We will discuss and apply these concepts with respect to how practitioners can accommodate fundamental human limitations in real-world design processes, as in the context of a product’s risk mitigation measures, controls, feedback, user interfaces, information displays, information architectures, and the overall design of medical devices, applications, and instructions for use. Our central goal is for participants to walk away from the workshop with a “nuts and bolts” understanding of human cognitive capabilities and limitations, as well as their implications for good design and research in healthcare. Additionally, they will understand the reasoning behind many of the most important heuristics and guidelines in the design of user interfaces, enabling them to generalize from current guidance for current products to new design challenges.
Event Type
Workshop
TimeSunday, March 308:00am - 5:00pm EDT
LocationPier 7/8