Lesson Goals

This module addresses the capabilities and limitations of human cognition as they pertain to successful human-centered system design. Prior modules have covered the human sensory systems: how we obtain information from our environment and how this information is preliminarily processed. We will now integrate this information with how the brain further processes this information into our perception of the world and enables our interaction with it. Our goal is to maximize human performance within a system, while developing tasks that neither bore nor overload human capacity. To this end, this module will cover:

• Perception - Attention and Sensory Processing,
• Memory and Learning,
• Decision Making,
• Cognitive Workload Measurement.

To design effective human-to-system interfaces, we must understand the strengths and limitations of human information processing. In interface design, we are interested in the amount of information that can be perceived, processed, and acted upon correctly within a given time frame and how best to present this information for optimum human performance.

This module takes about 1 hour to complete.