ABSTRACT
Cognitive Ergonomics (CE) emerged in the late 1970s on the back of the ‘personal’ computer and the ‘naïve’ user. The contrast was with the ‘mainframe’ computer and the ‘professional’ user. The emergence was associated with developments in Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence (Card, Moran and Newell, 1983). ‘Cognitive’ Ergonomics was in contrast to ‘Physical’ or ‘Traditional’ Ergonomics (Long, 1987). According to Long, “The advent of the computer, together with changes in Psychology, has given rise to a new form of Ergonomics termed ‘Cognitive Ergonomics’”. This paper considers the past, present and future of CE. The past, and in particular its shortcomings, is described in terms of this earlier characterisation (Long, 1987). The present describes CE in terms of the lessons learned, since that publication. The future characterises the lessons remaining to be learned (Dowell and Long, 1989).
