Cognitive engineering is a method of study using cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience to design and develop engineering systems to support or improve the cognitive processes of users.[1]
It was an engineering method used in the 1970s at Bell Labs, focused on how people form a cognitive model of a system based upon common metaphors.[2] As explained, by Joseph Henry Condon:[2]
"The idea is that people form a model. You present them with some instruments, tools, like a faucet, electric stove or something like that and demonstrate how it works. They then form in their heads a model that shows how it works inside to help them remember how to use it in the future. It may be a totally erroneous model of what is going on inside the black box."
— Joseph Henry Condon, "Interview with Joseph H. Condon (transcript)". History of Science, Princeton University. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
According to Condon, the ideas of cognitive engineering were developed later than, and independent from, the early work on the Unix operating system.[3]
Don Norman cited principles of cognitive engineering in his 1981 article, "The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid." Norman criticized the user interface of Unix as being "a disaster for the casual user."[4] However the "casual user" is not the target audience for UNIX and as the Condon quote above indicates, a high level of user interface abstraction leads to cognitive models that may be "totally erroneous."