The Human Mind and Engineering Models

Abstract

The design of systems where people and machines interact is an area where engineers work together with psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who are experts in the structure and functioning of the cognitive system and the laws of human behaviour. Both groups of experts collaborate in designing the machines and the interaction between machines and human beings. In this collaborative work, several assumptions are made, among which one of the more important is that it is possible to model the human cognitive system and its behaviour independently of the context of the interaction because these are assumed to be relatively fixed and only modifiable by evolution and learning processes. Based on this assumption, a methodology is followed in which social scientists model the human cognitive system independently of the context and, based on this modelling, they bring human knowledge into the design process. However, there is evidence that the characteristics and functioning of the human cognitive system are not independent of conditions of interaction. Revisiting this assumption may have important consequences for how we design machines and how humans interact with them. Above all, if the assumption is reviewed, it would mean that it is not possible to expect that the human sciences can model the human cognitive system independently of the context of the interaction. As a consequence of this, cultural aspects of interaction must also be taken into account when modelling the functioning and characteristics of the human cognitive system.