Spatial Cognitive Engineering

Roots: Cognitive Engineering

The term cognitive engineering was invented by Donald Norman in an effort to integrate cognitive and computer science approaches to the design and construction of machines. According to Norman, cognitive engineering is a type of applied cognitive science. When looking at people's interaction with different everyday things, such as telephones, faucets, and doors, one notices a discrepancy between psychological user variables and physical system variables. The psychological user variables comprise goals, intentions, concepts, and also spatial and cognitive abilities. During the performance of a task, a user must therefore interpret the physical system variables in the context of his or her psychological goals and translate his or her psychological intentions into physical actions on the system. The goal of cognitive engineering is to bridge the so-called gulf between execution and evaluation (Figure 1), which results from the differences between user and system states in terms of form and content. This gulf can be bridged from two sides:

• 1.
  The system designer can move the system closer to the user in terms of finding better matches to his or her psychological needs.
• 2.
  The user can bridge the gap by approximating the description of goals and intentions to the system's language. Such approximation covers different levels of outcomes and intentions.

In his account of cognitive engineering as a new discipline, Norman focused on computer design in general and the design of user interfaces in particular. A major point in the analysis was that different users may require different interfaces, even when performing the same tasks and working with the same system. He therefore advocated a user-centered system design, which starts with the user's needs regarding a particular problem.

From Cognitive engineering to Spatial Cognitive engineering

Spatial cognitive engineering follows the general ideas of cognitive engineering and applies them to the geospatial domain. Such application highlights important aspects that are integral to and [Page 2613]characteristic of geospatial problem solving. Spatial cognitive engineering focuses especially on human-computer interaction regarding the spatial and temporal aspects of phenomena in the world. Geospatial services and systems are unique in the way they use data, which are related to locations in space (and time), and in how processing of the data with respect to these spatial locations is possible. The fact that everything is tied to a location in space and time leads to increased complexity regarding reasoning with and analysis of the data. People's questions when using geospatial tools have a spatiotemporal context. One can ask “Where is (a certain object)?” or “Where are (all objects with certain properties)?” at a given time—for example, when trying to find the nearest kindergarten for a child; or one can ask “What are the properties of (a certain area in space)?” at a given time—for example, when trying to assess the area in which to rent a house.

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