Colloquium Cognitive Systems

Towards Cognition Centered Design

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Nele Rußwinkel, Cognitive Modeling in Dynamic Human-Machine Systems, TU Berlin

 

Abstract. To include cognitive requirements in the concept development of technical systems, user studies and interviews are not always the best choice. Users have very different experiences that might influence their judgements, reasons for User mistakes are often not verbalizable, and larger studies are expensive and time consuming. We need better tools and approaches that would bring us closer to the aim of Cognition Centered Design of technical systems. By means of further developing the methods of cognitive modeling towards interaction scenarios will help to improve technology at different levels.  Such approaches can provide a deeper understanding of key processes that determine our behavior toward technical systems and help to consider these in the design of a system. Furthermore, tools that incorporate cognitive models can help to evaluate new devices regarding cognitive requirements. A cognitive agent can also be integrated into technical systems to support the user adequately. Nele Rußwinkel will present different examples of how cognitive modelling can support the development towards more Cognition Centered Design. These examples will include predicting adaptation of Users after Software upgrades, supporting developers with evaluation tools and the conception of a cognitive flight support systems that predicts the next actions and possible misinterpretations of a user.

 

Bio. Nele Rußwinkels’s goal is to investigate the cognitive processes that determine the user’s interactive behavior with technical systems. Understanding, modeling and predicting these processes will eventually help to improve technology to a large degree.

Nele Rußwinkel studied Cognitive Science at the University Osnabrück and at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Her master thesis on visual attention was completed at Charité, and the Humboldt University Berlin.

She started her scientific career at the VW junior research group ModyS and earned her PhD at the DFG funded graduation school Prometei about quantitative models of time estimation. She was 2012-2016 part of the Governing Board of the German Cognitive Science Community and is since 2012 part of the international Steering Board of Cognitive Modeling and hosted the International Conference of Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) 2012 in Berlin. Since 2013 she holds a Juniorprofessorship for Cognitive Modeling in dynamic Human-Machine Systems at the department of Engineering at TU Berlin. She supervises a young, interdisciplinary and international visible team at the Technical University Berlin.