The role of emotion and attention in ergonomics

Yang-Ming HuangDepartment of PsychologyFu Jen Catholic University

A bit of introduction

EducationDept. of Psychology, University of York, Ph.D

WorkIndiana University, PostDocFu Jen Catholic University

Othershttp://cogemonews.comhttp://facebook.com/silverpsynews

Psychology & Ergonomics

What is psychology?

❖ From your own point of view

What does psychology has to do with ergonomics?

❖ The practice of designing products, systems or processes to take proper account of the interaction between them and the people who use them (adopted from wiki)

❖ So it’s important to know how people who use them think/feel

Attention

What is attention?

❖ According to William James

❖ “Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought...It implies withdraw from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state."

Different types of attention❖ Selective attention

❖ Divided attention

❖ Sustained attention

Attention & Ergonomics❖ Does this scene looks familiar?

Attention & Ergonomics❖ How do we fix this problem?

❖ Let’s use handsfree phone

Attention & Ergonomics❖ In reality, handsfree phone didn’t really solve the

problem.

❖ We need to cure a distracted mind

❖ But how?

Attention & Ergonomics

❖ Let people from the other end see the traffic

Attention & Ergonomics❖ Minimize cognitive load

❖ Restrict calls

❖ Simplified messages/alerts

Attention & Ergonomics❖ Expand attentional resources

❖ Meditation

❖ Distraction

Attention & Ergonomics

❖ How to prevent people from making mistakes

Attention & Ergonomics❖ How do we prevent pilots from making mistakes

❖ Automatization is the key

❖ Use alerts that truly captures attention

Attention & Ergonomics❖ Task switching problem

❖ Nowadays, dual tasking is pretty common

Attention & Ergonomics❖ How do we solve a problem like this?

❖ Split frame?

Attention & Ergonomics

❖ A Bottleneck is the bottleneck!

Reduce the need for dual-tasking

Emotion

What is emotion❖ William James

❖ Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.

Despite theoretical debate❖ Emotion does contain

❖ body change

❖ cognitive aspect

❖ affective aspect

Emotion & Ergonomics

❖ Since emotion is very complicated, it is probably not suitable to

❖ Use single aspect to decode one’s emotion

Emotion & Ergonomics

❖ Since emotion is very complicated, it is probably not suitable to

❖ Just prompt stuff that induce positive emotion

Sad people prefer sad music more

Emotion & Ergonomics❖ Body posture differs

Emotion & Ergonomics❖ Body Temperature

Emotion & Ergonomics❖ Action tendency

❖ Behavior tendency

❖ Puppy Says

Emotion & Ergonomics❖ Emotion & information processing style

❖ Global/Local processing

❖ Analytic vs. Heuristic thinking style

Emotion & Ergonomics

❖ Let’s see an example

To conclude

Humans are stupid robots with a heartIt’s important to make them feel touched