National Institute of Design
Application of Cognitive Ergonomics & Industrial Design in Interface Design
The growth of technological innovations, developments, and their applications in products / systems development has raised a definite issue on retaining the user interface quite friendly. With the consideration and understanding of the systems reliability in engineering and technological developments, a need is also being felt on developing suitable research methodologies and development of rational guidelines on human reliability & user interface design.
While the semiotics of product features (and the whole product in its totality) are undoubtedly some of the major features, It is also the Information design components (that are mainly the control and display interface elements) that render making the products or systems 'comprehensible'; hence, friendly, and compatible for specific uses. Cost, availability, developmental process, assembly, functional and human reliability etc., are some of the factors that would influence selection of a particular modality & the overall success of the product or the process. At this point, a probe into the task analysis, assessment of the user profile, operational characteristics, human compatibilities and capabilities, previous exposure, experience, certain typical human cognitive factors like decision making capabilities etc., become obvious for consideration, analyses and application.
With the ever growing rate of increased global competition towards development of new products and processes, there has been an overall shift from “Products for mass” to development of “customised products”. These processes are also geared towards Reduction of product life-cycles which demands reduction of development time, and production lead times. Coupled with this, Networked systems integration is also coming up quite rapidly along with emergence & stabilization of rapid tooling & prototyping processes. This paper presents certain successful case studies in Interface design and product development which demonstrate application of
I) certain Immediate ergonomic Issues like, working procedure, visibility, legibility of Information elements and related developments and
II) cognitive Issues In Information design. Analyses, and concerned design developments, with reference to specific applications do raise certain directional Issues which are substantiated through appropriate application of mental modeling and rational logistics in Interface design. The practical applications of Industrial Design have also been discussed. Strategies for developments of design guidelines and concerned procedural methodologies are also presented.
Dr S Ghosal heads NID’s Bangalore Centre. Dr Ghosal joined NID as Faculty of Industrial Design with his core area of Ergonomics way back in the year 1986. He is one of the key persons in initiating NID’s current Post Graduate Programmes in IT, namely, Software and User Interface Design and User Interface Design. He has been teaching, practising, and participating in a number of R&D driven consultancy projects in NID throughout his career. In the beginning, he dealt with industrial projects in the areas of display and control design. When the IT revolution commenced, the contents of the subject matter were aligned with User Interface Design. A recipient of a number of national and international fellowships and sponsorships, he is also exposed to a number of areas of work in international scenario such as in Hungary, USA, UK, Singapore, Thailand etc. Currently his responsibility is mainly targeted at developing NID’s R&D Campus at the national and international level.