Situated cognitive engineering for crew support in space

Abstract

Space crews are in need for excellent cognitive support to perform nominal and off-nominal actions. This paper presents a coherent cognitive engineering methodology for the design of such support, which may be used to establish adequate usability, context-specific support that is integrated into astronaut's task performance and/or electronic partners who enhance human-machine team's resilience. It comprises (a) usability guidelines, measures and methods, (b) a general process guide that integrates task procedure design into user interface design and a software framework to implement such support and (c) theories, methods and tools to analyse, model and test future human-machine collaborations in space. In empirical studies, the knowledge base and tools for crew support are continuously being extended, refined and maintained. © 2010 The Author(s).