Designing the interface to encourage more cognitive processing

Abstract

Cognitive engineering aims to provide operators with immediate access to as much relevant information as possible. However, this can encourage display-based strategies that do not involve committing information to memory. To overcome this problem, a somewhat counterintuitive method is discussed, based upon the theory of soft constraints [1], that involves delaying access to some critical information by one or two seconds. This design technique induces a more planful and memory-based strategy that can improve recall, develop more planning behavior, improve problem solving, and protect against the negative effects of interruption. Furthermore, we provide some preliminary results that this more memory-intensive strategy can be trained through past experience with high access cost and then used in situations where access cost is minimal. This was the case when only half of the training trials involved a higher access cost. Further research is needed to ascertain how long training effects last and what are the ideal training regimes for different types of task. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.