Cognitive function modeling for capturing complexity in system design

Systems and weapon platforms of the future will place even greater cognitive demands on the operators. Furthermore, future systems will permit dramatically reduced manpower, increasing the importance of function allocation and information presentation in design. Our current research effort involves synthesizing techniques of cognitive task analysis (CTA) with the network/control structure of operator function modeling (OFM) to provide a methodology, termed cognitive function modeling (CFM), for capturing and representing cognitive requirements within complex systems. CFM is intended to enable the system designer to understand the role of the human and the cognitive complexity in the system. Our ultimate goal is to assist the designer in making informed judgments on appropriately incorporating the human component into system design and designing systems that support human decision-making