The goal of the ``Ergonomics Psychology'' project is to study and improve the compatibility between the information representation and processing by the computer and the cognitive characteristics of the human. Research concerns users' activities, systems characteristics and ways to match user aspects and interface aspects, through a trade-off between two strategies : provide computer ``behaviors'' adapted to the user ; and improve the adaptation of the user to computers through documentation and training.
With such a goal, research focuses on modelling the cognitive capabilities of humans as well as on defining methods and tools appropriate for the evaluation and design of software (particularly interfaces) usability.
The research activities of the project are diverse : they
concentrate on human factors aspects, on psychology, but also
utilize knowledge from connected domains, such as interface
engineering (UIMs, design
methods), artificial intelligence (knowledge elicitation,
knowledge
representation, simulation of reasoning), linguistics
(sub-languages,
dialogues, textual linguistics).
Much of the research conducted in the project is experimentally based, starting from observations of real tasks, and is often aimed at solving practical problems. Research is always conducted with the collaboration of domain specialists. A few current research topics being investigated are :