Cognition, situatedness, and situated design

In the rationalistic perspective, the human expert is seen as a data processing system having properties similar to computers. As a consequence, the design of man machine interfaces, workplaces, and organizational procedures has been mainly driven by technological advances, focusing on replacing humans rather than supporting their actual needs. A more appropriate explanation of human cognition is based on the notion of situatedness: human cognition is considered to be emergent from the interaction of the human with the environment, i.e., the current situation the human is involved in. More generally, the system environment coupling is a prerequisite of cognition and cannot be abstracted away. We summarize the rationalistic perspective, its pitfalls, and its (undesirable) influences on design. As an alternative, we propose "situated design", a design methodology capitalizing on the notion of the human as a situated agent. We demonstrate how "situated design" can be applied to workplace design and computer system design, and we outline a situated perspective on man machine interface design supporting humans in coping with the so called "information overload" phenomenon.