Proceedings of the 13th Eurpoean conference on Cognitive ergonomics: trust and control in complex socio-technical systems

Abstract

Welcome to Zürich! We have the great pleasure of welcoming you to the Thirteenth European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics. The main theme of ECCE-13 is trust and control in complex socio-technical systems, including of course also single human-computer systems within larger systems. The horizons of cognitive ergonomics are expanding. With distributed and highly-interconnected systems, the control of these systems becomes ever more demanding. Can the controllability of systems still be secured in technology design? Does trust have to (partially) replace control and what consequences does that have on the distribution of responsibility for the correct and safe functioning of socio-technical systems? How can the coordination requirements and the management of uncertainty in systems with multiple human and artificial actors be better supported? The conference seeks to encourage dialogue among the diverse disciplines contributing to studies of the psychological, social and cultural aspects of technology use or technology design. We organized the contributions to the conference into four thematic sessions, concerning human-computer interaction, socio-technical system design, conceptual issues and methods in design. As there will be no parallel sessions, we hope of course that we can stimulate discussions spanning across all of these topics, helping to form a common understanding of how the challenges in system design can be responded to. We also hope that Zürich and the ETH will provide the innovative atmosphere for this important, cross-disciplinary meeting.