Our brains are not as reliable as we would like to think. Human factors is the science of understanding human cognition and designing systems to work within its limitations. A lot of time and effort has gone into understanding how our brains work (and when they don’t). However, we continue to make fundamental design errors that not only go against cognitive science principles but common sense as well. This talk will explore some of the quirkier aspects of our cognition, from visual attention to memory and decision making. There will be copious examples of design gone wrong along with discussions of how to understand how we think and how to avoid making design mistakes in the future.

Dr. Jason H. Wong is a Human Factors Scientist with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC). He received his Ph.D. in 2009 from George Mason University in Human Factors and Applied Cognition, where he conducted research on visual attention and working memory. He was awarded the Department of Defense SMART Scholarship in 2007. This paved the way for his work at NUWC, where Dr. Wong examines the human-computer interaction aspects of complex systems, develops efficient submariner training methodologies, and creates cognitive models to simulate human performance.