"Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance (definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 2000).

Ergonomists contribute to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems in order to make them compatible with the needs, abilities and limitations of people (IEA, 2000)." (Wikipedia, 2005a).

 

"Cognitive ergonomics, also known as engineering psychology, concerns mental processes such as perception, atention, cognition, motor control, and memory storage and retrieval as they affect interactions among humans and other elements of a system. Relevant topics include mental workload, vigilance, decision-making, skilled performance, human error, human-computer interaction and training. (Wikipedia, 2005a).

 

"Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. It is an interdisciplinary subject, relating computer science with many other fields of study and research. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both hardware (i.e. peripherals and other hardware) and software (for example determining which, and how, information is presented to the user on a screen)." (Wikipedia, 2005b).