Cognitive Ergonomics

Context-switching, information retrieval, maintaining orientation across long tasks, keeping track of what's been decided and why — these are all forms of extraneous cognitive load: mental effort consumed by the tool rather than the task. Sweller's cognitive load research established that working memory is limited and that poor design consumes capacity that should go to thinking. The goal of cognitive ergonomics is to eliminate that waste — not to make the work easier in the sense of doing it for you, but to ensure that the effort goes to the reasoning, not to fighting the environment.

Heersmink's framework for cognitive integration defines the conditions under which an external tool genuinely extends cognition rather than adding to it: availability (always there when needed), reliability (outputs can be trusted), transparency (you can see what the tool has done), portability (the tool travels with you), and informational sensitivity (the tool responds to your current task context). When a tool meets those conditions, users stop thinking about it and start thinking with it. When it doesn't, the tool becomes another cognitive burden.

Interface is designed to meet those conditions. Context is preserved across sessions. Sources are attributed so you don't have to remember where something came from. Inference records carry provenance so you can see how an output was produced without reconstructing it from memory. The aim is that the cognitive overhead of working with AI-derived information stays low enough that it never becomes the constraint on what you can do.