2. General principles of ergonomics

Designing ergonomic digital documents means designing documents that are adapted to the concrete activities and mental operations engaged by their users. While it is often utopian to anticipate all potential user profiles, it is possible to take into account the cognitive characteristics common to all users of digital documents. The aim of cognitive ergonomics is to adapt interfaces (of which digital documents are a subset) so that they are as well adapted as possible to users' activities (task environment, procedure to be followed and mental operations).

The founding discipline of cognitive ergonomics is cognitive psychology, from which it borrows its theoretical framework and experimental methodology. It is therefore on the basis of experimental studies involving users that it can draw up recommendations for the design and presentation of digital documents....