Nickleby have substantial capability in the analysis and assessment of human operator workload. Based on a solid capability in cognitive psychology and human performance theory, combined with expertise in ergonomics and human operator simulation, the company has the capacity to customise workload analysis methods to suit particular study objectives. The approach taken can vary from a detailed analysis of cognitive demands, to analysis of physical and physiological loading. Skill levels and cognitive style are also important. The conceptual model underlying much of Nickleby's work in this area draws on a number of theoretical constructs from cognitive psychology, including attention, situation awareness, working memory and multiple resource theory.
Attention is critical to the ability of humans to perform complex tasks.
While many contentious theoretical issues remain, for the purposes of human factors engineering, there is a reasonable working basis. Nickleby has undertaken a large number of research based assignments including much work within the MoD's Applied and Corporate Research Programmes. This included establishing user requirements and demonstrating evolving concepts to potential user groups. It also included a survey of the target user population to establish the system's functional and non-functional requirements. This scheme formed the basis for the development of conceptual designs leading to the layout of future operations rooms a study to investigate how the psychological and cognitive characteristics of future military equipment users can be captured and specified in a way which would make the information accessible to designers of military equipment in industry.