The MINDS Group, operating within the User Science and Engineering Laboratory (USE Lab), amplifies the interdisciplinary spirit of the College of Information Sciences and Technology by focusing on the intersection of the cognitive sciences, social psychology, and the engineering of cognitive/collaborative systems.

We emphasize multiple levels of theory, analysis, design, and assessment through the application of the Living Laboratory framework. Much of our theoretical work emphasizes orientations in social constructivism, perceptual anchoring and the spontaneous access of knowledge, team situation awareness, and analogical problem solving. The acronym used to define ourselves – MINDS Group – collectively represents our vision to produce Multidisciplinary Initiatives in Naturalistic Decision Systems.

The Living Lab

The Living Lab approach seeks to explore envisioned designs for complex, naturalistic settings that are influenced by informational, technological, organizational, social, and cultural factors. The appropriation of design is through multiple lenses that are at once use-centric, participatory, and naturalistic. Designs also make use of current intelligent systems technologies (agents, avatars, and collaborative computing ensembles) to support naturalistic decision making.

Research
The current “spotlight” of our interdisciplinary research quest focuses on the socio-cognitive factors that are involved in homeland security and defense, viewed as a complex system of systems. Our most recent research projects investigate intelligence analysts, image analyst work, social-technical design of humanitarian logistics, hurricane management and geo-collaborative systems, 911 emergency crisis management centers, Tsunami disaster management web portal support systems, information visualization for terrorist interdiction and decision making, and C3I operations.  Our laboratory maintains sponsor support from NSF, ONR, USAF, Lockheed-Martin, ARL, and NGA.

With the Living Lab perspective, our projects entwine both theoretical and practical outcomes applicable to real life situations… hence our motto, “putting knowledge to use.” 

-Michael D. McNeese, Ph.D., Laboratory Director