Intelligent technologies are rising. This is why methods for designing them are important. One approach is to study how people process information in carrying out intelligence demanding tasks and use this information in designing new technology solutions. This approach can be called cognitive mimetics. A problem in mimetics is to explicate tacit or subconscious knowledge. Here, we study a combination of thinking aloud in ship simulator driving and focus group commenting the solutions of subjects. On the ground of these early experiments, a multiple method combination seems to be the best way forward to solve problems of tacit or subconscious knowledge.

Mimetic design means using a source in the natural or artificial worlds as an inspiration for technological solutions. It is based around the abstraction of the relevant operating principles in a source domain. This means that one must be able to identify the correct level of analysis and extract the relevant patterns. How this should be done is based on the type of source. From a mimetic perspective, if the design goal is intelligent technology, an obvious source of inspiration is human information processing, which we have called cognitive mimetics. This article offers some conceptual clarification on the nature of cognitive mimetics by contrasting it with biomimetics in the context of intelligent technology. We offer a two-part ontology for cognitive mimetics, suggest an approach and discuss possible implications for AI in general.

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Digital twins -digital models of technical systems and processeshave recently been introduced to work with complex industrial processes. Yet should such models concern only physical objects (as definitions of them often imply), or should users and other human beings also be included? Models that include people have been called human digital twins (HDTs); they facilitate more accurate analyses of technologies in practical use. The cognitive mimetic approach can be used to describe human interactions with technologies. This approach analyses human information processes such as perceiving and thinking to mimic how people process information in order to design intelligent technologies. The results of such analyses can be presented as an ontology of human action, and in this way included in HDT models.

Modern information technology makes it possible to redesign the ways people work. In the future, machines can carry out intelligence-requiring tasks, which previously were done by people. It is thus good to develop methodologies for designing intelligent systems. An example of such methods is cognitive mimetics, i.e. imitating human information processing. Today, machines cannot by themselves navigate in archipelagos. However, the fact that people can take care of ship steering and navigation means that there is an information process, which makes it possible to navigate ships. This information process takes place inside the minds of navigating people. If we are able to explicate the information processing in the navigator’s mind, the knowledge of it can be used in designing intelligent machines. Replicating physical objects and industrial processes by means of digital computers is called digital twinning. Digital twins (DTs), which are digital replicas of physical systems and processes, have recently become tools for working with complex industrial processes. A crucial question for DTs is should human actions be added to them? As the answer is positive, such models of human information processing can be called human digital twins (HDTs). The knowledge of human tacit and explicit information processes can be represented by human digital twins. Models can be used in the search for a deeper understanding of human intelligent information processes. Human digital twins can thus be used as methodological tools in cognitive mimetics. In our present study, we modeled paper machine operators’ thinking. Specifically, we developed an ideal-exception-correction (IEC) model for paper operators’ control logic. The model illustrates how research and HDT-modeling can be used for explicating the subconscious or tacit information processing of people for the design of intelligent systems. In this article a model for design processes using cognitive modelling will be suggested. The concepts of cognitive mimetics and human digital twins enable us to outline a model for using the long tradition of simulating human thinking as a tool in designing intelligent systems.