Work Domain Analysis for Distributed Information Spaces

2000

Shipboard command and control presents unique challenges for decision support. Command decisions require an understanding of your own ship's capabilities as well as the capabilities and the intentions of friendly and hostile parties. While some actions can be pre-planned, naval decision makers will always be faced with unanticipated situations resulting from unknown variables in the environment or unexpected changes in their own equipment or technological capabilities. Decision support for these unanticipated situations demands that these operators be provided with as complete and flexible a model of the situation as possible. Ecological interface design is a design paradigm for unanticipated situations that has evolved from the domain of nuclear power, that bases its design on a cognitive work analysis (CWA) that is developed from work domain models. In this paper, we applied this approach to the domain of command and control for the Canadian Halifax-class frigate. In all, 38 work domain models were developed, from which we generated 132 information support requirements. This paper presents the first iterations of those models and discusses the application of this approach to the domain of command and control

2005

Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 2014

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA; Rasmussen, Pejtersen & Goodstein, 1994; Vicente, 1999) is most familiar to cognitive engineers from its successes in the area of interface design. In this report, we describe how we have used CWA in a variety of other contexts at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Australia. First, we describe the five analytic techniques of CWA, and we show how CWA can be used throughout a system's life cycle, from requirements definition to system retirement. Second, we provide specific examples of projects from the air defense domain in which we have used CWA. These projects include (1) evaluating alternative designs for Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft, (2) evaluating human-system integration solutions for AEW&C, (3) identifying training needs for F/A-18 pilots and developing functional requirements for a training system that meets those needs, and (4) designing information work spaces for command and control. These examples give strength to the argument that CWA can be used just as effectively in areas other than interface design where the professional contribution of cognitive engineers is required.

Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2004

The purpose of this note is to clarify the theoretical relationship between work domain analysis and task analysis, two classes of techniques that have been used by cognitive engineers to identify information requirements for systems design. The transformation from a work domain analysis to a task analysis (i.e., from a description of the object of control to a description of control itself) can be conceived as a discrete set of transformations. Work domain analysis identifies the set of all structural degrees of freedom that are available to any actor. Only a subset of these will be relevant for a particular context. At any particular point in time, actors will have to choose which of these relevant degrees of freedom to utilize. Finally, the utilized degrees of freedom will have a dynamic state that can usually be described quantitatively. Task analysis is the function that maps current states onto desired states via a set of human or automated control actions. By making these transformations explicit, the relevance of work domain analysis to worker (or automation) goals and actions becomes more clear.

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 2005

This paper presents an application of work-domain analysis (WDA) to the domain of the command and control of a multipurpose naval frigate—the Canadian Halifax Class frigate. This represents an application of this approach to a real system and, to the authors' knowledge, is the most extensive WDA of a naval work domain. In particular, and in contrast to other applications of cognitive work analysis, the authors extended the basic WDA framework to handle a multipurpose, loosely bound work domain. In addition, the naval domain is value driven, and this affects naval decision making. Values were incorporated as a social organizational analysis into the work-domain model and were represented as a type of soft constraint. A total of 38 submodels of the work domain were developed, whose primary models are discussed in this paper. From these models, 132 information requirements were extracted, substantiating that WDA is a worthwhile technique for supporting interface design. This paper makes a theoretical contribution by extending the WDA framework and a practical contribution by demonstrating the usefulness of the framework in a real design context. This paper concentrates on presenting WDA as a process, not as a finished product, showing intermediate levels of models and the design requirements that can be extracted from the early stages of the WDA.

ECMS 2013 Proceedings edited by: Webjorn Rekdalsbakken, Robin T. Bye, Houxiang Zhang, 2013

Increasing offshore activity result in new, demanding marine operations. Risks increase as loads get heavier, installations move subsea, and activities move further North. Detailed planning is required, but current techniques make little use of information technology, with paper-based plan-work easily filling multiple binders. Information overload becomes an added threat. Two key challenges can be seen. One is to develop good planning frameworks, to enable plans with robust risk management and control. This calls for modelling techniques for operational plans. Another is optimal presentation of the plan for each individual crew member, both for briefing and during the execution of the operation. Ready access to relevant and safety critical information must be ensured. This calls for operational software to support situation-awareness. A fundamental necessity to tackle either challenge is a modelling framework supporting joint understanding of the operation between operational planners, ship crew, software engineers, and ultimately the support software. This paper shows how to amalgamate three different modelling approaches: HTA, SADT, and state machines. We also discuss how the resulting models can be used in operational support software. * The authors would like to thank Leiv Kåre Johannesen for helpful discussions around the sample operation, and also the anonymous referees for very constructive feedback.

Human Factors, 2004

M. BISANTZ, University at Buffalo, Buffalo NY USA, and EMILIE ROTH, Roth Cognitive Engineering, Brookline MA USA. As methods in Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) become more widely applied, questions regarding the impact of modeling choices, and similarities in modeling efforts across projects and domains are increasingly relevant. To date, however, an explicit comparison of models of similar systems has not been reported. This paper presents a comparison of two independently developed Work Domain Analysis (WDA) models of similar command and control environments that were developed independently.

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2003

This paper describes an approach for integrating cognitive analysis in the early stages of design of a new, large scale system --a next generation US Navy Surface combatant. Influencing complex system designs in ways cognizant of human-system integration principles requires work products that are timely and tightly coupled to other elements of the system design process. Analyses were conducted, and recommendations made in parallel with, and as inputs to design decisions regarding system purposes, functionality, automation capabilities and staffing levels. We could not wait for design decisions to be made before proceeding or require other design groups to wait for our outputs. Thus, it was necessary to select and adapt cognitive work analysis methods to fit the demands of a time pressured design situation. A functional abstraction hierarchy model, and a series of cross-linked matrices were developed to provide a principled mapping between system function decompositions produced by system engineering teams, cognitive tasks, information needs, automation requirements, and concepts for displays. Cross-referencing the matrices supported design traceability standpoint and the integration of cognitive analyses with functional analyses being performed by other design teams. Results fed into design decisions with respect to level of automation, manning requirements and initial display prototypes. Providing an illustration of the processes and methods we applied is valuable because it describes and formalizes the relationship between concepts used in cognitive analyses and those used in systems engineering; it demonstrates the generalizability of cognitive engineering methods in a set of circumstances where few well documented examples exist; and it provides guidance for other human factors practitioners who may find themselves in similar circumstances.

Theoretical Issues in …, 2008

The objective of this paper is to illustrate the interconnections between the different phases (or tools) within the Cognitive Work Analysis framework; the benefits of extending an analysis across each of the five phases are highlighted through these interconnections. The paper uses a command and control micro-world example to describe how each of the five phases can be used to describe the constraints within the micro-world domain from a different perspective. Based upon the Social Organisation & Cooperation Analysis, design requirements are extracted in order to develop role specific customisable interfaces for use within the microworld. The interfaces have been specifically developed to communicate real time reconfiguration of the network through each of the individual interfaces; the reallocations of functions or roles are communicated to the actors through changes to the interface.