Imagine a young human factors engineer, recently graduated from a psychology program at a small Midwestern university (in Dayton, Ohio). He goes to work for a large engineering corporation and is told that he will be participating in a project to design the next generation of decision support for Combined Air and Space Operations Centers (CAOCs). One of the primary goals for this decision support is to facilitate the ability to prosecute time-sensitive targets (TSTs). Where does he start? Perhaps he locates a resident domain expert and arranges a meeting. He introduces himself and begins, “Can you tell me everything that I need to know about TST?” Where does the domain expert begin? How does he capture and communicate a lifetime of experience in a 1-hour meeting? Perhaps, he provides a detailed work analysis that had previously been done, or perhaps he turns to his bookshelf and says, “Start by reading this shelf!”
Suppose that there had been a previous work analysis, how valuable do you think it would be? Would it reflect the new technologies and software options that will be implemented in the next generation CAOC? Would it accurately reflect the demands of future air operations? Even if the analysis did anticipate future opportunities and demands, would the data be in a form that would be useful to the young human factors engineer. That is, could he learn what he needed to learn about the domain from reading the work analysis report? Would the data in the report be represented in a way so that the important dimensions of the work problems would be salient?
Flach et al. (2008) have suggested that there is a need for a continuous, work domain analysis. The many different products generated during the work analysis should be archived in a database that can be easily accessed, used, and updated throughout the evolution of a work domain. This reflects the belief that work domain analysis is never complete due to the complexity of work and to the fact that work domains are always evolving to take advantage of new technologies and to keep pace with changing demands. One framework for thinking about how the different products of work design analysis might be organized is the Abstraction-Decomposition framework suggested by Rasmussen (1986; See also Vicente, 1999).
If a new work domain analysis is required for every change in a domain, then cognitive systems and human factors engineers will always be following the design parade, sweeping up the litter from poorly designed systems. The hope is that this living database would allow new researchers and designers to build on the prior work of their peers and that this would allow cognitive systems engineers to be more efficient in responding to evolving challenges and to make early contributions to the design process.
To read more: Flach, J.M., Schwartz, D., Bennett, A., Russell, S. & Hughes, T. (2008). Integrated constraint evaluation: A framework for continuous work analysis. In A.M. Bisantz & C.M. Burns (Eds.) Applications of Cognitive Work Analysis. (p. 273 - 297). London: Taylor & Francis.
To request a pdf copy e-mail john.flach@wright.edu