Center for Human-Information Interaction is currently underway with a 3-year, NSF-funded research project studying work and the use of mobile and wireless technologies at Seattle Public Utilities. You can access the grant proposal here by clicking here. The Fully Mobile City Government Project (mCity for short) also has a website you can access here.

Spotlight on: HWID'06 : Designing for Human Work

Pre-proceedings from the IFIP WG 13.6 Conference HWID'06 : Designing for Human Work is available at http://dme.uma.pt/hwid06/.

Spotlight on: Theoretical and methodological developments

Neelam Naikar, Robyn Hopcroft, and Anna Moylan of the Centre for Cognitive Work and Safety Analysis (CWSA), Air Operations Division at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in Australia have recently released the report:

Work Domain Analysis: Theoretical Concepts and Methodology

Abstract:
This report contributes to the development of a coherent theoretical and methodological approach for work domain analysis (WDA), the first phase of cognitive work analysis. The report: (1) addresses a number of conceptual issues relating to WDA, including differences in the approaches of Rasmussen, Pejtersen, and Goodstein (1994) and Vicente (1999); (2) proposes a methodology for performing WDA; and (3) illustrates the theoretical concepts and methodology for WDA with a work domain of a home - a 'system' that will be highly familiar to everyone.

This research will help to: make WDA more accessible to researchers and practitioners who were not involved in the development of WDA or who cannot be apprenticed to experts in WDA; reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to perform WDA even for experts in WDA; and facilitate the application of WDA to large-scale industry projects. In addition, by making the methodology for WDA more explicit, this research will allow the methodology, or at least parts of the methodology, to be tested empirically.

For more information on the report please contact Neelam Naikar at the Centre for Cognitive Work and Safety Analysis: http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/research/page/3733/
 

Spotlight on: Teaching CWA

Raya Fidel is teaching the class Ecological Information Systems at the Information School. Here you can find the reading list, as an example of readings for a course on Cognitive Work Analysis.

Reading List

Selected chapters from the following books:

Churchman, C. W. 1979. The systems approach. NY: Dell.

Norman, D.A. and Draper, S.W. 1986. User centered system design. New perspectives on human-computer interaction. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Rasmussen, J., Pejtersen A.M., and Goodstein, L.P.G. 1994. Cognitive Systems Engineering. New York, Wiley.

Vicente, K. 1999. Cognitive Work Analysis: Toward safe, productive, and healthy computer-based work. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Articles:

Fidel, R., Pejtersen, A.M., Cleal, B., & Bruce, H. 2004. A multidimensional approach to the study of human-information interaction: A case study of collaborative information retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 55(11), 939-953.

Fidel, R., Pejtersen, A.M. 2004. From Information Behavior Research to the Design of Information Systems: the Cognitive Work Analysis Framework. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 10(1).

Gaver, W.W. 1991. Technology affordances. In CHI 91: Human factors in computing systems, conference proceedings on reaching through technology. New York, ACM. P. 79-84.

Grudin, J. 1989. The case against user interface consistency. Communication of the ACM, 32(10): 1164-73.

Norman, D. 1986. Cognitive engineering. In D.A. Norman and S.W. Draper (Eds.) User centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction. Hillsdale, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum. P 31-61.

Vicente, K. 1997. Heeding the legacy of Meister, Brunswik, & Gibson: Toward a broader view of human factors research. Human Factors, 39(2), 323-328.

Vicente, K. J. 1998. Human factors and global problems: A systems approach. Systems Engineering, 1, 57-69.

Additional Readings:

Books

Hancook, P., Flach, J., Caird, J. and Vicente, K. 1995. Local applications of the ecological approach to human-machine systems. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Earlbaum

Landauer, T.K. 1995. The trouble with computers usefulness, usability and productivity. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Articles

Hutchins, E.L., Hollan, J. D. and Norman, D.A. 1986. Direct manipulation Interfaces. In: Norman, D.A. and draper, S.W. (Eds.) User centered system design. New perspectives on human-computer interaction. Hillsdale, NJ., Lawrence Erlbaum. P. 87-124.

Norman, D.A., 1999. Affordances, conventions and design. Interactions, 6(3), 38-43.