Analysis with a Purpose: Narrowing the Gap with a Pragmatic Approach

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in using Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) techniques to understand work domains and the cognitive demands they imposes on practitioners in order to provide a foundation for the design of decision-aids. While CSE techniques, like Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA), have been proven successful in illuminating the sources of cognitive complexity and explicating the basis of expertise, there is often still a gap between the results of the CWA and the resulting design and development of the decision support system. One way to narrow the gap is to develop an integrated set of artifacts that provide explicit links between (1) the functional goals the domain, to (2) the cognitive demands that require support, through (3) the mapping of decisions to the display space. In this paper a brief discussion of a recent example where this approach was taken is presented.