Application Of Cognitive Work Analysis Research Articles

Application of cognitive work analysis in support of systems engineering of a socio-technical system

Application of cognitive work analysis in support of systems engineering of a socio-technical system

Application of Cognitive Work Analysis in support of Systems Engineering of a Sociotechnical System

Application of Cognitive Work Analysis in support of Systems Engineering of a Sociotechnical System

Designing human–system cooperation in industry 4.0 with cognitive work analysis: a first evaluation

One objective of Industry 4.0 is to reach a better system performance as well as to have a better consideration of humans. This would be done by benefiting from knowledge and experience of humans, and balancing in a reactive way some complex or complicated tasks with intelligent systems. Several studies already dealt with such an objective, but few are done at a methodological level, which forbids, for example, the correct evaluation of design choices in terms of human awareness of the situation or mental workload when designing intelligent manufacturing systems integrating the human. Indeed, increasing the intelligence and autonomy of industrial systems and their composing entities (resources, products, robots…), as fostered by Industry 4.0, increases their overall complexity. This modification reduces the ability to understand the behaviors of these systems, and leads to the difficulty for humans not only to elaborate alternative decisions when required, but also to make effective decisions and understand their consequences. This paper evaluates such a design methodology, the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA), and its applicability when designing an assistance system to support Human in the control of Intelligent Manufacturing System in Industry 4.0. Among several functions identified through the application of CWA, the assistant system might have to integrate a digital twin of the intelligent manufacturing system. The evaluation of the methodology through the one of the designed assistant systems is done using a micro-world, which is an intelligent manufacturing cell composed of intelligent mobile ground robots, products, and static production robots interacting together and with a human supervisor in charge of the reaching of several time-based and energy-based performances indicators. The assistant system embeds a digital twin of the intelligent manufacturing system. Twenty-three participants took part in experiments to evaluate the designed assistance system. First results show that the assistance system enables participants to have a correct awareness of the situation and a correct evaluation of their alternative decisions, while their mental workload is managed and expected production performances are reached. This paper contains an analysis of these experiments and points out some limits of the CWA method in the context of Industry 4.0, especially the lack of tool enabling to specify clearly the cooperation processes between the supervisor and the intelligent manufacturing system. This paper concludes with potential research avenues, the main one being the potential benefits of coupling CWA with human–machine cooperation principles to fine tune and adapt the cooperation between the human and the intelligent manufacturing system.

Abstraction Hierarchy Based Explainable Artificial Intelligence

This work explores the application of Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) in the context of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). We built an AI system using a loan evaluation data set and applied an XAI technique to obtain data-driven explanations for predictions. Using an Abstraction Hierarchy (AH), we generated domain knowledge-based explanations to accompany data-driven explanations. An online experiment was conducted to test the usefulness of AH-based explanations. Participants read financial profiles of loan applicants, the AI system’s loan approval/rejection decisions, and explanations that justify the decisions. Presence or absence of AH-based explanations was manipulated, and participants’ perceptions of the explanation quality was measured. The results showed that providing AH-based explanations helped participants learn about the loan evaluation process and improved the perceived quality of explanations. We conclude that a CWA approach can increase understandability when explaining the decisions made by AI systems.

Driving towards a greener future: an application of cognitive work analysis to promote fuel-efficient driving

Driving is a daily encountered task for many. Unlike the majority of life’s daily hassles, however, the act of driving has significant environmental repercussions. Supporting the development of environmentally conscious driving techniques and developing tools and interfaces to reduce the environmental impact of driving is warranted to minimise the negative impact of these actions. The current paper documents the development of a complete cognitive work analysis (CWA) to support environmentally conscious driving. The paper proposes that the use of the CWA approach-enabled examination of the fuel-efficient driving task and consideration of the role numerous objects, agents and skills can play in facilitating fuel-efficient driving. In addition to the traditional CWA process, this paper shows how the revealed finding can be used as the basis for developing specifications that can be taken forward to allow for the development of novel in-vehicle interfaces to support fuel-efficient driving.

Risk Map as a Library Management Information Dashboard: A Case Study in Adapting a Configural Display

In this paper, we report on our application of Cognitive Work Analysis to create an Abstraction Hierarchy model that helps librarians identify key functional relationships for managing the overall performance of a library. By themselves, functional relationships are not as useful in providing insights into the reasons for good or poor performance. However, when these functional relationships are set against the context of system invariants and constraints, they can provide library managers information useful for diagnosis and localization of problems. We propose the Risk Map visualization technique as an information dashboard to cognitively access these functional relationships. Furthermore, when these functional relationships are portrayed over time, trends and patterns can be detected with relative ease.

What's in a game? A systems approach to enhancing performance analysis in football.

PurposePerformance analysis (PA) in football is considered to be an integral component of understanding the requirements for optimal performance. Despite vast amounts of research in this area key gaps remain, including what comprises PA in football, and methods to minimise research-practitioner gaps. The aim of this study was to develop a model of the football match system in order to better describe and understand the components of football performance. Such a model could inform the design of new PA methods.MethodEight elite level football Subject Method Experts (SME’s) participated in two workshops to develop a systems model of the football match system. The model was developed using a first-of-its-kind application of Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) in football. CWA has been used in many other non-sporting domains to analyse and understand complex systems.ResultUsing CWA, a model of the football match ‘system’ was developed. The model enabled identification of several PA measures not currently utilised, including communication between team members, adaptability of teams, playing at the appropriate tempo, as well as attacking and defending related measures.ConclusionThe results indicate that football is characteristic of a complex sociotechnical system, and revealed potential new and unique PA measures regarded as important by SME’s, yet not currently measured. Importantly, these results have identified a gap between the current PA research and the information that is meaningful to football coaches and practitioners.

Socially Responsive Design and Evaluation of a Workers’ Compensation Thesaurus for a Community Organization with Selective Application of Cognitive Work Analysis: A Case Study

This article presents a case study of the evaluation of social responsiveness and relevance of terminology used in a specialized thesaurus constructed for a community legal clinic library. The thesaurus is intended to assist in meeting information discovery and educational needs of a small organization that advocates on behalf of injured workers for legal and social justice within Ontario's workers’ compensation system. The authors include an overview of the thesaurus project and the historical context of workers’ compensation. They discuss the use of Cognitive Work Analysis as an evaluation methodology particularly appropriate to both the material and the clinic's culture of collaboration, with examples of its application in practice and some lessons learned.

Cognitive Work Analysis Beyond Human Factors and Engineering

This paper extends the application of cognitive work analysis (CWA) beyond the fields of human factors and engineering by demonstrating its use for military doctrine and strategy development. A case study is presented that shows how CWA was applied to refine the logic, rigor, and coherence of Australian air pow-er doctrine and strategy. The value of this approach is assessed in terms of its impact, uniqueness, and fea-sibility, and some limitations of the current study and ideas for future research are considered. By cultivat-ing a richer appreciation of military philosophical, strategic, and operational concepts, CWA can lead to the more powerful implementation of these ideals.

How a submarine returns to periscope depth: Analysing complex socio-technical systems using Cognitive Work Analysis

This paper presents the application of Cognitive Work Analysis to the description of the functions, situations, activities, decisions, strategies, and competencies of a Trafalgar class submarine when performing the function of returning to periscope depth. All five phases of Cognitive Work Analysis are presented, namely: Work Domain Analysis, Control Task Analysis, Strategies Analysis, Social Organisation and Cooperation Analysis, and Worker Competencies Analysis. Complex socio-technical systems are difficult to analyse but Cognitive Work Analysis offers an integrated way of analysing complex systems with the core of functional means-ends analysis underlying all of the other representations. The joined-up analysis offers a coherent framework for understanding how socio-technical systems work. Data were collected through observation and interviews at different sites across the UK. The resultant representations present a statement of how the work domain and current activities are configured in this complex socio-technical system. This is intended to provide a baseline, from which all future conceptions of the domain may be compared. The strength of the analysis is in the multiple representations from which the constraints acting on the work may be analysed. Future research needs to challenge the assumptions behind these constraints in order to develop new ways of working.

Using cognitive work analysis and the strategies analysis diagram to understand variability in road user behaviour at intersections

In this article, an application of cognitive work analysis (CWA), using the strategies analysis diagram (SAD) method, to model performance variability in road transport, is presented. Specifically, the method was used to describe performance variability across four road user groups (drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists and pedestrians) when turning right at an urban signalised intersection. The analysis demonstrated that the method was able to identify a comprehensive range of strategies that road users can potentially use while turning right at an intersection, thereby describing a range of performance variability within intersection systems. Furthermore, the method identified constraints, disturbances, changes in circumstances and other influences on road user performance variability. It is concluded that the CWA/SAD approach was able to describe both the different ways in which activities can be executed and disturbances, situations and constraints that create performance variability. The implications of these findings for road design and intersection safety are discussed along with the benefits and drawbacks of the methodology used. Practitioner Summary: Recently, the strategies analysis diagram was proposed as a method to support the cognitive work analysis framework in modelling performance variability. This article evaluated this method within a complex sociotechnical system, namely road transport. The application provided insight into performance variability across road user groups when turning right at intersections.

Systems Change in Transport Control: Applications of Cognitive Work Analysis

Cognitive work analysis (CWA) is a comprehensive and in-depth framework for analyzing cognitive work. In recent years, the framework has received much attention in human factors research and particularly in aviation, air traffic control (ATC) and defense. This article presents the application of CWA in 2 industrial contexts—rail signaling and ATC. The utility of 2 different stages of CWA—work domain analysis and control task analysis—is considered and compared for these contexts. The aim is to show what analyses can be of use to systems designers and operation managers through the application of CWA, in particular how CWA can help in the analysis of the cognitive demands experienced by operators in rail signaling and en-route ATC. We discuss methodological and practical benefits of parallel applications of CWA in 2 transport environments.

Getting past first base: Going all the way with Cognitive Work Analysis

This paper reports the application of Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) to the problem of communications planning in military aviation. Applications of CWA rarely get beyond the first one or two phases; this paper presents an analysis in which all five phases have been completed. The method offers a formative description of the system, defining the set of boundaries and constraints that shape system activity in terms of work domain, recurring activities, decision making, social organisation and worker competency requirements. It is an analysis that is well suited to environments in which the occurrence of unanticipated events can have serious implications for both safety and productivity. Communications planning in military aviation is such an environment. The outputs of the analysis provided an extensive and exhaustive description of the system, highlighting the uneven spread of activity, across actors involved in communications planning and across the situations in which planning can occur. In addition, a new method for informing worker competency requirements based on abstract functions rather than specific decision steps is proposed and discussed in terms of job design, interface design, and person specification.

Beyond interface design: Further applications of cognitive work analysis

Cognitive work analysis (CWA) is gaining momentum as an approach for the analysis, design, and evaluation of complex sociotechnical systems. The majority of applications of CWA have focussed on interface design but in this paper we demonstrate that CWA can also be used for a variety of other applications. These applications include the use of CWA to: identify training needs and training-system requirements; evaluate alternative system design proposals; develop team designs; and identify training strategies for managing human error. By discussing how CWA has been employed in these areas for the Australian Department of Defence, this paper demonstrates that CWA can consistently produce feasible and useful outcomes on industry projects for applications other than interface design. Relevance to Industry This paper demonstrates the application of CWA to a variety of industry projects for analysing training needs and training-system requirements, evaluating alternative system design proposals, developing team designs, and identifying training strategies to manage human error.

Boundary, Purpose, and Values in Work-Domain Models: Models of Naval Command and Control

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.

On the Application of Cognitive Work Analysis to the Development of a Commercial Investment Software Tool

Principles of cognitive work analysis were directly applied to the conceptualization and design of a web-based software tool for investment analysis. The investment philosophy known as fundamental analysis is concerned with the intrinsic value of a company compared with its stock price. The means-end abstraction hierarchy was critical in characterizing the work domain of the fundamental analyst and allowed an ecological interface on the domain to be constructed. This resulted in a patentable software product which is now on the market.