Joint Cognitive Systems: Patterns in Cognitive Systems Engineering
Purchasing Options
Features
Summary
Our fascination with new technologies is based on the assumption that more powerful automation will overcome human limitations and make our systems 'faster, better, cheaper,' resulting in simple, easy tasks for people. But how does new technology and more powerful automation change our work?
Research in Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) looks at the intersection of people, technology, and work. What it has found is not stories of simplification through more automation, but stories of complexity and adaptation. When work changed through new technology, practitioners had to cope with new complexities and tighter constraints. They adapted their strategies and the artifacts to work around difficulties and accomplish their goals as responsible agents. The surprise was that new powers had transformed work, creating new roles, new decisions, and new vulnerabilities. Ironically, more autonomous machines have created the requirement for more sophisticated forms of coordination across people, and across people and machines, to adapt to new demands and pressures.
This book synthesizes these emergent Patterns though stories about coordination and mis-coordination, resilience and brittleness, affordance and clumsiness in a variety of settings, from a hospital intensive care unit, to a nuclear power control room, to a space shuttle control center. The stories reveal how new demands make work difficult, how people at work adapt but get trapped by complexity, and how people at a distance from work oversimplify their perceptions of the complexities, squeezing practitioners. The authors explore how CSE observes at the intersection of people, technology, and work, how CSE abstracts patterns behind the surface details and wide variations, and how CSE discovers promising new directions to help people cope with complexities. The stories of CSE show that one key to well-adapted work is the ability to be prepared to be surprised. Are you ready?
Table of Contents
Preface
CORE ACTIVITIES AND VALUES
Adaptability versus Limits
Complementarity
Core Values of CSE in Practice
On Systems in CSE
Patterns
Discovering Patterns in Joint Cognitive Systems at Work
A JCS at Work:
JOINT COGNITIVE SYSTEMS ADAPT TO COPE WITH COMPLEXITY
Adaptation in Joint Cognitive Systems at work
BEING BUMPABLE
The Story: A Delay
The Intensive Care Unit the Scene, the Cast, and BackDrop
Coping with Complexity: Parceling out beds by the Bedmeister
Artifacts as Tools: The Bed Book
Preparing for Demand > Supply Situations
Son of coping: Building an ICU from Scratch
Piling Pelion on Ossa: Escalating Demands
Observations on the Incident
DISCOVERY AS FUNCTIONAL SYNTHESIS
'Being Bumpable' as An Example of Studying a JCS at work
Insight and Functional Synthesis
SHAPING THE CONDITIONS OF OBSERVATION
Three Families of Methods
Converging Operations
The Psychologist's Fallacy
FUNCTIONAL SYNTHESES, LAWS, AND DESIGN
Properties of Functional Syntheses
On Laws that Govern Joint cognitive Systems at Work
Challenges To Inform Design
Patterns in How Joint Cognitive Systems Work
ARCHETYPICAL STORIES OF JOINT COGNITIVE SYSTEMS AT WORK
Demands and Adaptation
Affordances
Coordination
Resilience
Story Archetypes in 'Being Bumpable'
ANOMALY RESPONSE
Control Centers in Action
Cascading Effects
Interventions
Revision
Fixation
Generating Hypotheses
Recognizing Anomalies
The Puzzle of Expectancies
Control of Attention
Alarms and Directed Attention
Updating Common Ground When a Team Member Returns
Updating a Shared Frame of Reference
Patterns in Anomaly Response
PATTERNS IN MULTI-THREADED WORK
Managing Multiple Threads in Time
Tempo
Escalation
Coupling
Premature Narrowing
Reframing
Dilemmas
Over-Simplifications
AUTOMATION SURPRISES
The Substitution Myth
Surprises about Automation
Brittleness
Managing Workload in Time
Tailoring
Failure of Machine Explanation
Why is technology so Often Clumsy?
Making Automation a Team Player
A Coordination Breakdown in Response to a Disrupting Event
ON PEOPLE AND COMPUTERS IN JCSS AT WORK
Envisioning The Impact of New Technology
Responsibility in Joint Cognitive Sytems at Work
Problem-Holders
Goal Conflicts
Adapting to Double Binds
Literal-Minded Agents
Norbert's Contrast
Directions for Designing Joint Cognitive Systems that Include Robotic Platforms
Reverberations of New Robotic Technologies
LAWS THAT GOVERN JCSS AT WORK
A Tactic to Reduce the Mis-Engineering of Joint Cognitive Systems
Five Families of First Principles or Laws
Laws That Govern Joint Cognitive Systems at work
Generic Requirements to Design Joint Cognitive Systems that Work
Design Responsibility
Patterns and Stories
Bibliography
Appendix A
Appendix B
Author Index
Subject Index
Editorial Reviews
". . . present an effective joint cognitive systems paradigm, make compelling arguments, and recommend a substantial advance for our field."
– Doug Griffith, in Ergonomics in Design, Spring 2007
Related Titles
