Title: Steerin the Reverberations of Technology Change on Fields of Practice Laws that Govern Cognitive Work - eScholarship
Abstract: Steering the Reverberations of Technology Change on Fields of Practice: Laws that Govern Cognitive Work David D. Woods ([email protected]) Institute for Ergonomics The Ohio State University 1971 Neil Ave Columbus, OH 43210 USA Now all scientific prediction consists in discovering in the data of the distant past and of the immediate past (which we incorrectly call the present), laws or formulae which apply also to the future, so that if we act in accordance with those laws our behavior will be appropriate to the future when it becomes the present. Craik, 1947, p. 59 Abstract Research on cognitive work in context has abstracted a set of common patterns about cognitive work and about the relationship of people and computers. I offer four families of Laws that Govern Cognitive Work plus Norbert s Contrast as a synthesis of these findings to guide future development of human-computer cooperation. These Laws are one prong of a general strategy to avoid repeats of past automation surprises . 1. Patterns of Reverberations Observational studies of cognitive work in context have built a body of work that describes how technology and organizational change transforms work in systems. Points of technology change push cycles of transformation and adaptation (e.g., Carroll s task-artifact cycle; Carroll and Rosson, 1992; Winograd and Flores, 1987; Flores, Graves, Hartfield, and Winograd, 1988). The review of the impact of new technology in one operational world effectively summarizes the general pattern (Cordesman and Wagner, 1996, p.25): Much of the equipment deployed ... was designed to ease the burden on the operator, reduce fatigue, and simplify the tasks involved in operations. Instead, these advances were used to demand more from the operator. Almost without exception, technology did not meet the goal of unencumbering the personnel operating the equipment ... systems often required exceptional human expertise, commitment, and endurance. there is a natural synergy between tactics, technology, and human factors ... effective leaders will exploit every new advance to the limit. As a result, virtually every advance in ergonomics was exploited to ask personnel to do more, do it faster and do it in more complex ways. ... one very real lesson is that new tactics and technology simply result in altering the pattern of human stress to achieve a new intensity and tempo of operations. [edited to rephrase domain referents generically] This statement could have come from studies of the impact of technological and organizational change in health care or air traffic management or many other areas undergoing change today (see Billings, 1997, and Sarter and Amalberti, 2000, for the case of cockpit automation). Overall, the studies show that when black box new technology (and accompanying organizational change) hits an ongoing field of practice the pattern of reverberation includes (Woods and Dekker, 2000): • New capabilities, which increase demands and create new complexities such as increased coupling across parts of the system and higher tempo of operations, • New complexities when technological possibilities are used clumsily, • Adaptations by practitioners to exploit capabilities or workaround complexities because they are responsible to meet operational goals, • The complexities and adaptations are surprising, unintended side effects of the design intent, • Failures occasionally break through these adaptations because of the inherent demands or because the adaptations are incomplete, poor, or brittle, • The adaptations by practitioners hide the complexities from designers and reviewers after-the-fact who judge failures to be due to human error. The pattern illustrates a more general law of adaptive systems that has been noted by many researchers (e.g., Rasmussen, 1986; Hirschhorn, 1997) The law of stretched systems: every system is stretched to operate at its capacity; as soon as there is some improvement, for example in the form of new technology, it will be exploited to achieve a new intensity and tempo of activity. Under pressure from performance and efficiency demands, advances are consumed to ask operational personnel to do more, do it faster or do it in more complex ways (see NASA s Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board report, 2000, for a example). 2. Watching People Engineer Cognitive Work: Claims and Myths People as advocates for investment in and adoption of new technology make claims about how these changes will affect cognitive work and the processes and products of practice. Claims about the future of practice if objects-to-be-realized are deployed represent hypotheses about the dynamics of people, technology and work (Woods, 1998). Observations
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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