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.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA449707

Entities

People

  • Anna Moylan
  • Neelam Naikar
  • Robyn Hopcroft

Organizations

  • Defence Science and Technology Group

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Command And Control
  • Complex Systems
  • Control Systems
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • Governments
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Human-Machine Systems
  • Information Systems
  • Medical Personnel
  • Operations Research
  • Personnel Management
  • Psychology
  • Task Performance And Analysis
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.
  • Theoretical Analysis.