Using Ethnography for Understanding Team Decision-Making in a Time-Sensitive Military Setting

Abstract

We use two ethnographic methods, situated breakdown analysis and information ecologies, to understand how a group of military decision-makers collaborated as they performed a battle damage assessment (BDA) mission. These methods emphasized analysis of anomalous situations as well as the interdependencies among the people involved. By doing so, we were able to view decision-making beyond by the book situations and thus better understand collaboration needs. Further, we determined cases in which the technology provided to the military decision-makers could be improved to better support their collaboration needs. We believe this is the first use of situated breakdown analysis in a military setting.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA456104

Entities

People

  • J. L. Drury

Organizations

  • MITRE Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Cargo Aircraft
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Command And Control
  • Dead Reckoning
  • Enlisted Personnel
  • Ethnography
  • Grids
  • Ground Control Stations
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Information Systems
  • Military Personnel
  • Personnel Management
  • Situational Awareness
  • United States
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Readers

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