Making Sense of Sensemaking: Requirements of a Cognitive Analysis to Support C2 Decision Support System Design
Abstract
Conducting a Cognitive Analysis to adequately support a follow-on design effort for innovative decision support tools is a tall order and requires specific properties to exist in the CTA in order to be successful. This paper outlines requirements for analytical methodologies to satisfy this need. These requirements are based on several premises. The first premise is that a representation shapes cognition and collaboration, which guide behavior. This is known as the Representation Effect (Norman, 1993). The representation effect summarizes a widespread psychological result that the content and context of a problem representation (i.e. its reflection in the design of user interface) can radically alter a decision-maker's responses. Thus, how a command and control system is designed influences the cognitive work that needs to be accomplished, either improving or degrading sense making performance. The second premise is that the representation must reflect the essential characteristics of the work domain. That is, the relationship (or mapping) between the visual structure established by a particular representation and the underlying constraints and relationships within the work domain itself is fundamental to the decision-maker's effectiveness when using the visualization. Without an explicit specification of this mapping, it is impossible to determine if the visualizations are supporting user's needs as intended, or, making the supported task more difficult (Zhang, 1997). Woods (1991) has called this the Mapping Principle.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA463375
Entities
People
- James W. Gualtieri
- Scott S. Potter
- William C. Elm