Showing papers by "Erik Hollnagel published in 2001"

Extended cognition and the future of ergonomics

Abstract: Ergonomics, as the science of work, carries with it an implicit definition of work. Due to the technological development, the nature of work has changed significantly even in the time since ergonom...

The Future of Ergonomics

Abstract: Trying to predict the future is always a daunting task, even if taken lightly. In the case of ergonomics, the question is fortunately not whether ergonomics will have a future, but rather what that future may be. This assertion is not as trivial as it may seem, since it cannot be taken for granted that every scienti®c endeavour will go on forever. Indeed, most scienti®c ®elds, including behavioural science, can show several examples of ®elds or disciplines that have ®rst ̄ourished and then witheredÐor even vanished. Yet as long as humans work, ergonomics is in no danger of vanishing. The reason that ergonomics is not as old as work itself but only came into its own as a science around the middle of the 20th Century (Jastrzebowski 1857 notwithstanding) is simply that until that time the natural human capabilities and the ability to adapt were su cient, by and large, to meet the demands of work. It therefore stands to reason that ergonomics will continue to be needed unless the nature of work suddenly changes to become overly simple or reverts to the stage where it was so, say a hundred years ago. Instead, the di culty in saying something sensible about the future of ergonomics stems from the fact that the development of ergonomics depends on how work develops, rather than the other way around. Winograd and Woods (1997) have argued that the development of a discipline can be motivated either by the abstract logic of the discipline or by the needs of its areas of application. For example, research on medical technology is clearly based on practical needs, while research on graph theory is `abstraction-driven’ Ðthough it may well end up having several practical applications. Despite some courageous attempts to develop normative theories of work, the fact of the matter is that work develops in its own ways and that ergonomics, as a science, is constantly trying to catch up. To say something sensible about the future of ergonomics therefore amounts to saying something sensible about the nature of work in the future. The authors who have contributed to this special issue each try to do this in their own way. Sebastiano Bagnara and Patrizia Marti present a new and rapidly growing ®eld of workÐcall centresÐwhich are characterized as `modern factories’ where services are delivered through information and communication technologies. Call centres provide an excellent illustration of a new type of work that has developed from practical needsÐand further back from technological opportunitiesÐand for which ergonomics must try to ®nd appropriate ways to describe, analyse and explain what is going on. The type of work in call centres presents a challenge to existing ergonomic models and methods, and in that sense indicates one possible future direction or development. John Lee considers three main challenges for cognitive ergonomics that arise from the ever more sophisticated and complex technology with which humans must deal. The challenges are to understand the implications for humans of multi-agent, self-organizing automation, to understand human interaction with increasingly complex automation, and to develop new concepts THEOR. ISSUES IN ERGON. SCI., 2001, VOL. 2, NO. 3, 219±221

Anticipating Failures: What Should Predictions Be About?

Abstract: : Accident analysis and performance predictions have traditionally been pursued in separate ways, using different concepts and methds. This has made it difficult to use the experiences from accident analysis in performance prediction. As a resuli, performance prediction is still focused on the concept of individual "errors", despite overwhelming evidence that accidents are caused by a concatenation of conditions rather than a single action failure. It is argued that the anticipation of failures should be based on better models of how periormance conditions determine actions, and that the inherent van ability - or unreliability - of human performance is the noise rather than the signal.

Enhancing Operator Control by Adaptive Alarm Presentation

Abstract: The use of alarms in process control is a complex affair, because alarms can have many different functions over and above that of alerting the operator to a new event. Alarms are potentially a rich source of information that can be used in all phases of responding to a disturbance and should therefore be considered as an aspect of the general process information. From the point of view of cognitive systems engineering, alarms provide information that enables the operators to maintain control of the process and to be proactive as well as reactive. An important issue is the time and effort needed to evaluate events and new information (time to evaluate: TE) and the time and effort needed to select an appropriate response or line of action (time to select: TS). The former (TE) can be supported by more effective presentation of information, specifically a more comprehensive presentation of alarms. The latter (TS) can be supported by various kinds of computerized support, ranging from planning systems to adapt...

Time and control in joint human-machine systems

Abstract: Many proposals to enhance human control of dynamic systems focus on interface design and the provision of specific support for the interaction between humans and machines. System design should support not only people's internal cognitive activities but also the external collaboration among humans, technologies, and organisations. System design should specifically consider how the joint system may fail to achieve its objectives and how the human-machine ensemble can lose control. On the level of the joint system, control can be lost if the available resources, especially time, are insufficient to evaluate the current situation and select the next actions. In order to understand how such conditions may arise, it is necessary to have a workable model of the dynamics of control in a joint human-machine system. The paper presents an extension of the contextual control model, which previously has been used to describe both individual and team performance in process control. The extension provides a way of modelling how external variability may affect the dynamic equilibrium that is necessary for efficient control, hence provides an enhanced basis for the design of joint systems.

From human factors to cognitive systems engineering : Human-machine interaction in the 21st Century

Abstract: From human factors to cognitive systems engineering : Human-machine interaction in the 21st Century

Cognition, Technology & Work: Two Years On

Abstract: When the International Journal of Cognition, Technology & Work was launched approximately two years ago, we defined the mission of CTW to report on studies of people at work from a socio-technical and cognitive systems perspective (Hollnagel and Cacciabue, 1999) This implies that disciplines like cognitive systems engineering, human factors, and cognitive ergonomics represent the core subject of the journal, both at a theoretical and a practical level In a wider perspective, the scope of CTW can be defined as the consideration for all issues related to the joint humanmachine system operating in complex dynamic environments In this short editorial we report on the amount of received and published manuscripts and on the scientific content, scope and trend of the subjects discussed in the different issues In particular, we intend to show which areas and themes have been discussed and which problems have not yet been tackled This will enable the reader to get a flavour of how much has been covered of the original goals of the Journal and whether we are achieving the stated mission of CTW During the past two years approximately 70 manuscripts were received and have been thoroughly reviewed before publication Some have been rejected, as they did not meet the required standards set for our journal Some authors did not revise their work after the review process Some manuscripts are still going trough in the publication process The overall amount of published material has been of 43 papers These came from Australia, England, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Scotland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, and US Special Issues 1/3 and 2/1 were entirely dedicated to two correlated specific subjects: Managing Soft Knowledge in a Hard Workplace and People, Information Systems and Change They both focused on the impact of modern technology in social and working contexts Special Issue 2/4, which concludes the second year of publication of CTW, is totally devoted to the human factors issues and implications connected with the recent nuclear accident occurred in Japan at Tokai-Mura processing plant