Robert G. Eggleston

Work-centered support systems: a human-centered approach to intelligent system design

The work-centered support system approach to human-centered computing focuses on analyzing and supporting the multiple facets of work. The WCSS for global weather management developed to support weather forecasting and monitoring in an airlift service organization, exemplifies this approach. A hallmark of human-centered computing (HCC) is its focus on domain practitioners and their field of practice. Human-centered design depends on a deep analysis of a fields cognitive and collaborative demands and how people work individually, in groups, and in organizations to meet those demands. The objective is to leverage what we know about human cognitive and collaborative processes to create systems that optimize the affordances (direct perception of meanings) and effectivities (knowledge-driven actions) for humans. The WCSS paradigm offers an approach for incorporating software agent technology in a manner that helps the user keep the head in the work and reduces the possibility that software agent states or actions surprise the user.

Work-centered Support System technology: a new interface client technology for the battlespace infosphere

Information superiority is a strategic goal of the US Air Force. To achieve this goal the Air Force aims to produce a battlespace infosphere that will provide an unprecedented degree of connectivity and availability of raw data and value-added information for warfighter use. The essential challenge of the infosphere is to be able to provide the right information, at the right time, in the right form to enable warfighters to take effective, coordinated action. Although the infospheres core web and agent technologies are clearly able to provide a heterogeneous infosphere, improved interface technologies are also needed to address problems of information overload and how to provide support to specific end-users without the support tools themselves becoming an impediment to task performance. We have developed a prototype Work-Centered Support System software client as a means to address these interface issues. The WCSS approach achieves effective support in a software agent environment by blending direct manipulation work field organization, and decision, collaborative, and product development aiding in a manner that is tailored to both formal and informal characteristics of user work. In this paper we describe the philosophy behind and characteristics of the WCSS technology. We illustrate the technology with a discussion of an interactive WCSS prototype designed to improve support to military airlift mission planners at the headquarter level.

A Framework for Work-Centered Product Evaluation

We describe a comprehensive work-centered evaluation framework for assessing the value of new technology intended to support human performance. A key feature of the framework is that it spans three types of evaluation: (1) usability — How easy is the aid to use? (2) usefulness — How flexible and effective is it in aiding work? and (3) impact — How (much) does it contribute value within the work organization? We argue that all three of these dimensions are important for advancing the product development and facilitating rapid transition of the product to the customer for deployment. A recent evaluation of a work-centered support system prototype is used to illustrate the multi-level work-centered evaluation approach, the types of insights that can be drawn from it, and a way to employ it in a cost effective manner.

Work Centered Support System Design: Using Frames to Reduce Work Complexity

We have been developing user interface clients as fully integrated support systems. A Work Centered Support System aids work by using direct and indirect, passive and active methods. An important property of WCSS systems is the use of form representations as passive devices to help reduce work complexity while simultaneously aid users in adaptive problem solving. Based on our experience implementing the design of three WCSSs we have distilled a set of three form-based design principles that help insure a work-centered perspective is expressed in the interface and that aid problem solving. These principles connect problem-solving objects with work domain objects at different levels of abstraction, utilize a first-person work ontology, and organize information selection and layout based on problem relationships. This paper describes the principles and uses illustrations from our designs to indicate how they reduce work complexity.

Using Software Agents in a Work Centered Support System for Weather Forecasting and Monitoring

There has been a growing interest in developing system architectures and human-software agent interaction paradigms that deploy software agents in the service of effective support for human task performance. This paper describes an agent-based system for a weather forecasting and monitoring application, called Work Centered Support System for Global Weather Management (WCSS-GWM), that takes this approach. WCSS-GWM exemplifies and extends Cognitive Engineering (CE) principles for effecting human-software agent interaction and Work Centered Support System (WCSS) concepts. Two fundamental CE principles are observability and directability. Users need to be able to ‘see’ what the software agents are doing and be able to re-direct the software agents as task demands change. The WCSS brings an additional, complementary perspective, emphasizing the need to support the multiple facets involved in individual cognitive and collaborative work (decision-making, product development, collaboration, and work management). The WCSS-GWM agent-based architecture is explicitly designed with these objectives in mind.

Conveying Work-Centered Design Specifications to the Software Designer: A Retrospective Case Analysis

It has been noted that there is a gap between the analysis and products produced by cognitive engineers (CEs) and what is needed by software engineers who must implement CE-based requirements in the final product medium. In this paper, we report on a retrospective analysis of intermediate design artifacts that were produced from a CE and work-centered design perspective during the course of developing a successful work-centered support system software application. The analysis involved an examination of design analysis and synthesis artifacts produced by the development team that were made available to the software engineers. It concentrated on how work-centered information and requirements were conveyed and made useful to the software engineering staff. Based on this analysis, we suggest that a work-centered specification package needs to contain at least three classes of information: (1) work-centered descriptions of the work context, work activity, and support requirements, (2) principles and guidance specifying “work centeredness” and (3) detailed specifications of the aiding solution with links back to the support requirements.

A work-centered cognitively based architecture for decision support: the work-centered infomediary layer (WIL) model

Decision-making is strongly shaped and influenced by the work context in which decisions are embedded. This suggests that decision support needs to be anchored by a model (implicit or explicit) of the work process, in contrast to traditional approaches that anchor decision support to either context free decision models (e.g., utility theory) or to detailed models of the external (e.g., battlespace) environment. An architecture for cognitively-based, work centered decision support called the Work-centered Informediary Layer (WIL) is presented. WIL separates decision support into three overall processes that build and dynamically maintain an explicit context model, use the context model to identify opportunities for decision support and tailor generic decision-support strategies to the current context and offer them to the system-user/decision-maker. The generic decision support strategies include such things as activity/attention aiding, decision process structuring, work performance support (selective, contextual automation), explanation/ elaboration, infosphere data retrieval, and what if/action-projection and visualization. A WIL-based application is a work-centered decision support layer that provides active support without intent inferencing, and that is cognitively based without requiring classical cognitive task analyses. Example WIL applications are detailed and discussed.

Tightening the Linkage of CSE and Software Systems Engineering

As an analytical framework, Cognitive systems engineering (CSE) is gaining a growing presence in systems engineering. It is continuing to be adopted by more practitioners as a means to analyze complex user work, including team and collaborative work issues. It has also been recognized to be a valuable tool by acquisition agencies for the purpose of evaluating responses to proposals and early design products. In short, there is increasing evidence that the CSE analytic approach, along with user case methods, is being considered as a “method of choice” for accomplishing a work analysis, especially during the conceptual design phase of development.

A Development Environment and Methodology for the Design of Work-Centered User Interface Systems

Work Centered Support System design represents an approach to the development of user interface application as an integrated, multi-faceted active and passive aiding system. Several successful instances of WCSSs have been developed using largely labor-intensive hand analysis and software coding methods. Here we describe a well-formed analysis, design, and implementation development environment, called the WIL Application Toolkit (WAT), as a work-centered development support aid for one type of WCSSs. The design principles and architectural properties of the WAT are discussed in the context of a design methodology. These aiding tools for interface system development is expected to improve WCSS design, shorten develop time, and improve sustainability of released interface products.

A comparison of synthesis and integrative approaches for meaning making and information fusion

Traditionally, information fusion approaches to meaning making have been integrative or aggregative in nature, creating meaning “containers” in which to put content (e.g., attributes) about object classes. In a large part, this was due to the limits in technology/tools for supporting information fusion (e.g., computers). A different synthesis based approach for meaning making is described which takes advantage of computing advances. The approach is not focused on the events/behaviors being observed/sensed; instead, it is human work centric. The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency once wrote, “Context is king. Achieving an understanding of what is happening – or will happen – comes from a truly integrated picture of an area, the situation and the various personalities in it…a layered approach over time that builds depth of understanding.”1 The synthesis based meaning making framework enables this understanding. It is holistic (both the sum and the parts, the proverbial forest and the trees), multi-perspective and emulative (as opposed to representational). The two approaches are complementary, with the synthesis based meaning making framework as a wrapper. The integrative approach would be dominant at level 0,1 fusion: data fusion, track formation and the synthesis based meaning making becomes dominant at higher fusion levels (levels 2 and 3), although both may be in play. A synthesis based approach to information fusion is thus well suited for “gray zone” challenges in which there is aggression and ambiguity and which are inherently perspective dependent (e.g., recent events in Ukraine).