Ever since becoming interested in cognitive systems engineering, now more than 20 years ago, I have been concerned with misunderstandings and misconceptions that are rife within this area. I attribute most of that to a lack of clarity in our explanations of what we are doing. My tutorials on this page represent my best efforts to correct that problem.This is an ongoing process; I update these tutorials whenever I realize that something can be explained better. There is nothing on this page that constitutes an original contribution in thought or a radical re-interpretation of material already in the literature. This page is specifically devoted to explaining existing ideas in better ways.
Tutorial on Work Task Analysis
Tutorial on Work Domain Analysis
Work Domain Analysis brief referencing wild-fire management
Tutorial on Cognitive Work Analysis
The failure to address the cognitive functionality of humans remains one of the major sources of failure in the acquisition and operation of complex sociotechnical systems.
Three-page brief on the nature of and rational for Cognitive Systems Engineering in Systems Acquisition
I hope you will find my Decision Ladder to be consistent with, but more user-friendly, than the original.
I gloss over many technical details to present an overview of the framework, focusing particularly on how the diverse stages support each other.
Work Domain Analysis is the most challenging stage of Cognitive Work Analysis. This tutorial, the brief, and the exercise represent three of my forays into clarifying the concepts.
Cognitive Work Analysis is such an extensive framework that many people find it hard to encapsulate what it is about. This Flash movie offers one way to think about it.
We have paid far less attention to social organization analysis than to other stages of cognitive work analysis. In this tutorial I seek to correct that neglect.
The Air Space as a Cognitive System
A Paradigm Shift in Safety Management
Modeling of Cognitive Workflow with the Brahms Simulation Environment