Cognitive Systems Engineering

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center
Center for Cognitive Systems Engineering Risø
National Laboratory, Denmark In collaboration
with Center for Human-Information
Interaction University of Washington, Seattle,
USA


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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Motivational problem- world wide
• Information systems and technology are being
  developed at an accelerated pace
• Use is spreading rapidly, but
• Our understanding of how humans interact at work
  with information other people - and technology
  is very limited
• Many systems and technologies do not serve their
  users effectively

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Dynamic and collaborative
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• To be competitive work has become
• Collaborative, different perspectives from
  multiple disciplines, teams, organisations and
  countries
• Dynamic with rapidly changing information and
  tasks
• Information is no longer just out there create
  and seek it!

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Field study of work at Microsoft - software
• We thrive on chaos?
• Field study of work at Danfoss components for
  trucks
• There is a lot of stuff that looks interesting,
  but when I see it I dont know whether I am going
  to need it, and when I need it I dont remember
  where I saw it and whether it was excatly what I
  needed
• Field study of work at Boeing - aviation

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Real life problem driven, not discipline driven
• Cognitive Systems Engineering (Rasmussen,
  Pejtersen, Goodstein) 1994
• work with autonomous actors
• contraints imposed by other peoples intentions
• interdependences among teams tasks
• Selforganised
• Empirical and conceptual development is needed

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Mission
• To carry out basic research in Cognitive Work
  Analysis
• Develop models to help design Ecological
  Information Systems and collaboratories
• Research based education in Cognitive Systems
  Engineering

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Research focus

Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Information intensive, collaborative, dynamic,
  selforganised work
• I usually ask the group if there are others that
  previously have had similiar problemsWe spend a
  lot of time discussing the things in the group,
  and we establish small scenarios and experiments
  to try to get information on our problem
• Knowledge exploration and information retrieval
• Information creation and sharing
• Information structures and knowledge organisation

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Holistic, crossdisciplinary work analysis
• Systems theory
• Control theory
• Ecological psycology
• Organisational sociology
• Engineering-law seeking and predictive models
• Humanities -interpretation of particular events
• Domain competence

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Joint activities
• Research projects
• Ph.D programmes
• Faculty exchange programmes
• Teaching Programmes for the community, industry
  ,agences
• Bi-annual workshop on Cognitive Systems
  Engineering
• Publication
• Funding, proposal writing

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Common Vision
• International impact on research, design and
  evaluation of ecological information systems and
  collaboratories
• Internationally attractive for visiting
  researchers and students
• Critical mass of researchers
• New information system concepts that serve users
  effectively

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Cognitive Systems Engineering
Cognitive Systems Engineering Center

• Benefits
• Develop conceptually through research
  collaboration
• Information science
• Engineering
• Software science
• Psycology
• Antropology
• Social science
• Develop conceptually through teaching
  collaboration