IST 413 Human Computer Interaction Dr. Michael D. McNeese

Assignment # 3 Due Date: 8 APR

11 pts. (11% of your total grade)

Objective: Conduct a cognitive task analysis for design

Focus: We are beginning the part of the class that puts more emphasis on context and real world aspects of what people do. A task or work analysis is one of the most important components of HF, HCI, CSCW as it enables differing understanding of nested loops of activities given interaction with technologies, computers, and complex systems. Also, wherein cognitive science addressed a lot of generalities and principles of how cognition worked, cognitive systems looks more at specific knowledge, context, and users. Therein, when acquiring knowledge via a task analysis it is frequently done first at the individual level. In this sense, cognitive systems focuses more on individual differences and designing/engineering systems based on what you uncover from individuals. Then results are summarized across a set of individuals wherein we search for invariances. When you work with individuals, you uncover critical incidents, stories, and rich experiences that have been formed in them (mental models that are propagated from experience in real world contexts). You are trying to assess their cognition for a given context and discern the activities-functions-goals and they are interdependent and affecting each other as well as human performance given human interaction with complex systems.

Thoughts: There are a variety of means of conducting cognitive task analyses. In the first classes for this objective you will receive a tutorial and experience with some task analysis and design. However, there are many other kinds of analyses and methods of acquiring knowledge from users that are relevant for administration to your overall group project that can yield a variety of perspectives. The paper most focused on some of the analyses I have used is Zaff, McNeese, & Snyder, 1993. This goes over 3 methods: concept mapping, IDEF functional decomposition technique, and design storyboarding and how these are knit together and applied to a pilot associate application domain. The following reading sources provides the most relevant papers that you should be aware of (listed in order of most important first):

Zaff, B. S., McNeese, M. D., & Snyder, D. E. (1993). Capturing multiple perspectives: A user-centered approach to knowledge acquisition. Knowledge Acquisition, 5 (1), 79-116. [concept mapping IDEF & design storyboarding]

Woods (1998). Designs are hypotheses about how artifacts shape cognition and collaboration. Ergonomics, 41(2), 168-173. [available via HCI portal on webpage] [understanding, usefulness, & usabilility - the 3 U.s]

Klein, G. & Millitello, L. (1997) Cognitive task analysis: Bringing a powerful tool into wide use. HSIAC Gateway Newsletter, VII (4), 1-5. [http://iac.dtic.mil/hsiac/docs/gw_vii_4.pdf]

McNeese, M. D., Bautsch, H. S., Narayanan S. (1999). A framework for cognitive field research. International Journal of Cognitive Ergonomics, 3 (4), 307-332. [field ethnography and cta]

McNeese, M. D., Zaff, B.S., Citera, M., Brown, C.E., & Whitaker, R. (1995). AKADAM: Eliciting user knowledge to support participatory ergonomics. The International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 15 (5), 345-363. [Applications of cognitive systems engr.]

Eggleston, R. G. (2002). Cognitive systems engineering at 20-something: Where do we stand? In M. D. McNeese & M. Vidulich (Eds.), Cognitive systems engineering in military aviation environments: Avoiding Cogminutia Fragmentosa (pp. 15-78). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: HSIAC Press. [basis of cognitive systems engineering]

McNeese, M. D. (2002). Discovering how cognitive systems should be engineered for aviation domains: A developmental look at work, research, and practice. In M. D. McNeese & M. Vidulich (Eds.), Cognitive systems engineering in military aviation environments: Avoiding Cogminutia Fragmentosa (pp. 77-116). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: HSIAC Press. [a history of cognitive systems engineering with review].

HSCIAC 2001 Gateway Volume 12 is a nice quick overview of Cognitive Systems Engineering [http://iac.dtic.mil/hsiac/docs/gw_xii_1.pdf].

Your books are also useful for this topic in particular.

Instructions

Working in Goups (This will be worth 7 points)

This assignment will span 3 weeks and consist of your responses to several questions. The questions I want you to answer are:

1) What do you think cognitive task analysis is - please describe it, compare and contrast some of the methods/techniques, and tell me what it would be valuable to apply to your smart car project?

2) Based on your answers to question 1, I want you to take the presentation/ readings from class as necessary and select 3 types of perspectives/analyses you feel comfortable applying to the smart car problem your group is working on. Please give me a rationale for your selections.

3) I want you to conduct a task analysis (using one of the three selected techniques) for your project and use that analysis as one basis (from the overall living lab approach) to predicate/inform/create a user-centered design for the smart car. This may involve working with expert drivers, or analyzing a proposed procedure involved with driving, or applying using the technique to develop authentic and appropriate use scenarios for testing your design. Hence, task analysis can be used at various components of a HCI design project. You pick one that makes sense as you are the consultants working this project.

For those of you who like guidance about length etc. I would like to see about 3 pages double-spaced for questions 1-2. For question 3, I want to see evidence of what you have, how you have conducted the method, who you have conducted it with, and what your results and conclusions are. I will not specify a page length for question 3 but you must show me you have performed a technique with results.

Please use font size of 12 pt., times new roman and be sure to turn in assignment in APA standard format style.

Working as Individuals (This will be worth 4 points) with a bonus of additional 4 pts.

There are 3 components of your individual assignment for Objective 3 for IST 413. Item 3 is a bonus activity worth 4 points extra credit. The requirement and extra credit activities are as follows:

REQUIREMENT # 1

I want you to select one article from the scientific literature that elaborates a task analysis on either of our class topics, driver performance or fighter performance and complete a summary of the paper (as you have done before). You should have experience in doing this by now. The summary is in the same format that I specified previously. These summaries and the methods you have chosen may inform your group requirements for the assignment as well.

REQUIREMENT # 2

I want you to select one of the sets of HCI guidelines (there are many available - see HCI Bibliography online) and choose 5 specific guidelines that you feel are applicable to your pending smart car design. For each guideline express the rationale as to how you believe it would apply to the design problem/design interface your team has defined. Be sure to share these results with team members as the idea here is to show how guidelines may be influential for your design products. This should not be more than 3 pages double spaced (12 pt times new roman font). The objective here is to have team members (acting individually) come up with salient aspects of the design in which guidelines might help you as designers.

EXTRA CREDIT

I want you to keep track of your own activities for a one week period (in essence I want you to perform a cognitive task analysis on your self). Here is what I wish for you to do:

This assignment might be entitled, What do I do.   Who I am (we mentioned individual differences earlier in this assignment) relates strongly to a part of IST that is important - mainly the idea of Know Thy User.  By beginning with yourself (someone you know well!) you have taken a first step toward understanding someone.   Exploring user's needs is much more complicated because it is not you.  To explore needs of other users requires an investigation of them and their activities.  When we analyze their activities it includes understanding the tasks and activities that people do.   As a beginning task analysis, I want you to start with your self as an object of analysis......as you know or should be able to readily explore what you do.
    This assignment requires you to engage in self-reflection about your time, activities, work, and play.  The intent is to get students focused on how they spend their time, how they break down time, how they fill time with tasks and activities, and to become aware of the concepts of tasks-functions-work-actions and decomposition.
    I want you to take a typical day (you could keep track of this for several days to get a representative sample) and decompose that day into the things you do from the time you get up until you go to bed.   In essence, this is a beginning level task analysis as you are analyzing the task-activities-actions you make (or try to do) for a given time period.   You might begin this task audit by actively keeping track of what you are doing incrementally (say every 15 to 30 minutes).  You could get more microcosmic (every 2 mins) or macrocosmic (every hour) but lets try the time scale of 15-30 mins.   Just becoming aware of what you do may be informative in and of itself.    In a task analysis you take the time-task audit and break it down into more granular activities or aggregate activities towards higher level functions.    A task or subtask may also point towards immediate objectives or may fulfil longer range goals.  I would like you to try to a.) decompose activities and b) aggregate what you do across a given day.   This will give you a sense of what your activities are for and where they lead.  In many cases, your intent was a certain activity but a constraint or barrier caused the activity or task to not happen, to change, or caused addition problems.  Since this is a class that looks for problems (and in turn IST solutions) think about some of the problems you may have encountered during a given day and how they impacted your timeline.

Provide me with a 1 page thought paper on this portion of the assignment outlining your conclusions and summary of this task analysis. Attach your description (your actual task analysis).