A couple of discussion papers from Hoffman and Woods, describing several “empirical generalizations” about macrocognitive work. You may want a strong coffee.
These “generalizations” (that they referred to as “law-like”, but law is too strong in my view) often appear as consequences of limits on systems that carry out cognitive work. For instance, limits on building accurate models between people and technology.
They argue that >30 of these macrocognitive generalisations have been identified, and in their view and identified research have “held up under empirical scrutiny across work domains” (or at least, some of them have).
I’ll cover some of these generalisations and then follow-on with trade-offs over several posts.
First up:
· The Cognitive Vacuum generalisation: Workers develop mental models of the [macrocognitive work system]. That is, people “always develop mental models of the agents, processes, and devices they deal with” and that “developers bear the responsibility to design the technology such that that people can form accurate mental models of how the device or process works”.
· Generalisation of systems as surrogates: The macrocognitive system will embody the stances, agendas, and goals of the designers. Designs reflect the models and assumptions of “distant parties” and thus, design intent may be far removed from the actual conditions where technology is used or understood.
· Mr. Weasley’s generalization: Workers develop unjustified trust and unjustified mistrust in their macrocognitive system and its technology.
Refs:
1. Hoffman, R. R., & Woods, D. D. (2011). Beyond Simon’s slice: five fundamental trade-offs that bound the performance of macrocognitive work systems. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 26(6), 67-71.
2. Hoffman, R. R., & Woods, D. D. (2011). Simon’s slice: Five fundamental tradeoffs that bound the performance of human work systems. In 10th International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, Orlando FL (pp. 5-31).
Links:
Link to the LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benhutchinson2_a-couple-of-discussion-papers-from-hoffman-activity-7028492304956985344-s-0W?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
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