Earticle

As a work analysis technique, Work Domain Analysis (WDA) aims to identify the design knowledge structure of a work domain that human operators interact with through human-system interfaces. Abstraction hierarchy (AH) is a multi-level, hierarchical knowledge representation framework for modeling the functional structure of any kinds of systems. Thus, WDA based on AH aims to identify the functional knowledge structure of a work domain. AH has been used in a range of work domains and problems to model their functional knowledge structure and has proven its generality and usefulness. However, many of researchers and system designers have reported that it is never easy to understand the concepts underlying AH and use it effectively for WDA. This would be because WDA is a form of work analysis that is different from other types of work analysis techniques such as task analysis and AH has several unique characteristics that are differentiated from other types of function analysis techniques used in systems engineering. With this issue in mind, this paper introduces the concepts of WDA based on AH and offers a comprehensive list of references. Next, this paper proposes a set of principles for effectively applying AH for work domain analysis, which are developed based on the author‘s experiences, consultation with experts, and literature reviews.

This study aims to propose a conceptual design of information displays for supporting responsive actions under severe accidents in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). Severe accidents in NPPs can be defined as accident conditions that are more severe than a design basis accident and involving significant core degradation. Since the Fukushima accident in 2011, the management of severe accidents is increasing important in nuclear industry. Dealing with severe accidents involves several cognitively complex activities, such as situation assessment; accordingly, it is significant to provide human operators with appropriate knowledge support in their cognitive activities. Currently, severe accident management guidelines (SAMG) have been developed for this purpose. However, it is also inevitable to develop information displays for supporting the management of severe accidents, with which human operators can monitor, control, and diagnose the states of NPPs under severe accident situations. It has been reported that Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework can be a viable approach for developing information displays used in complex socio-technical systems such as NPPs. Considering the design principles underlying the EID, we can say that EID-based information displays can be useful for dealing with severe accidents effectively. This study developed a conceptual design of information displays to be used in severe accidents, following the stipulated design process and principles of the EID framework. We particularly attempted to develop a conceptual design to make visible the principle knowledge to be used for coping with dynamically changing situations of NPPs under severe accidents.

The purpose of this study is to apply WDA (Work Domain Analysis) for the development of EID (Ecological Interface Design) of vehicle control display. At first, a work domain model on the automobile operation was developed using the AH (Abstraction Hierarchy) which is one of WDA tools. Secondly, information requirements that should be included in vehicle control displays were extracted on the basis of the completed model. The vehicle control information that typical automobiles interface displays currently provide occurred on the low level of the work domain model. This implies that current control displays impose too heavy cognitive workload on automobile drivers. Information requirements that can be included new vehicle control display are also discovered in the high level of the work domain model. The detailed information for EID was not proposed in this study. In the further study, the development of vehicle control display will be deeply conducted, using the results of this study.