"Cognition, Technology & Work"

Khan, Imtiaz; Asghar, Mohd.

doi: 10.1007/s10111-010-0137-4pmid: N/A

Dynamic situations are not fully controlled and affected by uncertain human factors. Anthropometric considerations are important in the design of systems. Present research work have considered the ‘angle of abduction’, whose effect on operator’s performance has been ergonomically evaluated in a CNC-EDM environment. In this work, the experimental data are analyzed through an ANOVA using SPSS statistical software. The result indicates that the angle of abduction significantly affects the operator’s performance in a CNC-EDM interaction environment. Further analysis revealed that a 45 degree abduction angle gives the optimal performance as far as a human–machine interaction environment is concerned.

Randell, Rebecca; Wilson, Stephanie; Woodward, Peter; Galliers, Julia

doi: 10.1007/s10111-010-0138-3pmid: N/A

Hospitals are required to operate as a continuous system because patient care cannot be temporarily suspended and handover is seen as a key method for enabling this. This paper reports a study of handover in a medical admissions unit. We draw on the notion of awareness as conceptualised within the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work literature to explore the role played by a variety of cognitive artifacts in supporting continuous coverage. While such awareness is typically characterised as being ‘effortless’, our study reveals that maintaining awareness in a context such as the medical admissions unit is effortful due to invisible work. We suggest that the notion of awareness is beneficial for exploring the practices of continuous coverage because it moves attention away from the moment of handover, instead encouraging consideration of the variety of practices through which clinicians display their work to, and monitor the work of, colleagues on different shifts. We argue that efforts to support continuous coverage should focus on improving awareness by increasing the visibility of information.

Haavik, Torgeir

doi: 10.1007/s10111-010-0139-2pmid: N/A

In the petroleum industry, new technologies and work processes are currently being developed as an innovation strategy for better, faster and safer drilling. In this article, some features of today’s work processes that contribute to successful operations are presented and discussed. The articulation work involved in handling the transient complexity of operations involves making black-boxed and invisible work processes visible and transparent. It is argued that this articulation work contributes to the organisation’s understanding and knowledge of the drilling processes and the dependencies that exist between different actors. In addition to contributing to ongoing problem solving, the articulation work also contributes to the awareness of possible future events. Following this insight, it is argued that efforts to improve operational efficiency and safety by introducing new tools and work processes should focus not only on the capability of new tools to support decisions and actions by instrumentation and automation, but attention should also be paid to the existing articulation work and its role in the accomplishment of work. In that way, the contributions of today’s articulation work can be strengthened instead of lost, and the outcome of the change processes can be even better than anticipated.