Emerging Technologies for Distributed Teamwork
Abstract
To determine how emerging technologies could be used to support distributed teamwork, the components thought to make up distributed teamwork were modelled using Cognitive Work Analysis to produce a generic Abstraction Hierarchy (AH). The Command and Control (C2) Armed Forces domain was added to the AH in order to provide specific activities which could be supported by technology examples. By placing at the lowest layer of the AH both ‘physical artefacts’ (in the form of technology examples) and ‘military cognitive activities’ (relating to C2 in the Armed Forces), it was possible, via means-end links, to determine their individual and combined contribution to distributed teamwork.
It was thought that the nature of ‘military cognitive artefacts' should be used as a basis for determining specific functions that emerging technology should support in distributed teamwork within the C2 Armed Forces domain. Within Distributed Cognition theory, cognitive artefacts are items such as lists, electronic communications, orders and whiteboards that allow a team to distribute cognitive activities (i.e., perception, reasoning, decision making) outside the minds of individuals and across team members. Example military cognitive artefacts were taken from the planning phase of Operational Field Trial 3 (OFT3). These military cognitive artefacts were analysed in terms of the ‘cognitive activity’ they supported, and the physical functions (e.g. ‘display information, ‘transfer data’) necessary to allow their distribution.
Appropriate physical artefacts (i.e. man-made objects, in this case, technology examples) providing suitable physical functions, both for distributed teamwork in general, and for the chosen cognitive activities, were amassed in a technology repository. Previous work on the Technology Appropriateness Guidelines Tool (TAG Tool) was used as a starting point for populating the technology repository.
By mimicking the AH with a relational database in Access 2007 and applying rating scales, not only the type of contribution to distributed teamwork, but also its extent, could be easily identified. Practical constraints (such as budget, environmental tolerances etc.) were also applied to allow the user to filter for the most appropriate technology examples. A ‘no frills’ but user friendly interface was produced using Access 2007 forms. A ‘runtime’ version was also produced to allow users without Access 2007 to use the application.
The resulting functionality allows users to perform two different technology searches: They can walk through the levels of the generic AH of distributed teamwork in the C2 Armed Forces domain, selecting the nodes of interest, or instead select single or multiple ‘cognitive artefacts’. Both eventually lead to a list of ‘physical functions’ filtered by the previous choices. At this stage the user has the option to narrow the search further by selecting practical constraints, before outputting a report. The report displays the technology examples which elicit the chosen physical functions, listed in order of the highest rating scale value. Each technology example displayed is hot-linked to an individual technology report showing its relationship to each level in the generic AH, thus making its connection to other components of distributed teamwork explicit.
The key output of this work package is a working relational database populated with 210 technologies mapped to 92 affordances. This can be used by a novice (in terms of database manipulation and CWA theory) to consider alternate ways of achieving distributed teamwork in the C2 Armed Forces domain based on the selection of technology. By including cognitive activities in the model it is possible to establish if and how different technology choices, used to distribute the same military cognitive activity, could contribute to distributed teamwork in different ways.
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