Managing chronic illness requires personal health information management (PHIM) to be performed by lay individuals. Paramount to understanding the PHIM process is understanding the sociotechnical system in which it fr...
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Managing chronic illness requires personal health information management (PHIM) to be performed by lay individuals. Paramount to understanding the PHIM process is understanding the sociotechnical system in which it frequently occurs: the home environment. We combined distributed cognition theory and the patient work system model to investigate how characteristics of the home interact with the cognitive work of PHIM. We used a 3D virtual reality CAVE that enabled participants who had been diagnosed with diabetes (N=20) to describe how they would perform PHIM in the home context. We found that PHIM is distinctly cognitive work, and rarely performed in the head'. Rather, features of the physical environment, tasks, people, and tools and technologies present, continuously shape and are shaped by the PHIM process. We suggest that approaches in which the individual (sans context) is considered the relevant unit of analysis overlook the pivotal role of the environment in shaping *** Summary:We examined how Personal Health Information Management (PHIM) is performed in the homes of diabetic patients. We found that approaches to studying cognition that focus on the individual, to the exclusion of their context, overlook the pivotal role of environmental, social, and technological features in shaping PHIM.
Health care organizations employ simulation-based team training (SBTT) to improve skill, communication and coordination in a broad range of critical care contexts. Quantitative approaches, such as team performance mea...
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Health care organizations employ simulation-based team training (SBTT) to improve skill, communication and coordination in a broad range of critical care contexts. Quantitative approaches, such as team performance measurements, are predominantly used to measure SBTTs effectiveness. However, a practical evaluation method that examines how this approach supports cognition and teamwork is missing. We have applied distributed cognition for Teamwork (DiCoT), a method for analysing cognition and collaboration aspects of work settings, with the purpose of assessing the methodology's usefulness for evaluating SBTTs. In a case study, we observed and analysed four Emergo Train System (R) simulation exercises where medical professionals trained emergency response routines. The study suggests that DiCoT is an applicable and learnable tool for determining key distributed cognition attributes of SBTTs that are of importance for the simulation validity of training environments. Moreover, we discuss and exemplify how DiCoT supports design of SBTTs with a focus on transfer and validity characteristics. Practitioner Summary: In this study, we have evaluated a method to assess simulation-based team training environments from a cognitive ergonomics perspective. Using a case study, we analysed distributed cognition for Teamwork (DiCoT) by applying it to the Emergo Train System (R). We conclude that DiCoT is useful for SBTT evaluation and simulator (re) design.
There have been few studies on how analysts learn or use frameworks to support gathering and analysis of field data. distributed cognition for Teamwork (DiCoT) is a framework that has been developed to facilitate the ...
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There have been few studies on how analysts learn or use frameworks to support gathering and analysis of field data. distributed cognition for Teamwork (DiCoT) is a framework that has been developed to facilitate the learning of distributed cognition (DCog), focusing on analysing small team interactions. DiCoT, in turn, exploits representations from Contextual Inquiry (CI). The present study is a reflective account of the experience of learning first CI and then DiCoT for studying the use of infusion devices in operating theatres. We report on how each framework supported a novice analyst (the first author) in structuring his data gathering and analysis, and the challenges that he faced. There are three contributions of this work: (1) an example of learning CI and DCog in a semi-structured way;(2) an account of the process and outcomes of learning and using CI and DiCoT in a complex setting;and (3) an outline account of information flow in anaesthesia. While CI was easier to learn and consequently gave better initial support to the novice analyst entering a complex work setting, DiCoT gave added value through its focus on information propagation and transformation as well as the roles of people and artefacts in supporting communication and situation awareness. This study makes visible many of the challenges of learning to apply a framework that are commonly encountered but rarely reported.
There is steadily growing interest in the design and evaluation of digitally enhanced spaces in the real-world where users use, combine, and appropriate different physical and digital tools based on the task at hand. ...
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There is steadily growing interest in the design and evaluation of digitally enhanced spaces in the real-world where users use, combine, and appropriate different physical and digital tools based on the task at hand. Under the notion of ubiquitous computing, researchers have explored tools and theories to analyze, understand, and model users in complex socio-technical systems. Yet, even though theoretical approaches play a significant role in the work of practitioners, there is a general difficulty in applying them, pushing researchers to explore methodological frameworks with clearer guidelines. Using the distributed cognition for teamwork (DiCoT) framework, we study collaboration and communication patterns, physical movement, and social structures of two groups of learners working on a design problem as they evolve over a 3-month period. Through an in-depth investigation, we present detailed accounts of the social and evolutionary models of DiCoT for each group. Our analysis enriches the DiCoT framework by identifying five new principles: social emersion and social circles of privacy for the social model, and continuity, mutual adaptation, and semantics of body for the evolutionary model. This article contributes to HCI research by refining and extending the existing DiCoT framework and elaborating on two dimensions that have previously been under-developed in the literature.
Objectives: Infusion safety is a recognised concern internationally. While few observational studies explore the causes of the errors that occur, even fewer describe how safety is maintained in routine practice. We so...
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Objectives: Infusion safety is a recognised concern internationally. While few observational studies explore the causes of the errors that occur, even fewer describe how safety is maintained in routine practice. We sought to understand safety around infusion devices. Methods: An ethnographic study of infusion device use was conducted on a haematology ward. This included observations of 51 infusions, plus their preparation where possible, during 120 h of ward observation over 11 days. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using deductive coding informed by distributed cognition. A further inductive thematic analysis highlighted new themes for making sense of the data. Results: The distributed cognition analysis highlighted how infusion treatment was affected by interactions distributed across artefacts, tasks, social networks, physical space and time. These interactions occurred close to and away from the infusion: at micro, meso and macro levels according to distance from the actual process. The inductive analysis highlighted three new interdependent themes that account for how safety is constructed and compromised: structure, agency and performance variability. Discussion and conclusion: Safety is constructed through the co-evolution of sociotechnical structure and agency whereby structure shapes and influences people's behaviour and people reproduce and create structures. Everyday performance variability emerges from these interactions, including deviations in processes and outcomes (e.g. incidents, near misses and opportunities). Studies of everyday safety can explore interactions between four points of a sociotechnical structuration model: structure, agency, and satisfactory and unsatisfactory performance.
Emergency medical dispatch (EMD) is typically a team activity, requiring fluid coordination and communication between team members. Such working situations have often been described in terms of distributed cognition (...
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Emergency medical dispatch (EMD) is typically a team activity, requiring fluid coordination and communication between team members. Such working situations have often been described in terms of distributed cognition (DC), a framework for understanding team working. DC takes account of factors such as shared representations and artefacts to support reasoning about team working. Although the language of DC has been developed over several years, little attention has been paid to developing a methodology or reusable representation which supports reasoning about an interactive system from a DC perspective. We present a case study in which we developed a method for constructing a DC account of team working in the domain of EMD, focusing on the use of the method for describing an existing EMD work system, identifying sources of weakness in that system, and reasoning about the likely consequences of redesign of the system. The resulting DC descriptions have yielded new insights into the design of EMD work and of tools to support that work within a large EMD centre.
Technology is a mobile and integral part of many work places, and computers and other information and communication technology have made many users' work life easier, but technology can also contribute to problems...
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Technology is a mobile and integral part of many work places, and computers and other information and communication technology have made many users' work life easier, but technology can also contribute to problems in the cognitive work environment and, over time, create technostress. Much previous research on technostress has focused on the use of digital technology and its effects, measured by questionnaires, but in order to further examine how technostress arises in the modern workplace, a wider perspective on interactions between people and technology is needed. This paper applies a distributed cognition perspective to human-technology interaction, investigated through an observational field study. distributed cognition focuses on the organisation of cognitive systems, and technostress in this perspective becomes an emergent phenomenon within a complex and dynamic socio-technical system. A well-established questionnaire was also used (for a limited sample), to gain a frame of reference for the results from the qualitative part of the study. The implications are that common questionnaire-based approaches very well can and should be complemented with a broader perspective to study causes of technostress. Based on the present study, a redefinition of technostress is also proposed.
This paper presents a study examining interruptions in the wild by portraying the handling of interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition lens. By studying how interruptions occur and are handled in th...
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This paper presents a study examining interruptions in the wild by portraying the handling of interruptions in manufacturing from a distributed cognition lens. By studying how interruptions occur and are handled in the daily activities of a work team at a large foundry for casting heavy diesel engines, we highlight situations when the propagation, transformation, and representation of information are not supported by prescribed work processes and propose recommendations for how this can be amended. The study was conducted by several visits to the aforementioned factory with cognitive ethnography as the basis for the data collection. The focus was on identifying interruptions and analysing these through a distributed cognition framework as an initial step towards studying interruptions in a manufacturing environment. The key findings include the identification of three, previously undefined, types of interruptions and the conclusion that interruptions do indeed affect the distributed workload of the socio-technical system and thus the overall production performance at the casting line.
Organizational artifacts such as rules, procedures, or codes of practice play important roles in chemical process safety management. The violation of an organizational artifact can lead to major accidents. It is thus ...
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Organizational artifacts such as rules, procedures, or codes of practice play important roles in chemical process safety management. The violation of an organizational artifact can lead to major accidents. It is thus essential to understand the underlying significance of violations to coordination of organizational artifacts. Currently, there are rapid changes and development of chemical products which require developing new process in chemical plants. The pre-startup stage in the chemical process is especially prone to errors due to ill-defined work processes and the variety of jobs involved at this stage. However, human errors and understandings in the stage have not been given much of attention it deserves. This paper focuses on human errors in pre-startup stage: (I) An analysis of major industrial accidents in Korea was conducted. (2) A survey of related personnel in chemical plants was carried out to understand conditions of safety management on human error. (3) An accident case study at the pre-startup stage in a Korean chemical plant was conducted by applying the Fault Tree Analysis method to reveal failures of coordination of organizational artifacts. This paper adopted distributed cognition theories to analyze the underlying implications of such failures because these theories have the power to examine the relationship between human operators and artifacts in a system. This study highlights the importance of considering organizational artifacts related to human error in safety management. The results may help people, who are related to a process of pre-startup stage in chemical plants, to improve safety of the work. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
As healthcare shifts from the hospital to the home, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how patients interact with home medical devices, to inform the safe and patient-friendly design of these devices....
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As healthcare shifts from the hospital to the home, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how patients interact with home medical devices, to inform the safe and patient-friendly design of these devices. distributed cognition (DCog) has been a useful theoretical framework for understanding situated interactions in the healthcare domain. However, it has not previously been applied to study interactions with home medical devices. In this study, DCog was applied to understand renal patients' interactions with Home Hemodialysis Technology (HHT), as an example of a home medical device. Data was gathered through ethnographic observations and interviews with 19 renal patients and interviews with seven professionals. Data was analyzed through the principles summarized in the distributed cognition for Teamwork methodology. In this paper we focus on the analysis of system activities, information flows, social structures, physical layouts, and artefacts. By explicitly considering different ways in which cognitive processes are distributed, the DCog approach helped to understand patients' interaction strategies, and pointed to design opportunities that could improve patients' experiences of using HHT. The findings highlight the need to design HHT taking into consideration likely scenarios of use in the home and of the broader home context. A setting such as home hemodialysis has the characteristics of a complex and safety-critical socio-technical system, and a approach effectively helps to understand how safety is achieved or compromised in such a system. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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