In principle, almost every possible characteristic of an actor, and every element in
an actor's life experience, may affect information behaviour. The possibilities are
so enormous that human information behaviour is still in the process of
uncovering the elements that should be considered for research (Fidel et al., in
press). The number of elements is so great that it is impossible to consider them
all, and all their possible combinations, in a single study, or apply them all to the
design of an information system.
Cognitive Work Analysis assumes that for the design of information systems, it is
impossible to consider all the attributes an individual might have, the variability
among individuals, and the transformations they might go through with changing
personal situations. Therefore, Cognitive Work Analysis takes a work-centred
approach, rather than a user-centredone. The focus of the analysis is not the
individual actor but on the work domain and the requirements that it presents to
the actors who operate within it.
This approach is facilitated by the Cognitive Work Analysis dimensions. Work
analysis along these dimensions lays out the constraints under which actors carry
out their tasks, regardless of their individual attributes. In other words, it analyses
the context in which actors in a certain organization, performing a particular task,
operate. Moreover, Cognitive Work Analysis recognizes that there are certain
attributes that are typical to those who operate in a certain context. When
Cognitive Work Analysis analyses actor's resources and values(inner circle in
Figure 1), it creates a model of the prototypical actor, that is, that of the best
example of an actor in the given context. Cognitive Work Analysis recognizes
that not all actors are prototypical, and that their individual attributes and
histories might affect their interaction with information. However, because the
goal of Cognitive Work Analysis is to design information systems for distinct
work domains and tasks, regardless of the individuals who are carrying out a task
at a certain point in time, it considers the prototypical attributes as most
important.
The decision as to which prototypical attributes to analyse may change from one
work domain to another. In a study about Web searching behaviour of high
school students (Fidel et al., 1999), for example, we analysed the students'
education, their experience with computers and with retrieving information from
the Web, their experience in the subject domain, their educational plans for the
future, their preferences with regard to searching the Web, the priority criteria
they used to select a search strategy, the performance criteria they employed, and
their opinion about their own situation, abilities, and preferences. While varying
from one domain to another, several attributes are common to most domains,
such as level of expertise and experience with the subject domain, experience and
expertise with information systems, and technology, preferences, values,
structure of subject domain, and type of training required to carry out the task.
Future research on the application of Cognitive Work Analysis to the design of
information systems is likely to develop a core set of attributes that would be
relevant to most studies.