The Abstraction Hierarchy and its Extension beyond Process Control

Rasmussen's abstraction hierarchy — more recently called the abstraction-decomposition space (ADS) — has been used for years within the process control domain and is increasingly being used to analyze and model ‘intentional’ systems. The ADS has been the basis for Work Domain Analysis and Ecological Interface Design. However, the researchers new to the ‘Danish’ approach to cognitive engineering have often found using the ADS to be difficult and confusing, particularly when applying it to systems outside process control. A ‘new’ set of labels associated with the five levels of the means-ends dimension of the ADS are suggested. These new labels suggest a much tighter logical relation between means-ends levels and thereby make it more clear what characteristics, functions, and resources of a domain belong at what level of abstraction. Second, an illustration of how these new labels might extend the ADS to intentional systems will be presented and discussed.