Applied Work Domain Analysis: Translating Knowledge to Representation

This paper describes a method for transforming knowledge elicited from real life applications into Rasmussen's Abstraction-Decomposition Space (ADS). The ADS is used to represent knowledge in a Work Domain Analysis (WDA), the first of five stages in a Cognitive Work Analysis. The WDA is highly conceptual and is mostly used by trained practitioners. There are many concepts and rules in the construction of the ADS. These make it difficult for practitioners to transform and map their data onto the two dimensional (2D) ADS. In Applied Work Domain Analysis (AWDA), we introduce a new dimension, cause-effect, thereby creating a 2D orthogonal space called the Motivation-Expectation Space (MES). The rules for constructing the MES are easier to apply than the ADS. After constructing the MES, practitioners can map information in MES onto the ADS.