Cognitive work analysis: An influential legacy extending beyond human factors and engineering

Jens Rasmussen’s multifaceted legacy includes cognitive work analysis (CWA), a framework for the analysis, design, and evaluation of complex sociotechnical systems. After considering the framework’s origins, this paper reviews its progress, predictably covering experimental research on ecological interface design, case studies of the application of CWA to human factors and engineering problems in industry, and methods and modelling tools for CWA. Emphasis is placed, however, on studying the nexus between some of the recent results obtained with CWA and the original field studies of human problem-solving that motivated the framework’s development. Of particular interest is a case study of the use of CWA for military doctrine development, a problem commonly regarded as lying outside the fields of human factors and engineering. It is concluded that the value of CWA, even for such diverse problems, is likely to result from its conceptual grounding in empirical observations of patterns of human reasoning in complex systems. •This paper traces the evolution of cognitive work analysis (CWA), from its origins to its subsequent development and impact.•It demonstrates that CWA provides a strong basis for addressing a range of problems including military doctrine development.•The impact of CWA is likely to be due to its conceptual grounding in empirical observations of patterns of human reasoning.