Cognitive Edge News
Cognitive Edge Guest Blog
Having had a practitioner perspective on the Accreditation Course, we now move to an academic one. Professor Kathleen Mosier PhD is the Chair of the Department of Psychology at San Francisco State University. An active member of the naturalistic decision making movement which includes Gary Klein (an early guest blogger) she organised the 8th International Congress in Monterrey last year. She helped arrange the recent Cognitive Edge accreditation programme in San Francisco which she also attended.
15 August 2008
The Sierras
I’m just back from camping in the mountains of California near Lake Tahoe – a great place to re-orient your priorities. We saw redwoods, stars in the night sky, and an eagle battling an osprey for a fish dinner.
So – back to home, and thinking about work to be done. We’re thinking of changing the focus of the book from the 2007 Naturalistic Decision Making Conference to knowledge management. A critical component of the Naturalistic Decision Making framework is the role of expertise in dealing with changing and ambiguous information. Sounds like knowledge management to me…
On a completely different note, I had my annual physical today, and my doctor commented on the bureaucratic morass he found when he moved his small practice to Kaiser Permanente. He said that a book on organizational dynamics gave him some insight in to what was going on – I think I’ll send him Dave’s HBR article.
31 July 2008
summer in Oakland
I’m awaiting the arrival of friends from Paris – I was there during a terrible August heat wave several years ago, and will be happy to welcome them to our Oakland summer temperature of about 70 deg! I’m sure they won’t miss the Parisian heat.
I’ve gotten some good suggestions for making sense of the ASRS reports. Right now, we’re just reading the batch. My students say they will be hesitant to fly again after reading all these incident reports – but the good news is that none of these incidents resulted in an accident. It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of titles will be given to these reports – and to see what people say about the frequency of different types of conflict between pilots and ATC.
On a happy personal note, I was elected President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. I’ll spend a year as President-Elect before starting my year as President. The Naturalistic Decision Making community started a technical group within HFES – the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group. HFES publishes a journal – the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making – and you can join the TG without being a member of HFES. Check the hfes.org website.
20 July 2008
Story databases
I’m not sure what my guest blogs are going to look like – it’s hard for an academic to let the thoughts flow, so to speak, without thinking about what the reviewers will say…
As I said earlier, I’m excited about using the Cognitive Edge techniques in my research. As a first crack at it, we’re going to look at the very large database in the Aviation Safety Reporting System. If you don’t know what this is, check out http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ . Anyone involved in aviation - pilots, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, maintenance personnel – can file a report of an unsafe incident. The incentive for pilots is protection from penalties associated with their own actions (e.g., if they ‘bust’ an altitude, or do not follow an ATC directive). The incidents are de-identified and catalogued, and are searchable by keywords, dates, type of aircraft, etc. The reporter tells what happened in his/her own words. Seems like an idea story database to mine – but the authors are not available to answer any new questions on their reports. Any tips on indexing/signifying someone else’s stories after the fact are greatly appreciated.
14 July 2008
Reflections on San Francisco
Last month I spent 3 days with a diverse and interesting group of participants in the Cognitive Edge Accreditation Course led by Dave Snowden and Michael Cheveldave. I felt a bit out of place because most of the participants were consultants or practitioners, but quickly focused on the research applications of what I was learning.
