Spring Report - Human-Computer Interaction Institute - Carnegie ...

Recommendations
[7] TITAN Follow-
Up Interview
4/6/2010
[8] Soloway,
Guzdial, and
Kenneth E. Hay,
Interactions
Magazine 1994
Internalization of soft constraints
gained from experiential knowledge
supports a very efficient workflow
for experienced planners. However, it
creates difficulties for new planners.
The challenge, therefore, becomes
finding the right balance between the
externalization of this information and
the effort required outside the normal
workflow.
“[The CAPCOM]’s
really good
at the happy
words, making
the crew feel
comfortable.”
RPE Support
(2/23/2010)
Spread knowledge through
shared work context.
The only way to gain tacit knowledge
of another role is through experience
of their work practice. Rotating
personnel between similar roles (like
WLP, STP, and RPE) may help create a
better understanding of different work.
Similarly, working in close proximity
to equivalent practitioners may yield
insights into the different mental
models of the problem space.
Mentorship, as seen in all of the
domains, is a successful practice and
increased effort in this direction will to
help build and maintain consistency
in planning workflow. This can be
encouraged through online forums and
mailing lists for tool support and general
advice. Tips and frequently asked
questions would also give planners the
opportunity to share information.
Capture and expose knowledge
where possible.
NASA’s console logs contain valuable
execution information that is only occasionally
audited by Flight Controllers
at the Mission Control Center. Through
this effort they can create ‘templateized’
activities that help Increment
Leads reduce repetitive busy work for
the planning team [7]. It could also
be beneficial to allow executors to
annotate console logs with additional
information. Possible annotations could
include thoughts on the quality of the
execution, or brief suggestions for the
next scheduled attempt.
Though some are too sensitive, other
soft constraints can be externalized
in a culturally acceptable way. For
example, the Assignment Editors at
the news broadcast were unwilling
to externalize variances in skill level
among the staff. Reading speed of
the different anchors, however, was
explicitly built into ENPS as a time
constraint.
Obviously, not all executor-specific
information is too sensitive to capture.
At NASA, however, it would be much
very awkward to publicize information
about how closely each crew member
follows procedures. The Charge Nurse
circumvented this social concern by
keeping the soft constraint information
in a private binder. The binder
contained constraint information about
social preferences but was only seen
or used by the Charge Nurse. An
interface to support these indirect
constraints should consider the balance
between appropriateness and the
benefit of its inclusion.
Offer contextual help to novices.
Scaffolding is a technique that teachers
use to provide support to learners of a
new task. As a student gains expertise,
a good teacher provides less and less
coaching. Thus, the scaffolding fades
as the learner becomes more experienced
and is ready to be in full control
[8]. Planners at NASA could use this
technique to reduce the learning curve
of new technologies and save training
costs. There is an opportunity to
incorporate unique indirect constraints
for novices by building tips about how
to handle frequent problems and suggestions
for next steps in editing the
plan. These tips could come directly
from the expert’s hands. Experiential
knowledge comes into play by learning
from the past mistakes of others
and benefitting from previous plans,
which is something that no system did
especially well.
CAPCOM:
Capsule Communicator
Jenn and Noah observing Short-Term Planners (STP) having an impromptu discussion about the schedule.
ENPS: Essential
News Production
System
30 May 4, 2010 Spring Research Report :: Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute :: Master’s Capstone Project :: Team Lumina Team Lumina :: Spring Research Report :: Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute :: Master’s Capstone Project May 4, 2010 31