ABSTRACT
The root of the notion of need has been found to be below the symbolic cognitive processes, like reasoning or working memory process. Research in natural decision making has highlighted the importance of situation awareness in the quality of decision making. It means that direct elicitation of needs is not evident and that some aspects of the environment have to be taken into account. Some evidence concerning the sub-symbolic aspect of need and its ecological dimension has been shown in ecological psychology. The coding scheme applied to the recorded interview consisted of three kinds of tags corresponding to the three ecological elements defining a need: resource, need, and population. The maps of ecological elements and the indicators of depth and coherence in specification serve to be presented to the decision makers in order to help them improve the quality of their mental representation of needs.
