ABSTRACT
One goal of research, design, and development is to link the technological capability with the adaptive power of people as goal-directed agents (Alexander, 1977). People actively manage the dynamic characteristics of their workplace by drawing on a deep knowledge of their work domain to create and use artefacts
(Blumer, 1986). Workers create cognitive artefacts (Hutchins, 2002) in physical form (e.g., order forms, checklists, schedules) and digital form (e.g., equipment control and display interfaces, information) to aid their cognitive work. Prior work has shown how these artefacts can be used to understand (Xiao et al., 2001) and derive design guidance for IT systems to support such work settings, because the artefacts embody only the essential elements of a work domain (Nemeth, 2003; Nemeth et al., 2006). This makes it possible to pursue a design approach from the user to the system.
