Cognitive Work Analysis across the System Life-Cycle: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects in Aviation

Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) is an approach to analysing, modelling, designing, and evaluating complex systems. Proponents of CW A claim that it leads to designs that are particularly useful when people have to adapt to unanticipated situations (Rasmussen, Pejtersen, & Goodstein, 1994; Vicente, 1999). CW A does not focus on how human-system interaction should proceed (normative modelling) or how human-system interaction currently works (descriptive modelling). Instead, it focuses on identifying properties of the work environment and of the workers themselves that define possible boundaries on the ways that human-system interaction might reasonably proceed, without explicitly identifying specific sequences of actions (formative modelling).