Program Overview

9 – 12 June, 2015
The MITRE Corporation, McLean, Virginia, USA

*12 June: Half-day Tutorials

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA)

CTA methods are a staple in many Naturalistic Decision Making projects.  The tutorial will describe the concepts behind CTA, some of the CTA success stories, and methods for performing Cognitive Task Analyses.  It will primarily cover the Critical Decision Method (CDM) technique, describing the four sweeps for conducting a CDM interview.  Participants will have a chance to conduct their own CDM interviews.  The tutorial leaders have been conducting CTA workshops for many years, at conferences such as Human Factors and Ergonomics, and also for private and governmental organizations.  This will be the first time the workshop is offered directly to the NDM community.  Attendance is limited to 15 participants.

The workshop leaders are Gary A. Klein and Laura Militello.  Dr. Klein, a Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC, is one of the developers of the CDM.  Dr. Militello, Senior Scientist at Applied Decision Science, has been using the CDM for over 20 years in healthcare and other domains.

Concept Mapping

The use of Concept Maps and similar types of diagrams has expanded. This workshop that will provide guided instruction and practice in how to make good Concept Maps. Concept mapping has been a primary method for many cognitive task analysis projects. This tutorial will allow participants to practice the creation of Concept Maps and come to understand what makes for a good Concept Map. The Workshop should benefit anyone interested in task analysis, expertise studies, knowledge management, and related topics. Exercises will involve the use of CmapTools freeware. Participants are asked to bring a laptop with CmapTools installed. [http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/]

The workshop leaders are Robert Hoffman, Ph.D., Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, and Brian Moon, Chief Technology Officer for Perigean Technologies LLC.  Dr. Hoffman is one of the founders of Expertise Studies. He pioneered the empirical comparison of knowledge elicitation and representation methods. Brian Moon is a leading practitioner and researcher in the field of expertise management.

Decision Spaces and Option Awareness

In this tutorial we will describe how we have extended the basis for naturalistic decision making beyond traditional definitions of situation awareness. We have done this by providing computer-generated depictions of decision spaces in uncertain and complex decision environments, which display the distributions of plausible outcomes for available options. This approach enables fast visual comparisons producing option awareness that augments the mental simulation of recognition primed decision making in complex environments: empirically yielding faster, more confident, more robust decisions. The tutorial will demonstrate the process and tools for generating and analyzing such decision spaces.

The workshop leaders are Gary L. Klein and Mark S. Pfaff.  Dr. Klein is a Senior Principal Scientist in cognitive science and artificial intelligence at The MITRE Corporation. His work has focused on how people acquire and use information in complex uncertain environments. Dr. Pfaff is a lead human-centered engineer at The MITRE Corporation. His research explores the intersections of people, information, and technology in computer-supported cooperative work environments through the use of experimental simulations and mixed-methodological approaches.

Last updated: 06/05/2015