An electricity power plant was redesigned so that the old system consisting of a single large display screen which could be seen by all of a team of three operators was replaced by individual workstation screens for operators. This worked well until there was a problem which resulted in dangerous gases being released. The team of operators had great difficulty in finding the source of the problem and deciding what to do. Because they no longer have access to all the information, they have to spend time explicitly co-ordinating their understanding of the situation by talking to each other. Under the old system, the knowledge would be shared – one operator would know what was happening with another’s area of the plant without explicit communication. Although the team’s individual responsibilities would still have been clearly divided, the knowledge of the system would be shared. How could the new system of individual workstations be modified to make better use of distributed cognition?
An electricity power plant was redesigned so that the old system consisting of a
single large display screen which could be seen by all of a team of three operators
was replaced by individual workstation screens for operators. This worked well
until there was a problem which resulted in dangerous gases being released. The
team of operators had great difficulty in finding the source of the problem and
deciding what to do.
Because they no longer have access to all the information, they have to spend
time explicitly co-ordinating their understanding of the situation by talking to
each other. Under the old system, the knowledge would be shared – one operator
would know what was happening with another’s area of the plant without explicit
communication. Although the team’s individual responsibilities would still have
been clearly divided, the knowledge of the system would be shared.
How could the new system of individual workstations be modified to make better use of
distributed cognition?
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