Envisioning Evolvable Work-Centered Support Systems: Empowering Users to Adapt Their Systems to Changing World Demands

Abstract

Work-Centered Support Systems (WCSS) provide visualizations that reveal domain constraints and affordances based on software agent technology to support cognitive and collaborative work. Here we argue for a need to incorporate facilities that enable users to adapt these systems to the changing requirements of work—–evolvable work-centered support systems. We recently developed a WCSS for weather forecasting and monitoring in an airlift organization that is currently used in their operations center. As part of the development process we conducted field observations both prior and subsequent to system introduction. A striking finding was the constant changes that operations personnel faced (changes in goals and priorities; changes in scale of operations; changes in team roles and structure; changes in information sources and systems). We describe the changes in workplace demands that we observed and the modifications we needed to make to the WCSS in response. Our findings are presented as a case study to illustrate the challenges confronted in designing a WCSS to support a constantly changing environment. For today's fielded systems, making changes that are responsive to users changing requirements in a timely manner is seldom possible.

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