Cognitive Artifacts in Complex Work - Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery - page 152

Cognitive Artifacts in Complex Work

Peter H. Jones 1 and Christopher P. Nemeth 2

1 Redesign Research, USA
[e-mail]
2 The University of Chicago, USA
[e-mail]

1 Introduction

The Indian folk tale recorded in the well-known John Saxe poem tells of six
blind men, each grabbing a different part of an elephant, and describing their
impression of the whole beast from a single part's perspective. So the elephant
appears to each blind man to be like a snake, a fan, a tree, a rope, a wall, a
spear. As the poem concludes:

“And so these men of Indostan, Disputed loud and long, Each in his own
opinion, exceeding stiff and strong. Though each was partly right, All
were in the wrong.”

Although this tale suggests a general metaphor for poor collaboration and
social coordination, the insinuation of blindness indicates an inability to share
the common information that is normally available through visual perception.
When fundamental cognitive resources such as shared information or visual cues
are missing, collaborative work practices may suffer from the “anti-cognition”
suggested by the elephant metaphor. When individuals believe they are con-
tributing to the whole, but are unable to verify the models that are held by other
participants, continued progress might founder. We may find such “blind men”
situations when organizations value and prefer independent individual cognition
at the expense of supporting whole system coordination. Blindness to shared
effects is practically ensured when those who work together are not able to share
information.
Our research shows the importance of artifacts that are created and used by
multiple participants in collaborative practices. Artifacts analysis, in the context
of ethnographic field research, admits access and insight into the cognitive work
underlying observed practices. For example, the blind men might have benefited
from the use of a common artifact to integrate the attributes of the partially-
observed animal. Those who work in science and medicine perform research and
work on phenomena with only a partial grasp of function and mechanisms. Peo-
ple use what are termed cognitive artifacts, usually physical, tangible written
objects such as the operating room schedule or the laboratory notebook, to note
status, maintain current knowledge through cryptic but well-understood mark-
ers, distribute memory among participants, and manage emergent conditions.
We contend that digital artifact design (including ambient intelligent systems as