Cognitive Artifacts in Complex Work - Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery - page 173

of boundaries may assert that current information technology has not met the
conditions sucient to adoption. However, a cognitive view suggests the inter-
action of many factors, both individual and collective, may constrain electronic
artifacts in established practices.

5 Using Cognitive Artifacts for System Design

Intelligent ambient environments show promise for many situations where indi-
viduals interact with complex technological devices, such as medical treatment
facilities, smart homes and public spaces, and learning spaces such as museums
and schools. Ambient systems that can be designed to sense individual presence,
collect and organize appropriate data, and respond situationally [27], might also
serve distributed cognition in research laboratory and acute health care appli-
cations.
Ambient intelligence concepts vary across a wide range, partly because the
field remains in the early stages of technological development. The findings from
both of the studies that are described in this chapter demonstrate how to link
research with system design and development. This section relates the findings
from the analysis of distributed cognition to the development of advanced com-
puting systems that are intended to support that cognition.

5.1 Acute Care Anesthesia Scheduling

Research into acute care cognition has provided a number of insights into meth-
ods, cognitive artifacts, and practitioner individual and group behavior in the
health care setting. The study of physical cognitive artifacts showed how mem-
bers of the organization seek to reduce uncertainty to the smallest possible
amount to make it manageable on the day of procedures. Artifacts show how
practitioners apply their expertise to the creation and management of a plan
in order to perform a complex set of procedures. Artifacts also reveal organiza-
tional change. For example, the master schedule evolves from a plan of proce-
dures that may be performed at day's start into a log of procedures that have
been performed by day's end. Artifacts can make research e cient by enabling
the researcher to get in at the right level (where help is useful), and to deal with
the most meaningful aspects of a complex technical work setting.
Practitioner cognition is distributed in order to strike and manage the balance
of constrained resources with the continually changing demand for services. Their
cognition is also temporal, shifting attention forward and backward as the day
evolves. Team members view past, present and expected events through the day
as it progresses. All participants rely on other departments through a daily set
of expectations and anticipated action in order to execute the procedures.
The research methods that have been described here get at the nature of
practitioner behavior, including the goals and strategies that practitioners use
to achieve them. Methods make it possible to evaluate new cognitive artifacts
by determining the fit between an artifact and the work domain for which it is