Naturalistic analysis of control room activities
Paul Luff, Christian Heath · Institution of Engineering and Technology eBooks · 2001
It would seem relevant and appropriate to observe the activities of personnel in control rooms prior to designing new technologies to be placed in them, altering the configuration of equipment and layout, or changing the assignment of staff responsibilities and tasks. Numerous approaches have been outlined for organising and shaping these observations, most noticeably task analysis. These can support the analyst to delineate the tasks and functions of individuals, to examine the role of new technologies in the accomplishment of activities and to identify what information is available, where, and how this information should be communicated. Typically, these approaches focus on the formal tasks and activities, or at least, what can be made explicit. In this chapter the tacit and social practices on which control room work relies will be considered. Observations of work and interaction in one particular setting, station control rooms in London Underground, will be reported. This contributes to the growing number of naturalistic studies of control rooms and similar settings. The details of the practices revealed by the analysis could contribute to the development of technologies for the control room and more generic kinds of systems. In particular, we seek to re-examine how individuals 'monitor' the surrounding domain and the activities of their colleagues. We look at how the personnel utilise the available technologies that are a combination of audio, visual and computational systems and how, in concert with colleagues, they monitor the happenings in the world beyond the control room. Finally, the ways in which such an analysis can provide insights into how prototypes technologies could best be deployed in organisational settings will be examined. The chapter will conclude by briefly outlining some recent technological developments that aim to support the work of control room personnel.