Funding Status:
Completed - Task completed and produced a deliverable
Procurement Mechanism(s):
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Aims:
Through a literature review, two controlled experiments, and a validation study, the task examined the potential attributes of cognitive aids as they interact with task demands, time pressure, and number of team members. All studies were performed using a dual-task/interruption paradigm to better approximate the environments where cognitive aids are likely to be used. The hypothesis was that a taxonomy of cognitive aids for non-experts will need to contain differential information on aid design for number of operators, highly spatial versus highly verbal sub-tasks, highly visual versus highly auditory sub-tasks, and combinations thereof.
A product to come from these studies is a prototype of a hybrid aid for medical equipment maintenance tasks, while at the same time building a library of tools to create similar aids for other procedures. Second, we developed a taxonomy of cognitive aid design that considers the most important variables affecting performance with aids: user knowledge and experience, time pressure on performance, task criticality, and the number of operators expected to interact with the aid. Our Hybrid Aid toolkit (HAT) is a prototype of an innovative cognitive aid technology that is designed to support non-expert operators in complex tasks, while also offering tools to the procedure designers and the operators themselves as they perform the task.
Aims:
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Complete a literature review of interactive cognitive aids
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Determine Resource Demand Conflict between Sub-tasks and Cognitive Aid
a. How is performance affected by task-aid resource conflict?
b. How does aid design, in terms of resource conflict with the task, affect resumption of task after an interruption?
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Examine the benefits to non-expert operator(s) of adaptively including more information at the operator’s request and including support tools helpful to the task within the aid, also accessed at the operator’s request.
a. How does adding more operators change use of the cognitive aid during a procedure?
b. Do aid attributes, such as specifically encouraging theory of mind between team members and inclusion of task-specific tools, offer benefits to task performance and subjective assessments of the aid?
The task will contribute to gap closure by providing design guidelines for interactive cognitive aids. These will be critical for autonomous long-duration crewmembers.