Cognitive Work Analysis: Investigating Social Aspects of Work with a Decision Support System

Abstract: Despite the widespread use of digital technologies in the workplace, there is littleknown about how social aspects and contextual influences affect the usage. Asdigital technologies get more integrated in work duties it creates new possibilitiesfor how work can be conducted, however, the integration also induce new demandsand expectations. This thesis takes an exploratory approach to study social aspectsand contextual influences, and how these affect the usage of a decision supportsystem. The theoretical framework, cognitive work analysis, was adopted to conduct a workdomain analysis, and a social organization and cooperation analysis. Interviews,observations and an online questionnaire were used with the cognitive workanalysis framework to study the social aspects and contextual influences. The results of this thesis can be boiled down into the following outcomes: a modelof the work domain where the system is used; eight themes that were identified asthe main source of influence on the users’ attitudes and motivations toward thesystem; a social organization and cooperation analysis that tie together thepreviously outlined results, this to provide three scenarios that illustrate socialaspects of work with the system.Keywords: cognitive work analysis, work domain a