Book Review: Work Domain Analysis: Concepts,Guidelines,and Cases

A work domain is an intentional-functional-physical space in which work can be accomplished. As its name implies, work domain analysis (WDA) identifies the intentional, functional, and physical properties of a workspace and maps the relationships among those properties. WDA is the best-known and most challenging stage of cognitive work analysis. With its focus on activity-independent structural properties of a work domain, it is unique within behavioral and technical disciplines.

WDA builds a rich functional model of a complex sociotechnical system. In practice, this model describes the product of an analyst’s thinking about a problem and essentially represents the analyst’s conjecture of the relationships between abstract and concrete artifacts. For this reason, many find WDA obscure and difficult.

Many other human factors methods of analysis exist that are more straightforward. If WDA is obscure and difficult, why bother using it? Throughout her book, Naikar forwards a persuasive argument that WDA offers unique and valuable contributions that approach the problem of design in a fundamentally different way. Her treatment of WDA is by far the most thorough and systematic currently available. Rather than breaking new ground, she explains the fundamentals in clear, evocative language. She reports an impressive array of research in explaining why this method of analysis is useful, how it is typically accomplished, and how it can be applied to good effect.

Naikar addresses issues such as whether five levels of abstraction is always the right number and whether there is always a need for part-whole decomposition. She generally accepts variations in work domain models, where she can trace those variations back to the work of Rasmussen, Vicente, and others. She contrasts different strategies for developing work domain models and explains the rationale behind the different strategies. She argues that the variations are typically consistent with the foundational assumptions of WDA, with each of the variations offering something useful. Possibly the most valuable message of the book is that although there may be incorrect ways to build an abstraction hierarchy or an abstraction-decomposition space, there are at least several valid variations.

The major limitation of the book is that it lacks industrial examples. One of the primary constraints for analysts working in industrial domains is the shortage of proof-of-concept examples of WDA at the scale and complexity of large sociotechnical systems. Nuclear power plant operations, for example, receive only cursory mention in a reference to previous work by other authors. Naikar relies on the analysis of a home as a tutorial strategy to illustrate key concepts. Her worked-out examples of a home are useful in that they make abstract concepts more concrete, but for most readers it will be a major cognitive leap from an everyday artifact to a complex industrial system. Complete analyses of one or two complex industrial systems would have been valuable in this instance.

This is, nevertheless, an excellent treatment of a difficult topic. It is a practitioner’s handbook rather than an academic treatise. Naikar demystifies obscure concepts from older sources and provides step-by-step directions for turning the theoretical foundations of WDA into practice. She achieves this through useful tips on how to conduct specific aspects of an analysis. She offers practical guidance on sources of information for an analysis, typical content of models, questions to ask, and formats for results. Naikar has provided an excellent and comprehensive treatment that will do much to assist those coming to grips with this challenging analytic method.