Work-centered design: a case study of a mixed-initiative scheduler

  • Authors:

  • Keith A. Butler;Jiajie Zhang;Chris Esposito;Ali Bahrami;Ron Hebron;David Kieras

  • Affiliations:

  • Microsoft Global Services Automation, Redmond, WA;University of Texas at Houston, Houston, TX;Boeing Math & Computing Technology, Bellevue, WA;Boeing Math & Computing Technology, Bellevue, WA;Boeing Math & Computing Technology, Bellevue, WA;Univeristy of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

We present the case study of a complex, mixed-initiative scheduling system to illustrate Work-Centered Design (WCD), a new approach for the design of information systems. WCD is based on theory of distributed cognition and extends established user-centered methods with abstract task modeling, using innovative techniques for work ontology and top-level algorithms to capture the logic of a human-computer interaction paradigm. WCD addresses a long-standing need for more effective methods of function allocation. The illustrating case study succeeded on a large, difficult problem for aircraft scheduling where prior expensive attempts failed. The new system, called Solver, reduces scheduling labor from 9 person-days a week to about 1 person-hour. These results were obtained from the first user test, demonstrating notable effectiveness of WCD. Further, the value of Solver's higher quality schedules is far-reaching. WCD extends HCI methods to fill an important need for technical problem-solving systems.