Wanted: psychologically relevant, device- and event-independent work analysis techniques

This article offers a commentary on Richardson, Ormerod, and Shepherd (in press) while building on the previous discussion in this journal of the relative merits of task analysis and systems analysis in human–computer interface design [1,2,7]. The SGT scheme described by Richardson et al. represents a valuable contribution to the work analyst’s toolkit. However, it is limited in the extent to which it can identify the information requirements associated with unanticipated events. The abstraction hierarchy [23] is an event-independent work domain analysis technique that can be used to overcome this limitation while still satisfying the criteria of device-independence and psychological relevance. Future research should integrate the complementary advantages of SGT and the abstraction hierarchy into a single, unified framework for work analysis.