Human Information Interaction

Human information interaction (HII) is an emerging area of study that
investigates how people interact with information; its subfield human information
behavior (HIB) is a flourishing, active discipline. Yet despite their obvious
relevance to the design of information systems, these research areas have had almost
no impact on systems design. One issue may be the contextual complexity of human
interaction with information; another may be the difficulty in translating real-life
and unstructured HII complexity into formal, linear structures necessary for systems
design. In this book, Raya Fidel proposes a research approach that bridges the study
of human information interaction and the design of information systems: cognitive
work analysis (CWA). Developed by Jens Rasmussen and his colleagues, CWA embraces
complexity and provides a conceptual framework and analytical tools that can harness
it to create design requirements. CWA offers an ecological approach to design,
analyzing the forces in the environment that shape human interaction with
information. Fidel reviews research in HIB, focusing on its contribution to systems
design, and then presents the CWA framework. She shows that CWA, with its ecological
approach, can be used to overcome design challenges and lead to the development of
effective systems. Researchers and designers who use CWA can increase the diversity
of their analytical tools, providing them with an alternative approach when they
plan research and design projects. The CWA framework enables a collaboration between
design and HII that can create information systems tailored to fit human
lives.