HUMAN FACTORS, 1994,36(1),94-119 Design of a Cooperative Problem-Solving

Both optimization techniques and expert systems technologies are popular ap-proaches for developing tools to assist in complex problem-solving tasks. Because of the underlying complexity of many such tasks, however, the models of the world implicitly or explicitly embedded in such tools are often incomplete and the prob-lem-solving methods fallible. The result can be "brittleness " in situations that were not anticipated by the system designers. To deal with this weakness, it has been suggested that "cooperative " rather than "automated " problem-solving sys-tems be designed. Such cooperative systems are proposed to explicitly enhance the collaboration of the person (or a group of people) and the computer system. This study evaluates the impact of alternative design concepts on the performance of 30 airline pilots interacting with such a cooperative system designed to support en-route flight planning. The results clearly demonstrate that different system design concepts can strongly influence the cognitive processes and resultant perfor-mances of users. Based on think-aloud protocols, cognitive models are proposed to account for how features of the computer system interacted with specific types of scenarios to influence exploration and decision making by the pilots. The results are then used to develop recommendations for guiding the design of cooperative systems