Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis

by Gary Klein, Gary Klein, Robert R. Hoffman

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) helps researchers understand how cognitive skills andstrategies make it possible for people to act effectively and get things done. CTA can yieldinformation people need -- employers faced with personnel issues, market researchers who want tounderstand the thought processes of consumers, trainers and others who design instructional systems,health care professionals who want to apply lessons learned from errors and accidents, systemsanalysts developing user specifications, and many other professionals. CTA can show what makes theworkplace work -- and what keeps it from working as well as it might. Working Minds is a true handbook, offering a set of tools for doing methodsfor collecting data about cognitive processes and events, analyzing them, and communicating themeffectively. It covers both the "why" and the "how" of CTA methods, providing examples, guidance,and stories from the authors' own experiences as CTA practitioners. Because effective use of CTAdepends on some conceptual grounding in cognitive theory and research -- on knowing what a cognitiveperspective can offer -- the book also offers an overview of current research oncognition. The book provides detailed guidance for planning and carrying out CTA,with chapters on capturing knowledge and capturing the way people reason. It discusses studyingcognition in real-world settings and the challenges of rapidly changing technology. And it describeskey issues in applying CTA findings in a variety of fields. Working Minds makes the methodology ofCTA accessible and the skills involved attainable.

Genres: Psychology, Business, Research, Nonfiction, Management

332 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2006

About the author

Gary Klein, Ph.D., is known for the cognitive models, such as the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model, the Data/Frame model of sensemaking, the Management By Discovery model of planning in complex settings, and the Triple Path model of insight, the methods he developed, including techniques for Cognitive Task Analysis, the PreMortem method of risk assessment, and the ShadowBox training approach, and the movement he helped to found in 1989 — Naturalistic Decision Making. The company he started in 1978, Klein Associates, grew to 37 employees by the time he sold it in 2005. He formed his new company, ShadowBox LLC, in 2014 and is the author of five books.

The Lightbulb Moment: Insights are unexpected shifts in the way we understand how something works, and how to make it work better. The talk examines two mysteries. First, where do insights come from? This talk presents a new account of the nature of insights. Second, how can we trigger more insights? This talk describes a strategy for adopting an insight mindset.

Reviews

[Paolina Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book presents several interesting techniques for mapping expert knowledge. Having been trained by the insightful Gary Klein himself, I would have given it a five star rating if it came with a video on how the techniques are applied eg. concept mapping. Nothing like seeing it dine in action. Still, a must and marvelous read for any hard core knowledge management practitioner.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book introduces a good number of practical tools and methods to use in performing cognitive task analysis and motivates their use with many examples. It was very helpful.