The Etienne Grandjean Memorial Lecture Situated cognition and action: implications for ergonomic work analysis and anthropotechnology

Abstract

After a short history of the study of work activities, the methodology of Ergonomic Work Analysis (EWA) is described and the diversity of practices is underlined. The methodology of analysis of activities involves exhaustive checks of the behaviour of operators in critical situations and confronts the operator with his own behaviour in order to obtain pertinent explanations and evoke the cognitive unconscious. Ethnological work may constitute a contribution as regards the choice of the operator(s) whose behaviour is the most significant for the problem posed. In the same way, ethnologists using recording tools that are similar to those of ergonomists offer interesting frameworks for discussion of the qualities of these tools and the posture and balance aspects of behaviour. Moreover, interpersonal communications lead to beneficial exchanges with the ethnographic experience. Although the American school of situated cognition (cognitive and psychological anthropology) is very useful to know for activity analysts, it should not be confused with EWA which, by definition, is directed towards an objective: knowing and transforming obstacles of all types that hinder and prevent satisfactory activities. First of all, EWA has to show, from the viewpoint of operators, how they build problems in order to be able to solve them. Ergonomists and ethnologists note how difficult this problem building may be in view of the variability of the technical system and of the state of operators' knowledge. The technology transfer situations studied by anthropotechnology need EWA even more in view of the frequent degradation of technical systems and the heterogeneous character of the two cultures present in the mind of the operator: his own culture and that which has inspired the imported technology. From this viewpoint, here and there the operator may be considered not as a performer but as the iterative creator of his task.