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

This article offers a commentary on Richardson, Ormerod, and Shepherd (in p ress) while building on the previous discussion in this journal of the rela tive merits of task analysis and systems analysis in human-computer interfa ce 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 limi ted in the extent to which it can identify the information requirements ass ociated with unanticipated events. The abstraction hierarchy [23] is an eve nt-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 complemen tary advantages of SGT and the abstraction hierarchy into a single, unified framework for work analysis. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.