Designing Displays for Mobile Decision Support

Mobile context aware decision support systems have the potential to provide workers with the information they need, when they need it. The design of such systems must take into account the organisation of information, the activities of the worker, and the wider sociotechnical system if they are to work effectively. Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) has been applied extensively to the design of decision support systems, as it gives us a framework for structuring complex information spaces, which is a major component of designing a comprehensible and consistent decision support system. This approach can be paired with ecological interface design (EID) for mapping these information structures onto representations within the interface. These approaches have been developed for traditional interaction scenarios, particularly control room interfaces. The display limitations and task scenarios associated with mobile workers differ from those related to control room operators. In this paper we look at mobile context aware decision support, in an industrial setting. We discuss how the display restrictions of mobile devices can be countered by the potential for automated navigated through location awareness and the repercussions this has on the users understanding of system state.