Multiple Viewpoints On Computer Supported Team Work : A Case Study On Ambulance Dispatch

A novel usability evaluation technique, Ontological Sketch Modelling (OSM), was applied to the analysis of systems used within a complex work setting, namely emergency medical dispatch. OSM focuses on the structure of the domain in question and the devices which are applied to that domain, in order to reason about the quality of fit between the two. This analysis shows how OSM can be used to identify misfits between domain (here incidents, ambulance calls and real-time call processing by ambulance service staff) and device (the computer aided dispatch system) in real work settings. We show how OSM can aid additional reasoning about the way in which a new or proposed computer system can both support and enhance existing work structures. The analysis presented here also yields important insights into both the still-developing OSM and the structure of emergency medical dispatch systems.