Performance Improvement Quarterly, 8(1) pp. 31-46
Dynamism in Electronic Performance Support Systems James Laffey University of Missouri
ABSTRACT This article introduces a model of dynamic electronic performance support systems. Dynamic support systems are characterized by the ability to change with experience, the ability to be updated and adjusted by the performer, and by the ability to augment other supports found in the performers’ community. Dynamic systems are contrasted with the static nature of conventional models of performance support systems. This article reviews the attributes of current performance support systems, describes lessons learned from a project that explored a dynamic model of learning and support, and presents design principles for dynamic performance support.
Introduction At one level, performance support can be described as the tools and resources we use to be successful. Performance support means our tools, our habits, our tricks-of-the-trade, our colleagues, our reference materials, our office environment: all the resources we rely upon and organize to help us become successful in our work. As an individual, I acquire and build tools for myself; such as my list of phone numbers on the wall by the phone, a spreadsheet template I use for monthly budgeting, computer aliases of frequently used applications that I keep on my desktop, or a pile of things to read that I maintain in the corner of my office. An aspect of these tool examples is that they are somehow customized to work for me in my environment. Performance support systems are extensions of performance support tools. Systems are built to integrate VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
resources and tools and to facilitate working on complex tasks. Systems are usually built to deal with the need for efficiencies when more than one person is needed to complete a task or solve a problem. When we integrate resources and tools with electronic technology, we call these systems Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS). Gloria Gery (1991) defined EPSS as the use of technology to provide on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, advice, assistance, training, and tools to enable high-level job performance with a minimum of support from other people. The goal of an EPSS is to provide whatever is necessary to ensure performance and learning at the moment of need. In general, performance support systems contain reference, and guidance, designed specifically for the performance of interest. The movement to Electronic Performance Support Systems is the re31
sult of the confluence of new technological powers, changing demands of the workplace, and new knowledge about how to improve performance, knowledge that points to a need for resources that are customized and adapted to the worker, the work task, and the work environment. Computer and communication functions are increasingly mobile, connected, and intelligent. This means that tools can be more advanced, and that tools used for one task can connect to tools for related or subsequent tasks. In discussing his vision for the 90s, John Sculley, former Chairman of Apple Computer, identifies (1992) how the nature of work is changing: I believe that one of the great themes of this decade is quickly becoming the “Reorganization of Work.” That is, finding new and better ways to do things. Instead of mapping new technology on top of old behaviors, we need, as a nation, to re-engineer how the process of work gets accomplished. Only through fundamentally changing the ways we work will we actually be able to increase productivity. —John Sculley
Current Models of EPSS Since 1990, many companies have built prototypes, and a few companies have even implemented fully functional systems. These companies have justified EPSS as a means for building and ensuring worker competence in the face of new competitive environments with increasingly difficult job demands and inadequate training systems. Inherent in this work is a recognition that simply improving training or doing more training is not sufficient. 32
Most of the efforts to date represent collections of existing reference, training modules, and decision support. The innovation is in how these are delivered on-line, on time, and to the work site. The goals and design models of these systems come from seeing traditional training as being inadequate to help people become competent quickly and be self-sufficient over time. This approach has strong potential to improve the way many competencies are developed. The strength of the current models is that they provide the kinds of resources that performers require to be successful. Using electronic reference, on-line help, and computerbased training as models, EPSS provides timely information, useful advice, and relevant training to the work environment.
Conceptualizing a Dynamic Performance Support System Providing the kinds of resources that performers require to be successful is significant and valuable, but represents only a small part of the potential of support systems. Current models of EPSS provide the kinds of resources, but they do not support the processes by which these resources are developed or customized for the work environment. Instead of seeing EPSS as merely a vehicle for delivering information, we can see it as a reconceptualization of the work environment. Future EPSS hold the promise of being a new communications form for reengineering work processes. Some commercial software applications hint at systems to come in their innovative approaches to repPERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY
resenting task support and enabling tasks and work experience and be new ways of working. For example, dynamically customized so as to inMECA Software’s “Andrew Tobias’s creasingly better fit the worker, work TaxCut” provides a navigator to task and work environment. The fuguide one through the process of comture of performance support will be pleting a tax form, an auditor to spot influenced increasingly by underinconsistencies and omissions, and a standing how people use self-conbookkeeper to help organize one’s structed job aids, such as Post-It shoe box of tax information. The proNotes. EPPS will no longer be simply gram can import data from last year’s extensions of what we know about IRS forms and from other financial instructional design and the design of applications, thus helping to intedatabases. EPSS will be grounded in grate the the fluid naprocess of ture of supmanaging fiport in the Instead of seeing EPSS as nances and work envip a y i n g ronment merely a vehicle for taxes. The rather than delivering information, program in the static we can see it as a provides nature of much of the formalized reconceptualization of expertise knowledge. the work environment. needed to M o r e complete than 30 Future EPSS hold the most peryears ago, promise of being a new sonal tax filDouglas communications form for ings, proEngelbart vides it as provided a reengineering work needed, intevision for processes. grates most augmenting of the tasks, the human and prointellect. By duces and verifies the end product. In augmenting he meant “increasing the contrast, traditional tax preparation capability of a man to approach a software merely automates the calcucomplex problem situation, to gain lation processes for preparing taxes. comprehension to suit his particular New performance support sysneeds, and to derive solutions to the tems will extend the approaches reproblem” (Engelbart, 1962, p. 1). flected in “TaxCut” ideas. InformaCritical to Engelbart’s vision is a tion and guidance will be tailored and framework that leads us to consider contextualized to a particular work the worker, the learner, and the work experience while the knowledgebase situation as an integrated whole with of the system will adapt and grow as conditions that negate or facilitate an outcome of the work. These new “increasing capability.” systems will provide not only ready Performance support systems will access to a valuable collection of rebe tailored to the work environment, sources, they will be crafted around provide information that is contextuVOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
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ally relevant for the tasks at hand, facilitate collaboration among workers, and be dynamic in their knowledge and expertise. By dynamic, I mean that the knowledge is in motion. It is not just a fixed set of data to be referenced, but also a growing accumulation of captured experiences to be shared and examined. This type of system has the potential not just to improve, but to transform the way we learn and work.
NNAble: A Case Study of a Dynamic EPSS In this paper, I present a personal example of the type of EPSS I envision becoming commonplace. As a case study, I discuss the background, goals and design of the system. I then propose, based on my experiences as a participant in the case study, a set of principles to guide future development of such systems. Background A few years ago the Training group at Apple Computer was confronted with the paradox of having powerful interactive learning systems and media-supported training, yet realizing that these approaches alone could not meet the mission of empowering the learner and building competencies throughout Apple. The paradox is partially explained by recognizing that training and formal learning account for only a small part of the knowledge, skills, and proficiencies that people use in their jobs. Many people report that they learn the processes and content of work while doing real work. The dilemma was that with rapid transitions in technology and the technology business, many employees at Apple were literally inventing their 34
jobs as they did them. How could the Training group influence the learning and growth that was taking place informally and perhaps unevenly in the Apple workplace? How could we contribute to improving the efficiency, effectiveness, reliability and availability of this learning—especially when content and process were being “made up” as people faced new situations, requirements, and conditions? We undertook the NNAble project (Laffey, J., Machiraju, N. Rao, & Chandhok, R. 1991a&b) to explore these issues and start to build knowledge about performance support. Goals The NNAble project was developed to support Apple Technical Coordinators (ATCs), and to study how they acquired, utilized and transmitted problem-solving knowledge within their job context. ATCs’ responsibilities were to troubleshoot computer and communications systems used by Apple employees. For example, if a workstation suddenly could not print documents properly and the user could not resolve the problem, the ATC would be expected to get it fixed. Unfortunately, we found a large variance in troubleshooting capability among ATCs. Training did little to reduce it. Despite this variance, however, we noticed common elements present in the way ATCs approached troubleshooting and solving problems that enabled us to identify three key areas as essential to successful skill development and work: personal experience, tools and artifacts, and community membership. Personal Experience. In our study of ATCs we observed interpersonal skills, analytic skills, and the appliPERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY
cation of procedures and methods. created artifacts (such as reference Some of these skills had been initimaterials and manuals) to represent ated or helped by their training expeor convey meaning. We found that riences, but the overwhelming reATCs spent a lot of time maintaining sponse to our question, “How did you and sharing sets of tools. Because of learn how to do that?” was “by doing work complexity and the rate of it.” We concluded, therefore, that change, many ATCs weren’t confipeople must know things because dent that their set of tools and artithey remember what they do and the facts was current. In addition, many resulting consequences. They act in of the most-used tools and artifacts new situations by referring to prowere ‘home grown’ and were circucesses and outcomes of a prior analolated only informally because there gous situawas no tion. After structured many simiupdate or EPSS will be grounded in lar experisubscription the fluid nature of e n c e s , service. Fisupport in the work people build nally, due to skills and the amount environment rather than rules for usof effort asin the static nature of ing them. sociated Because with learnformalized knowledge. these skills ing how to and rules use new have been constructed within the tools and finding unfamiliar refercontext of their own work environence resources, ATCs would often forment, they are based on personal exsake use of more powerful tools to use periences that yield expectations or their familiar ones—or act on prior predictions for what will happen. knowledge—rather than on current Consequently, we decided that a key information. to any performance support system Community Membership. The two would be to assist people to such an most frequent skill-building pracextent that they try and succeed at tices we observed in the ATC commuchallenges that stretch their capanity were modeling and coaching. bilities and grow their experience ATCs liked to see more experienced base. members solve problems and usually Tools and Artifacts. Because huasked lots of “Why did you do that?” mans are tool-using creatures, we try type questions. Similarly, ATCs to enrich our environment with defound value in being observed, supvices that extend our scope and caported, and critiqued while working pacity. We insert tools between us whether or not the observer had and our work to leverage our capabiligreater skills. ATCs reported that ties. In our NNAble project, we obthe observations decreased feelings served ATCs using software diagnosof isolation and generated greater tics and remote-access software such conscious reflection on their work as “Timbuktu,” E-mail and teleprocess and logic. The observer (inphones to extend their reach. They formal coach) often asked “Why did VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
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you do that?” types of questions to help the ATC recognize and use feedback from his or her actions. We concluded, therefore, that our EPSS would need to support the sharing and updating of tools and artifacts in ways that augmented the experiencebase of ATCs with familiar yet useful alternatives. In addition to using coaches, successful workers drew upon other community resources to enhance their individual capacities. These resources included experts who would offer suggestions from a wealth of experience and specialized training, and peers who might not have deeper knowledge but who had different experiences that could be brought to bear on the problem. Access to this community memory was a key resource for being successful at technical support. ATCs worked to extend their community and to improve their access to key members of the support community. For example, we found that a key outcome of attending classroom training was the network of personal contacts with instructors and classmates, who would later be called for assistance and advice. Understanding the benefits of community membership was important in defining the goals and tasks to be associated with our new performance support system. One goal would be to assist users in locating people with useful experience and availability. Another goal of the performance support system would be to capture and share experience so that when an ATC confronts and solves a problem, she gains knowledge and experience from which the rest of the community can benefit to the extent that it hears the story of the solution and knows to use the special exper36
tise of that ATC when a similar problem occurs. We wanted our performance support system to 1) augment this relationship by storing experiences as cases and 2) use case-based reasoning techniques to help others access the experience when relevant. The goal was to turn individual learning into organization knowledge. (See Barry Raybould’s article in this issue.) Design We designed NNAble to operationalize the goals generated by our observations and to explore general learning and support issues in EPSS. Figure 1 shows a simplified view of the basic components of NNAble. The left side of the figure represents the vehicles for accessing the areas of support critical to successful performance. The concept of an “agent/finder” was developed to provide an integrating function. The agent/finder, as the core structure and intelligence of the system, shielded the ATC from the complexities of case-based reasoning, creating search queries, finding collaborators, and so forth, while enabling them to focus on the problem at hand and, through their description of the problem and their troubleshooting actions, be connected to the most useful resources, services and collaborators. It is important to note that the system does not operate as a problem solver independently of a human operator. The system, at its best, acts as an intelligent assistant, providing information and recommendations, but leaves the final decision and actions to the performer. Additionally, ATC’s are expected to enter new cases into the case library with little expert intervention. PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY
Figure 1 NNAble Project Components.
NNAble in use To illustrate NNAble more concretely, I have included a typical, albeit hypothetical scenario in which an ATC uses the system to help a client. Suppose a client tells the ATC via voice mail that after installation of an Ethernet networking card, devices on the network can no longer be viewed. The ATC 1) calls up the Chooser (a Macintosh tool for finding entities on an AppleTalk network), 2) checks for common problems, 3) verifies that the devices really are not there, and 4) generally verifies cable connections. When these simple steps fail to solve the problem, the ATC turns to NNAble. NNAble queries the ATC to type into the computer a problem description using natural language (free text). Employing a clipboard-type environment, the ATC is requested to make some common and high-level observations that seem relevant to the problem at VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
hand. Exhaustive descriptions are not required. While working in the main NNAble support environment (see Figure 2) observations, procedures, notes, and a final diagnosis are captured into a transcript of the case. A browser facilitates entering observations in a structured fashion. The browser supports making entries that exactly match the symbols of the system as a way of giving the ATC access to the conceptual hierarchy within the case-based reasoning system. The browser also provides the ability to make new entries for new concepts. NNAble also provides a support window for accessing procedural recommendations from the case library, people as collaborators, or reference documents. The default window includes a set of common procedures for the problem type at hand. These procedures are ones which occur with 37
high frequency in the case library and are tied to the problem type (e.g., networks, printing, applications, etc.). When clicking “Search Library” the ATC activates the case retrieval system and a query is sent to the knowledgebase. The system finds the most similar cases and returns a list of case titles (see Figure 3). When selecting a case title, the ATC can select the list of procedures from that case or call up a complete description of the case. In addition to the list of cases, the case-retrieval mechanism is augmented to return a list of questions to further focus the case description. In reality, these questions are formulated from the decision tree in the case-based reasoning tool. The net effect, however, is to have a dynamic discrimination tree available to help
the ATC solve a problem. This dynamic behavior contrasts with many rigid and programmed decision treebased systems where the decision tree is hard-wired. Since the system re-computes the discrimination tree based on the information content of the case library, the pertinent questions adapt to meet the needs of a changing work environment. If the ATC wants to try a procedure, but does not know how, he can select the procedure and click the “Learn Procedure” button to retrieve the training lesson from its library and view a demonstration of the procedure. From the “Learn Procedure” selection, the ATC also has access to hints and requirements for executing the procedure. If reviewing “Found Cases” does not lead to a solution, the ATC can select references and use a
Figure 2 Partial screen capture of NNAble Support Environment.
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free-text search engine to search a library of technical articles. NNAble automatically generates a set of descriptors from the case transcript for use in searching for relevant articles. In addition, the ATC can use collaboration features to send a query, or post the entire case transcript for review and comment by other ATCs and relevant experts. These collaborators can then annotate the transcript and make their suggestions available to the responsible ATC. When a case has been solved, the ATC is prompted to enter a final diagnosis and submit the problem to the case library. After review and revision by an editor, the submitted case is entered into the library and is available to provide support for other ATCs in their troubleshooting tasks.
Key Roles for EPSS: Augmentation and Integration As a result of the NNAble project, I have come to believe that the most fundamental task for performance support developers is to build systems that augment and integrate the sets of resources relevant to the workers in the field. Augmentation means that the system increases the ability of the worker to take advantage of these resources. For example, a system that helps collect and recall past experiences would improve the impact of personal experiences on new problems. Similarly, a system that helps communicate issues to colleagues would improve access to community resources. Integration means that the tools that augment the use of one type of resource can be used to connect to another of the resources, without redundant activity on the part of the worker. In the next section, I elaborate on these key VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
Figure 3. Example of found cases.
points by proposing five principles for designing dynamic EPSS.
Principles for Designing Dynamic Performance Support Unfortunately, there really is no simple prescription for building a performance support system and no standard set of features. For some workers in some fields, new tools and artifacts may need to be identified and developed in order to ensure successful outcomes. My personal experience leads me to believe that the resources identified for ATCs are highly generalizable across other tasks and types of work and provide a good starting point for thinking about performance support for any work group. However, by their very nature performance support systems must be crafted for the work, the workers, and the community to be supported. I propose that the crafting of dynamic performance systems must follow five principles which I believe will aid 39
in understanding and supporting the required dynamism of human performance. Developers need to 1) appreciate that their work will be a part of the work system, 2) center their design on the users’ interaction with the work, 3) recognize the power of the situation to shape meaning and understanding, 4) draw upon organizational memory, and 5) fit technology and its increasing potency to the performer rather than vice versa. Principle #1. The Systems Approach Design for a successful system, not just a successful component.
The systems approach is a way to address the complexity of supporting performance that takes place in any work, social, or organizational context. To be successful, we need to develop solutions that work in the entire context of the work situation. Often, we seek to support performance by fixing a component of the performance system. For example, we improve a training course or add another type of phone support. A systems approach shifts the emphasis from exploring and improving components of existing systems to working from a larger perspective. The design goal is to develop an environment that includes resource and task support and makes people competent in its use. This is very different than trying to develop competence within the performers themselves. We must focus on the important target (the successful work performance of our customer) and on strategies for continuously improv40
ing our systems and the knowledge and skills of our performers. In describing how systems thinking enables a learning organization, Peter Senge (1990, p. 71) contrasted supports designed to handle detail complexity with supports for dynamic complexity. Detail complexity means the process has numerous steps. This is the kind of complexity that most of our performance support systems are designed to handle. Dynamic complexity is present when cause and effect are difficult to determine. When a local action can have a remote effect, or the immediate effect is different from the long-term effect, or when obvious actions produce not-soobvious results, we have a dynamically complex situation. While there may be numerous jobs in which success is ensured by handling detail complexity, many jobs, such as manager, teacher, problem solver, require handling dynamic complexity. Performance support systems must support and reflect the dynamism of the role they support. The starting point for our design should be the recognition that at best our EPSS is a participant in the workers’ efforts to be successful in the social and organizational context of their work. Because this environment is dynamic, the worker (unless mandated to a lockstep process) will find and use the supports most likely to bring success. In the NNAble project we found this dynamism of the work environment an impediment to field testing the performance support system. Until the ATC’s could legitimately believe that NNAble was the most appropriate approach to solving a problem, they PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY
relied on their more tested apment process. In reality, the interproaches: calling on colleagues, trial face, the delivery strategy, and the and error, or escalating the problem content all must be designed around to someone more expert. This proved the performer and his/her interaction to be a substantial obstacle because with the tasks to be supported. For NNAble was designed to “grow example, when establishing the consmarter” through its use by ATCs, tent or knowledgebase for the sysbut until they used it on a regular tem, we cannot be satisfied with delivering what we have available, but basis, it would not get smarter. In retrospect, we would have been wiser must strive to deliver what the performer actually needs to be successto have built into NNAble some of the ful. common methods of communication The system needs to make sense routinely used to solve problems— such as e-mail to colleagues or to a hot and fit together for the performer. Ultimately the performer will use or line. We saw this communication task as a reject the simple probsystem on lem, which the basis of We wanted to solve the we planned whether it hard problems first. If we to handle h e l p s were to do it over , we later. We achieve sucwanted to cess and would build the simple solve the whether it (and familiar) hard probfits with the communications tools first lems first. If way work is we were to done. and add the expertise and do it over, we A key difknowledge-building would build ference bethe simple tween percomponents later . (and familformance iar) commusupport sysnications tools first and add the extems and training systems is the locus pertise and knowledge-building comof control. In training systems, the ponents later. author takes the role of expert and sets the rules for working and the criteria for success. In a performance Principle #2. Performersupport system, we must recognize Centered Design the performer’s expertise in his/her environment and the fact that the Remember to make the boss (the performer may have additional inforperformer) look good. mation not contained within or conOver the past few years, software sidered by the support system. The developers have shown great passion system, therefore, must take the role and respect for user-centered design, of an assistant rather than a director. but often we view that as only an In the real world, neither the trainer nor the performer are comattribute of the interface developVOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
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plete experts. Our systems need to be analyzing the use of NNAble in field a hybrid of what each contributes to trials. successful performance. The performance support system should in one Principle #3. Awareness of instance act as an intelligent assisSituated Cognition tant responding to the needs articuLearn by doing. lated by the performer, and in another instance, act as a mentor guidWe need to view learning and ing the performer to a higher level or competency building as a multimore abstract understanding of the source, integrated, situated, and work being performed. People learn goal-directed process. Support for and grow by undertaking work and this view is by reflecting mounting on and disfrom a numcussing that The technologies of ber of differwork (e.g., performance support will ent discitelling war plines and stories) with help people be connected research efcolleagues or when they are mobile, be forts: situteachers. ated cogniThe support competent when they are tion (Collins, s y s t e m inexperienced, be Brown & should perreflective when they are Newman, mit or en1989); cognicourage this hurried, and be tive apprenactivity as resourceful when they are ticeships well. (Brown, Developchallenged. Collins & ing a softDuguid, ware inter1989); contextualized learning face that supported the users’ inter(Fischer, Lemke & McCall, 1990); action with the work and that could generative learning (Wittrock, 1977); appropriately play both the role of self-regulation of knowledge intermentor and assistant proved a subnalization (Iran-Nejad, 1990); reflecstantial challenge for the NNAble tive practitioners (Schön, 1987). project. We did not succeed in develWhat is significant about this oping a compelling interface. In realgrowing body of scientific evidence is ity, I don’t believe this will be accomthe recognition that the knowledge plished until we have significant imwe use in practice is predominantly provements in speech recognition acquired and shaped by that practice. and can include more intelligence Knowledge that is acquired in schoolinto the user interface. We did, howing and training experiences is abever, make progress toward a more stracted from real world experiences workable interface by using techand may play less of a role in compeniques of rapid prototyping, by intence than we have previously becluding the ATCs as participants in lieved. the design process, and by carefully 42
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Earlier I mentioned that much of what we know to do in a job we learn on the job. One of the responses of the training community has been to provide just-in-time training or on-demand learning, so as to situate the training in the job environment at the time of need. This direction has great merit and no doubt will benefit development of work competencies, but I suspect that the greatest limitation of training is its abstractness. Merely changing the time and place will not make it contextually appropriate. Our learning and support systems need to increasingly model apprenticeships rather than simply serve as information distribution systems. Apprenticeships embed the learning of skills in their social and functional context and make the “what is learned” more meaningful and valuable. A performance support system should encourage workers to try things that stretch their knowledge and skills. Ideally, the system provides sufficient support for being successful; it is only through stretches that people learn and grow. NNAble supported the goal of learning by doing through being a rich environment for advice and support and through articulating the problem-solving process. The NNAble interface required that ATCs be more methodical than they typically had been. Essentially, the ATC had to articulate his or her cognition. This made NNAble feel awkward to the ATCs, but led to the kind of understanding and growth that resembled the coaching scenarios we had observed in the normal ATC environment. Finding appropriate models for, or the correct balance between, efficiency in doing the performance task and additional articulaVOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
tion and reflection processes that support learning will be an important area of research for those wishing to advance performance support systems. Principle #4. Organizational Memory Knowledgebases must include the important information of a community and represent it in a way that is useful to members.
Organizational memory refers to the knowledge that an organization has or could have about its business and to the process it uses to acquire and recall that knowledge. It includes what is archived in electronic and paper documents, but even more critically, what people in doing their work have learned about norms, policies, practices and solutions. How often have we been in a situation where we need to know something and instead of looking it up in books or other archives—we call someone. Experience tells us there are many reasons for this dependence on others. One reason is access: We know people who are more familiar with a subject and who we expect to be able to find things more easily than we might. Often we find that archived information is out of date or does not represent real behavior. For example, people may not follow written policies because the work environment changes more rapidly than do the policies. Policies, at best, represent a codification of real procedures. Another reason is that we want help to do something—not just know something. We want people to help us apply knowledge. We not only 43
want the knowledge but also the experiencebase that has helped form the knowledge. And simply put, we don’t know how much we don’t know: People often volunteer invaluable suggestions or cautions that go beyond our original question. Our support systems should aspire to mimic the knowledgebase and process for acquiring expertise that is used by practitioners. Thus, the process needs to be on-going, rooted in practice and experience, and constantly adjusted by new inputs. We need to find ways to capture and share expertise. The capturing and sharing of experiences was at the heart of the NNAble system, and was the aspect of NNAble we spent the greatest amount of effort conceptualizing, designing, and prototyping. The use of cases as a fundamental resource of competent performance and as an outcome of competent performance (i.e., that a new case was added to the NNAble system after each successful use) was the part of the system that most excited the ATCs and held the greatest promise for improving the way they worked. The ATCs could easily see how the use of cases in NNAble mirrored their own informal strategies for solving hard problems. The ATCs saw value in having access to a rich and broad set of real experiences and in the processes that keep the set of experiences current. Principle #5. Technology Use “My goal is to develop a humancentered view of the technologies of cognition. My theme is not antitechnological, it is pro-human. Technology should be our friend in the creation of a better life; it should
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complement human abilities, aid those activities for which we are poorly suited, and enhance and help develop those for which we are ideally suited.” (Norman, p12.)
Our technologies will become ever more powerful. This path is neither straight, nor easy, but it is inevitable. As developers of performance support systems, we must build systems with today’s technology, design these systems to grow with advances in technology, and experiment constantly with the potential of new technology. We know that our information is increasingly available in digital form and will be accessed and used in an interactive and integrated format. We also know that people will be increasingly networked together and to the information they need, wherever it may reside, and that technology will be increasingly portable and will support higher degrees of mobility. Trends in information technology are creating a future in which technology is pervasive, integrated, customized, and better able to act as an intelligent assistant to human performance. Electronic performance support will provide ever better fits for the way people learn, think, and work. Again, this path is neither straight nor easy; it is inevitable. Donald Norman (1993) has described the interaction between human thought and the technologies we create and use. He argues that we should be developing technology that fits our minds, rather than forcing human minds conform to our technology. He also describes, however, that the affordances (what the technology enables us to do easily) of our technology begin to shape the way we think and PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY
act. Traditionally, we have designed technology to change the nature of the task for the user: Making things easier, faster, or more consistent. Norman’s work illustrates how, with good design, technology can be made an ally in our quest to be smart in a dynamic problem situation. We do not have to require humans to work like machines to enjoy the benefits of machines. By paying attention to how we seek information, learn, and solve problems in the real workplace, we can design technology-based systems that support human work. EPSS is a natural extension of building technologies that transform the way people work and learn. The technologies of performance support will help people be connected when they are mobile, be competent when they are inexperienced, be reflective when they are hurried, and be resourceful when they are challenged.
Conclusions The key to performance support is to set successful performance as our target and find ways to use systems approaches and technology to empower the worker and learner. Currently structured (and limited) models of performance support are finding success in helping workers handle detail complexity. Models of performance support to address dynamic complexity in the work environment cannot rely on static combinations of training, reference materials, and advice. Robust and responsive performance support systems will need to be as dynamic as the challenges the workers face. EPSS must be able to learn from users’ experience, be updatable and adjustable by their users, and augment the VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1/1995
supports found in the users’ community. The principles for designing these dynamic systems are as likely to be found in observing the way people use yellow stickies as in how they use three ring binders.
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Raybould, Barry. (1994) Performance support engineering: An emerging development methodology for enabling organizational learning. Performance Improvement Quarterly 8(1) pp. 7-22. Schön, D.A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sculley, J. (1992). “A Telecommunications Vision for the 1990s,” Remarks at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Jan. 22, 1992. Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Doubleday Currency. Wittrock, M. (1977). Learning as a Generative Process. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Learning and Instruction. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Author’s Note. In part this paper describes a project that is the outgrowth of many people’s ideas and hard work. In particular, I would like to acknowledge N. Rao Machiraju, Ravinder Chandhok, Catherine A. Abbott, and the ATCs of Apple Computer.
JAMES LAFFEY is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Before coming to the University he worked for six years at Apple Computer, Inc., conducting research and development for learning and support systems. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1981. Mailing address: University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. E-mail:
[email protected]
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