David D. Woods is an American safety systems researcher who studies human coordination and automation issues in a wide range safety-critical fields such as nuclear power, aviation, space operations, critical care medicine, and software services. He is one of the founding researchers of the fields of cognitive systems engineering [1] and resilience engineering. [2]
In 1974, Woods received his BA in psychology at Canisius College. In 1977, he received his MS in cognitive psychology at Purdue University. In 1979, he received his PhD at Purdue University in cognitive psychology, where he studied human perception and attention. [3]
From 1979 to 1988, Woods worked as a senior engineer at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center [3] where he worked on improving control room equipment interfaces for power plants. [4] [1]
From 1988 onwards, he served on the faculty of The Ohio State University in the Department of Integrated Systems, where he is currently a professor emeritus. [1]
In 2017, Woods co-founded a consulting company, Adaptive Capacity Labs, with Richard Cook and John Allspaw. [5]
Woods has previously been president of the Resilience Engineering Association (2011-2013), and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (1998-1999). [6] He is a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. [7]
Woods is one of the founders of the field of resilience engineering. [2] One of his significant contributions is the theory of graceful extensibility. [14]
In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident, Woods and Erik Hollnagel proposed a new approach to thinking about human-computer interaction (HCI) in the domain of supervisory control, Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) [15] that focuses on the interaction between people, technological artifacts, and work. In this approach, a set of interacting human and software agents are viewed as a joint cognitive system, where the overall system itself is seen as performing cognitive tasks.
The theory of graceful extensibility is a theory proposed by Woods to explain how some systems are able to continually adapt over time to face new challenges (sustained adaptability) where other systems fail to do so. [16]
This theory asserts that all complex adaptive systems can be model as the composition of individual units that have some ability to adapt their behavior and communicate with other units. It is expressed as ten statements that Woods calls 'proto-theorems':
Woods proposed visual momentum as a measure of how easy it is for a person to navigate to a new screen and integrate the information they see, when in the process of performing a task. [17] [18] This work was motivated by study of event-driven tasks, where events occur that operators must respond to (e.g., pilots, space flight controllers, nuclear plant operators, physicians).
Woods argued that it is easy to get lost in such user interfaces. Effective operator interfaces should help figure out where to look next, and that navigating a virtual space of information could be improved by leveraging the human perceptual system has already been optimized to do, such as pattern recognition.
Woods proposed a number of concepts for improving the design of such interfaces by increasing the visual momentum:
Woods studied the nature of operations work involved in identifying and mitigating faults in a supervisory context, such as controlling a power plant or operating a software service. [19] He found that this work was qualitatively different from traditional offline troubleshooting that had previously been studied. [20] In particular, because of the dynamic nature of the underlying component, the nature and severity of the problem can potentially change over time. In addition, because of the safety-critical nature of the process, the operator must work to limit possible harms in addition to addressing the underlying problem.
Woods's research found three recurring patterns in the failure modes of complex adaptive systems: [21]
The adaptive universe is a model proposed by Woods for the constraints that all complex adaptive systems are bound by. The model contains two assumptions: [16]
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help){{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)