Social Representations, Cognitive Attractors and Workspace Studies

With the coming of information age white collars experience a dramatic rise in information overflow. To create better environments for cognitive workers, we started in 1994 a series of studies of office work at Electricité de France R&D Division. This led to new observation tools recording office activity, to theoretical tools stemming from the theory of social representations, and finally to participative design of new workscapes.
    One observation tool we use is the Subcam ("subjective camera"). It is a miniature, wearable, wide angle video camera with microphone, clipped on a pair of glasses worn by the (volunteer) worker ; it is designed to observe individual activity. It records its wearer's activity from a subjective point of view, wherever (s)he goes, during the half-day periods they typically wear it. The subcam thus provides continuous and detailed "first-person view" records of activity, encompassing the perception-action loop (hands movements are captured as well as the visual and sonic arrays). It is a rich tool for design and interaction studies.
    The Offsat ("office satellite") is a time-lapse webcam attached to the ceiling, taking pictures of the office every few seconds. It shows long term evolution of the setting, e.g. the spatial distribution of information artifacts (piles, etc.). Automated image analysis enables measuring the distribution of gross activity (meetings, stand alone computing, etc.). The offsat is useful for evaluating the impact of changes in the workscape.
    These tools were used in a program of detailed observation of office work involving dozens of subjects "in the wild", which highlighted the most frequent problems, and suggested theoretical models. One is the notion of "cognitive attractors": stereotyped, compound patterns of elements from the context and internal states which may trigger action. Attractors, like social representations, are patterns that can be interpreted in pragmatic ways. Attractors in offices may be piles, files to read, papers to write, co-workers to monitor, duties, problems to settle, etc. The competition between a high number of cognitive attractors is one hypothesis for cognitive overflow: the subject gets confused in the phase of problem choosing (what to deal with now?) This may result in procrastination and browsing, or clearing one's desk by processing attractors with low cost and high salience (e.g. reading e-mail, instead of writing a problematic note). This model provides design guidelines for building more serene and efficient workscapes.