With the launch of the 787 program, Boeing has made a solid commitment to increasing its understanding of how pilots outside North American use the current generation of Boeing airplanes.  Through a research contract with the Boeing Flight Deck Concepts Center,  my laboratory has participated in this program.  The work includes visits to foreign carriers in which we interview pilots and managers, observe revenue flights from the jumpseat, and make video recordings of training sessions conducted in high fidelity simulators.  See Digital Cognitive Ethnography for a description of the methods used.

In addition to trying to help Boeing make safer, more efficient flight decks, I use this research project to explore the cognitive processes by which meaning is constructed in interactions among experts. Commercial airline pilots are highly trained professionals who, in spite of sometimes marked differences in language and national culture, share a substantial body of professional culture. This body of professional culture is a vital resource in the construction of meaning in the global aviation system.

Publications:

Edwin Hutchins  “Interacting loops of risk perception and risk management”  Keynote address at the 14th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology (ISAP 2007), Dayton, Ohio, April 2007.

Saeko Nomura and Edwin Hutchins, "The Multimodal Production of Common Ground Understandings in Intercultural Flight Training,"  In Proc. of the 14th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology (ISAP 2007), pp.475-480, Dayton, Ohio, April 2007.

Saeko Nomura and Edwin Hutchins,  "Study for Bridging between Paper and Digital Representations in the Flight Deck,"  In Proc. of Collaborating over Paper and Digital Documents Workshop (CoPADD 2006), pp. 21-24, Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 2006.

Saeko Nomura, Edwin Hutchins, and Barbara Holder,  "The Uses of Paper in Commercial Airline Flight Operations,"  In Proc. of Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2006 (CSCW 2006), pp.249-258, Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 2006.

Saeko Nomura, Edwin Hutchins, and Barbara Holder,  "A Multi-Cultural Study of Paper Use in the Flight Deck,"  In Proc. of International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Aeronautics (HCI-Aero2006), pp.216-223, Seattle, WA, September 2006.

Edwin Hutchins, Saeko Nomura, and Barbara Holder,  "The Ecology of Language Practices in Worldwide Airline Flight Deck Operations: The Case of Japanese Airlines,"  In Proc. of International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Aeronautics (HCI-Aero2006), pp.90-96, Seattle, WA, September 2006.

Edwin Hutchins, Saeko Nomura, and Barbara Holder,  "The Ecology of Language Practices in Worldwide Airline Flight Deck Operations,"  In Proc. of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2006) , Vancouver, Canada, pp. 363-368, 2006.

Hutchins, E. & Nomura, S. (in press) Collaborative Construction of Multimodal Utterances.  In J. Streek, C. Goodwin, C. LeBaron (Eds.) Multimodality and human activity: Research on human behavior, action, and communication Cambridge University Press.