title: A naturalistic study of railway controllers.
abstract: There is an increasing prevalence for work to be analysed through naturalistic study, especially using ethnographically derived methods of enquiry and qualitative field research. The relatively unexplored domain of railway control (in comparison to signalling) in the UK is described in terms of features derived from observations and semi-structured interviews. In addition, task diagrams (a technique taken from the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis toolkit) are used to represent controllers' core elements of work, i.e. to manage events or incidents, and to identify the challenging steps in the process. The work features identified, the task diagrams, and the steps identified as challenging form a basis from which future ergonomics studies on railway controllers in the UK will be carried out.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Rail Human Factors, Institute of Occupational Ergonomics, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Farrington-Darby
authors.forename: John R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Norris
authors.forename: Theresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Clarke
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition; D003625:Data Collection; D004526:Efficiency; D006804:Ergonomics; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D011890:Railroads; D013597:Systems Analysis; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D006113:United Kingdom; D014584:User-Computer Interface