Collaborative prototyping approaches for ICU decision aid design.

When computer-based aids do not support the human users' decision-making strategies or anticipate the organizational impacts of technological change, advances in information technology may degrade rather than enhance decision-making performance. Such failures suggest the design of human-computer cooperation for problem solving and decision-making must be driven by human cognitive and organizational process requirements rather than computer technology. Decision- and user-centered development techniques involve domain experts and end-users in the earliest phases of design to evolve an understanding of requirements through iterative prototyping. This paper presents a collaborative approach to cognitive systems engineering applied to developing a clinical aid to assist respiratory care in the surgical ICU.