Responding to the Unexpecteced

A place where we often need assistance,   Often an important aspect of process design and optimization.   Technical.

Cognitive Work of Hypothesis Exploration During Anomaly Response
A look at how we respond to the unexpected
Marisa R. Grayson

Web-production software systems operate at an unprecedented scale today, requiring extensive automation to develop and maintain services. The systems are designed to adapt regularly to dynamic load to avoid the consequences of overloading portions of the network. As the software systems scale and complexity grows, it becomes more difficult to observe, model, and track how the systems function and malfunction. Anomalies inevitably arise, challenging incident responders to recognize and understand unusual behaviors as they plan and execute interventions to mitigate or resolve the threat of service outage. This is anomaly response.1

The cognitive work of anomaly response has been studied in energy systems, space systems, and anesthetic management during surgery.9,10 Recently, it has been recognized as an essential part of managing web-production software systems. Web operations also provide the potential for new insights because all data about an incident response in a purely digital system is available, in principle, to support detailed analysis. More importantly, the scale, autonomous capabilities, and complexity of web operations go well beyond the settings previously studied.7,8

Four incidents from web-based software companies reveal important aspects of anomaly response processes when incidents arise in web operations, two of which are discussed in this article. One particular cognitive function examined in detail is hypothesis generation and exploration, given the impact of obscure automation on engineers' development of coherent models of the systems they manage. Each case was analyzed using the techniques and concepts of cognitive systems engineering.9,10 The set of cases provides a window into the cognitive work "above the line" (see "Above the Line, Below the Line" by Richard Cook in this issue) in incident management of complex web-operation systems (cf. Grayson, 2018).   .... "

Information Latency Study for DOD

I  suggest that there are important latency conditions in many parts of large networked systems.  For example in supply chains it can greatly change costs, effective responses, contract and goal compliance, risk analysis,  decision design integration, etc.    Information latency is always considered in such systems, but often not carefully enough.  Latency is a key kind of metadata, and should be included in a 'knowledge graph' to represent a problem in both its statement and in any automated approaches being designed.   - Franz

Research Team to Study Information Latency With $7.5M DOD Grant
By Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
 Virginia Tech researchers Walid Saad, Jeffrey Reed, and Thomas Hou

Information latency is a measure of how quickly or slowly networked devices transmit information. When the information being transmitted is for the military, understanding latency may be the deciding factor in the outcome of warfare.

That's one of the reasons the U.S. Department of Defense has now tapped the expertise of an interdisciplinary research team led by Virginia Tech to study latency and information freshness in military Internet of Things systems with a $7.5 million, five-year Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant.

The goal is to develop a novel foundational framework for guaranteeing low latency and information freshness in military networked systems, such as the Internet of Things, using a cutting-edge concept known as multimode age of information, which tightly ties in information latency with the dynamic networked military system.

The project will fundamentally define this new concept of information latency and provide a suite of tools to optimize multimode age of information in massive-scale military networked systems.

"Despite much progress being made in the study of military communications, the basic science for tracking, control, and optimization of information latency is yet to be developed," says principal investigator Jeffrey Reed, Willis G. Worcester Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. "In fact, a fundamental knowledge of information latency is crucial for our military to maintain information superiority on the battlefield."  ..... " 

(see more at link above)

Responsive Design

Was unaware of the precise definition of responsive design, but OK, worth thinking about:

10 Ways Responsive Design is Critical to the Customer Experience
by Melissa Thompson   

Responsive web design is defined as an approach to designing websites that remain constant across different devices used. Using responsive design is something you should consider if you are looking to improve your customer’s online experience. Whether you are building a website for your business or looking to improve an existing one, here are 10 ways in which responsive web design is critical to your customer experience .... "