Human factors goes to the golf course: Knowledge engineering of commercial mowing

One of the critical steps in moving toward the design of user-centered platforms in any domain is to document the knowledge that operators of existing systems use to drive their performance and to understand the nature of their interaction with the system. In this project, we set out to acquire and document the knowledge that experienced operators of fairway mowers used to successfully perform their job. As a product of this effort, we were able to identify opportunities to improve the usability of the mower. Furthermore, we provided information to design engineers about the nature of the mowing task. This information was used to make more informed design decisions regarding future system platforms. In this article, we focus on the methodology used to accomplish our objective.