Episode #23: Interview with Mica Endsley

Naturalistic Decision Making

Date: 12/03/2020

Show Description:

Dr. Mica Endsley is widely recognized as a pioneer and world leader in the study and application of situation awareness in advanced systems. She is a former President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and former Chief Scientist for the U.S. Air Force. Dr. Endsley is the author of over 200 scientific articles and reports on situation awareness, decision-making, and human-system integration and is widely cited in professional journals. She is the co-author of “Designing for Situation Awareness” and speaks extensively at conferences. Dr. Endsley has a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California. She is a Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE).

Learn more about Mica’s work:

SA Technologies

ResearchGate

Designing for Situation Awareness: An Approach to User-Centered Design, Second Edition

Handbook of Distributed Team Cognition

Learn more about NDM:

NaturalisticDecisionMaking.org

Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making

Where to find hosts Brian Moon and Laura Militello:

Brian’s website

Brian’s LinkedIn

Brian’s Twitter

Laura’s website

Laura’s LinkedIn

Laura’s Twitter

Timestamps:

The first paper Dr. Endsley ever published [1:00}

The importance of situation awareness [3:10]

The challenges of dealing with cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias [8:35]

How to encourage open-mindedness [12:20]

UFO’s and how individuals respond when their mental models fail [14:50]

Past research projects that have been particularly rewarding [19:50]

Reflections on serving as chief scientist for the Airforce [21:13]

Insights on experiences of trying to convince others to think differently [23:30]

Interesting projects surrounding situation awareness [29:57]

Advice for people just entering the field of NDM [32:32]

Major influences in Dr. Endsley’s career [34:25]

Ideas on ways to better manage the COVID-19 response [35:32]

One question that can determine if someone is an NDM researcher [40:15]

Some things that not many people know about Dr. Endsley [42:18]

“If you could become an expert in anything instantly, what would it be?” [43:30]