COmmunication and WORKload analyses to study the COllective WORK of fighter pilots: the COWORK2 method

This paper presents the COWORK2 method, designed to classify the collective tasks of a fighter jet patrol according to two classification criteria: mental workload (at individual level) and communication quality (at team level). The classification purpose is to detect the tasks for which collective work could be impaired. A three-stage method is developed. Stage 1 consists in carrying out a task analysis with a subject matter expert to identify the collective tasks and characterize them in terms of commonly occurring situations and functions (constraints). In Stage 2, data related to individual mental workload (physiological measures) and team communications (communication recordings) are collected from a low-intrusiveness device in a highly realistic simulation environment. Stage 3 finally produces the classification of patrol collective tasks according to the two levels of analysis: individual and team. This classification is corroborated by the risk-level categorization of collective tasks achieved by a subject matter expert. The results highlight the relevance of the COWORK2 method.