planning travel as everyday design
This paper examines the implications of conceptualising planning as a type of design activity. This is explored through results from a two-month field study that investigated the planning and decision making behaviour of people engaged in preparing for multipoint, international air travel. Planning travel is a type of ill-structured complex problem that is characterised as being temporally sporadic, sometimes synchronous, often asynchronous, frequently collaborative, and spatially varied with participants at different times co-located and in separate places. Research participants were professional travel agents and non-professional but experienced travel planners. Ancillary material collected included photographs of the planning situation and drawings and notes made by participants. In contrast to the formalised prescriptive planning models common in cognitive science and operations research, the everyday planning activity featured in this study is situated and naturalistic. This research is undertaken with a view to designing systems to support the design and decision making activity of travel planners.
planning decision making planning support