As a work analysis technique, Work Domain Analysis (WDA) aims to identify the design knowledge structure of a work domain that human operators interact with through human-system interfaces. Abstraction hierarchy (AH) is a multi-level, hierarchical knowledge representation framework for modeling the functional structure of any kinds of systems. Thus, WDA based on AH aims to identify the functional knowledge structure of a work domain. AH has been used in a range of work domains and problems to model their functional knowledge structure and has proven its generality and usefulness. However, many of researchers and system designers have reported that it is never easy to understand the concepts underlying AH and use it effectively for WDA. This would be because WDA is a form of work analysis that is different from other types of work analysis techniques such as task analysis and AH has several unique characteristics that are differentiated from other types of function analysis techniques used in systems engineering. With this issue in mind, this paper introduces the concepts of WDA based on AH and offers a comprehensive list of references. Next, this paper proposes a set of principles for effectively applying AH for work domain analysis, which are developed based on the author's experiences, consultation with experts, and literature reviews.