| Introduction to the Special Issue on Temporal Aspects of Usability | | BIB | 1-7 | |
| Alan Dix; John Fabre; Steve Howard | |||
| Interaction in the Large | | BIBAK | 9-32 | |
| Alan Dix; Devina Ramduny; Julie Wilkinson | |||
| Most work in HCI focuses on interaction in the small: where tasks take a few
minutes or hours and individual actions receive feedback within seconds. In
contrast, many collaborative activities occur over weeks or months and the
turnaround of individual messages may take hours, days or even weeks. This
slow pace of interaction brings its own problems, especially when expected
responses do not occur. This paper analyses these problems, focusing on the
triggers which initiate activities and the way processes recover when triggers
are missed or misinterpreted. Furthermore, we are able to consider processes
which cross organisational boundaries. We draw on theoretical analysis, an
exploratory case study of conference organisation and recent application of the
techniques to a student placement office. During the studies, a pattern of
recurrent activities was discovered, the 4Rs (request, receipt, response and
release), which we believe to be generic to this class of collaborative
process. Keywords: Pace, Interruptions, Reminders, Events, Long-term interaction, CSCW,
Cooperative work, Workflow, To-be-done-to lists, Paper documents | |||
| Designing a Real-Time Telepathology Workstation to Mitigate Communication Delays | | BIBAK | 33-52 | |
| David Carr; Catherine Plaisant; Hiroaki Hasegawa | |||
| Dynamic telepathology uses a teleoperated microscope to allow pathologists
to view samples at a remote location. However, time delays introduced by
remote operation have made use of a commercial dynamic telepathology system
difficult and frustrating. This paper describes the iterative redesign of the
user interface. We redesigned the interface, conducted experiments to evaluate
the improvements, and then redesigned the user interface based on the results.
Our work shows that predictive displays and local maps improve user control of the microscope and increase user comfort with the system. It also indicates that some degree of automation is necessary to support the navigation process and increase the overall usefulness of the system. Therefore, we also make recommendations for further automation to support the telepathology process and increase the usefulness of the system. While performed on a specific device using a dedicated communications system, the same problems would be encountered in other environments. For example, Internet-based systems that enable remote control or require browsing of large images will need to compensate for time delays and can benefit from our experience with the telepathology application. Keywords: Iterative design, Predictive displays, Remote control, Supervisory control,
Telepathology, Time delays | |||
| Representing the Impact of Time on Human Error and Systems Failure | | BIBAK | 53-86 | |
| Chris Johnson | |||
| Time plays a central role in our understanding of human 'error' and system
'failure'. Without a detailed knowledge of the flow of events, investigators
cannot hope to arrive at well founded conclusions about the causes of major
accidents. This paper argues that formal and semi-formal notations can be used
to build time-lines that show the ordering of events leading to a failure.
These time-lines help to improve the quality of an accident report by
identifying the temporal inconsistencies that often arise between human factors
and system engineering accounts of the same accident. This, in turn, can help
to ensure that any recommendations for the future design of interactive systems
are based upon coherent accounts of previous failures. Keywords: Safety-critical interfaces, Notations | |||
| Temporal Aspects of Interaction in Shared Virtual Worlds | | BIBAK | 87-105 | |
| David England; Philip Gray | |||
| In this paper we examine the problems of usability and related temporal
issues in shared virtual environments. Shared virtual environments involve
physically distributed users interacting with each other and with distributed
objects via complex highly graphical user interfaces. These factors can result
in interaction which suffers from serious and unpredictable delays in system
response times. Careful interaction design can alleviate the problems
resulting from such delays. We look at several areas of shared virtual world
design, including object interaction, avatars and scene rendering,
investigating ways of dealing with communicating information, preserving world
coherence and providing users with effective real-time interaction. Our medium
of analysis is the Extended User Action Notation (XUAN), a variant of the User
Action Notation that enables us to express explicitly and clearly the temporal
features of our examples. Finally, we discuss the implications of our temporal
analysis for further research and development of shared virtual worlds, and the
implications for the further development and use of XUAN. Keywords: Temporal aspects, Usability, Shared virtual worlds, Virtual reality, Formal
specification, Temporal specification, UAN, XUAN | |||
| Integrating Natural Language Generation and Hypertext to Produce Dynamic Documents | | BIBAK | 109-135 | |
| Robert Dale; Jon Oberlander; Maria Milosavljevic; Alistair Knott | |||
| We discuss a task requiring the coherent presentation of heterogeneous
information about objects recorded in electronic catalogues. We consider the
advantages of combining hypermedia delivery with natural language generation
technology, so as to allow us to view a session with such a system as a
coherent conversation or dialogue. We describe two prototype systems we have
built which make use of these combined techniques, and focus on those aspects
of the systems which attempt to provide coherence. Although the techniques
themselves are not novel, their combination is relatively recent, and promises
to help forge useful tools for accomplishing our specific information retrieval
task. Keywords: Hypermedia, Natural language generation, Information presentation, Discourse
coherence, Adaptive hypertext | |||
| The Attribute Explorer: Information Synthesis via Exploration | | BIBAK | 137-146 | |
| Robert Spence; Lisa Tweedie | |||
| The Attribute Explorer is a visualization tool in which the graphical and
interactive presentation of data supports the human acquisition of insight into
that data. The underlying concept employed is that of interactive linked
histograms. The advantage of the Attribute Explorer derives from its ability
to support both qualitative exploration and quantitative design decisions, as
well as a smooth transition between these two activities. Keywords: Attribute Explorer, Qualitative exploration, Quantitative decision making | |||
| The Effect of Interaction Style and Training Method on End User Learning of Software Packages | | BIBAK | 147-172 | |
| Sid Davis; Susan Wiedenbeck | |||
| This paper reports two studies of software learning by individuals who use
packages as a tool but never become experts. Using assimilation theory, we
studied the effect of three interaction styles (direct manipulation, menu, and
command) and two training methods (instruction and exploration) on the initial
learning of a package and the subsequent learning of functionally equivalent
packages. Results suggest that direct manipulation aids initial learning and
that previous experience is a moderate aid in learning a subsequent package,
but only when the interaction styles are similar. Exploration training does
not appear to aid learners in a short training period. Keywords: Interface style, Exploration-based training, Instruction-based training, End
users | |||
| The HOMER UIMS for Dual User Interface Development: Fusing Visual and Non-Visual Interactions | | BIBAK | 173-209 | |
| Anthony Savidis; Constantine Stephanidis | |||
| Existing systems which enable accessibility to graphical user interfaces
(GUIs) by blind people follow an 'adaptation strategy'; each system adopts its
own hard-coded policy for reproducing visual dialogues in a non-visual form,
without knowledge about the application domain or the particular dialogue
characteristics. It is argued that non-visual user interfaces should be more
than automatically generated adaptations of visual dialogues. Tools are
required to facilitate purposeful non-visual interface construction, allowing
iterative design and implementation. Such tools should cater for the
construction of 'integrated' user interfaces, which are concurrently accessible
by sighted and blind users. Thus, the concept of dual user interfaces is
introduced, arguably as the most appropriate basis to address this important
issue of concurrent accessibility, in order to prevent segregation of blind
people in computer-based working environments. A user interface management
system (UIMS) has been developed, called HOMER, which facilitates the
development of dual user interfaces. HOMER supports the integration of visual
and non-visual toolkits of interaction elements; a non-visual toolkit, called
COMONKIT, has been also implemented for building non-visual user interfaces,
and has been incorporated in HOMER. Keywords: Dual interface, Non-visual interaction, Abstract interaction objects, User
interface specification, User interface management systems | |||
| The Design of Sonically-Enhanced Widgets | | BIBAK | 211-235 | |
| Stephen Brewster | |||
| This paper describes the design of user-interface widgets that include
non-speech sound. Previous research has shown that the addition of sound can
improve the usability of human-computer interfaces. However, there is little
research to show where the best places are to add sound to improve usability.
The approach described here is to integrate sound into widgets, the basic
components of the human-computer interface. An overall structure for the
integration of sound is presented. There are many problems with current
graphical widgets and many of these are difficult to correct by using more
graphics. This paper presents many of the standard graphical widgets and
describes how sound can be added. It describes in detail usability problems
with the widgets and then the non-speech sounds to overcome them. The
non-speech sounds used are earcons. These sonically-enhanced widgets allow
designers who are not sound experts to create interfaces that effectively
improve usability and have coherent and consistent sounds. Keywords: Earcons, Auditory interfaces, Widgets, Non-speech audio, Interface
sonification, Interface toolkits | |||
| Wanted: Psychologically Relevant, Device- and Event-Independent Work Analysis Techniques | | BIBAK | 237-254 | |
| Kim J. Vicente | |||
| This article offers a commentary on Richardson, Ormerod, and Shepherd (in
press) while building on the previous discussion in this journal of the
relative merits of task analysis and systems analysis in human-computer
interface design [1,2,7]. The SGT scheme described by Richardson et al.
represents a valuable contribution to the work analyst's toolkit. However, it
is limited in the extent to which it can identify the information requirements
associated with unanticipated events. The abstraction hierarchy [23] is an
event-independent work domain analysis technique that can be used to overcome
this limitation while still satisfying the criteria of device-independence and
psychological relevance. Future research should integrate the complementary
advantages of SGT and the abstraction hierarchy into a single, unified
framework for work analysis. Keywords: Task analysis; Systems analysis; Human-computer interaction; Cognitive
engineering; Process control | |||
| A Comparison of the Comprehension of Object-Oriented and Procedural Programs by Novice Programmers | | BIBAK | 255-282 | |
| Susan Wiedenbeck; Vennila Ramalingam; Suseela Sarasamma; Cynthia L. Corritore | |||
| This paper reports on two experiments comparing mental representations and
program comprehension by novices in the object-oriented and procedural styles.
The subjects were novice programmers enrolled in a second course in programming
which taught either the object-oriented or the procedural paradigm. The first
experiment compared the mental representations and comprehension of short
programs written in the procedural and object-oriented styles. The second
experiment extended the study to a larger program incorporating more advanced
language features. For the short programs there was no significant difference
between the two groups with respect to the total number of questions answered
correctly, but the object-oriented subjects were superior to the procedural
subjects at answering questions about program function. This suggests that
function information was more readily available in their mental representations
of the programs and supports an argument that the object-oriented notation
highlights function at the level of the individual class. For the long program
a corresponding effect was not found. The comprehension of procedural subjects
was superior to object-oriented subjects on all types of question. The
difficulties experienced by the object-oriented subjects in answering questions
in a larger program suggest that they faced problems in marshaling information
and drawing inferences from it. We suggest that this result may be related to a
longer learning curve for novices of the object-oriented style, as well as to
features of the OO style and the particular OO language notation. Keywords: Object-oriented programming; Empirical studies of programming; Novice
programmers; Learning to program | |||
| A Performance Comparison of Two Handwriting Recognizers | | BIBAK | 283-297 | |
| I. Scott MacKenzie; Larry Chang | |||
| An experiment is described comparing two commercial handwriting recognizers
with discrete hand-printed characters. Each recognizer was tested at two levels
of constraint, one using lowercase letters (which were the only symbols
included in the input text) and the other using both uppercase and lowercase
letters. Two factors -- recognizer and constraint -- with two levels each,
resulted in four test conditions. A total of 32 subjects performed text-entry
tasks for each condition. Recognition accuracy differed significantly among
conditions. Furthermore, the accuracy observed (87%-93%) was below the walk-up
accuracy claimed by the developers of the recognizers. Entry speed was affected
not only by recognition conditions but by users' adaptation to the
idiosyncrasies of the recognizers. In an extensive error analysis, numerous
weaknesses of the recognizers are revealed, in that certain characters are
error prone and are misrecognized in a predictable way. This analysis, and the
procedure for such, is a useful tool for designers of handwriting-recognition
systems. User satisfaction results showed that recognition accuracy greatly
affects the impression of walk-up users. Keywords: Pen-based computing; Text entry; Hand-printing; Mobile computing; Character
recognition; Handwriting recognition | |||
| The Ergonomic Criteria and the ISO/DIS 9241-10 Dialogue Principles: A Pilot Comparison in an Evaluation Task | | BIBAK | 299-322 | |
| J. M. C. Bastien; D. L. Scapin; C. Leulier | |||
| This study compared the relative effectiveness of the Ergonomic Criteria and
the ISO/DIS 9241-10 Dialogue Principles in an evaluation task. Three groups of
participants (Criteria, n=6; ISO, n=5; Control, n=6) conducted an ergonomic
inspection of a musical database application. Participants in the Control group
relied solely on their individual judgement to conduct their evaluation. No
significant correlation was found between the time spent conducting the
evaluation and the number of problems uncovered (Kendall' Tau=0.324; Z
corrected for ties= 1.853; p=0.0638). The median time spent evaluating the
application was 52.5 (Mean rank=3.5), 89 (Mean rank=10.6), and 124min (Mean
rank=13.167), in the Control, ISO, and Criteria groups respectively
(Kruskal-Wallis' H corrected for ties=11.762; p=0.0028). Multiple comparisons
between groups revealed that only the Control and the Criteria groups differed
significantly. The median number of usability problems uncovered by the
participants in the Control, ISO and Criteria groups was 56.5 (Mean rank=6.25),
56 (Mean rank=7), and 85.5 (Mean rank=13.417) respectively (Kruskal-Wallis' H
corrected for ties=7.18; p=0.0276). Again, multiple comparisons between groups
revealed that only the Control and the Criteria groups differed significantly.
The percentages of problems uncovered as a function of the number of evaluation
reports cumulated showed similar trends for both the Control and the ISO
groups. For the Criteria group, the percentage of problems uncovered with
respect to the number of evaluation reports cumulated was higher. To summarise,
participants using the Ergonomic Criteria spent significantly more time
evaluating the application than the participants of the Control group. They
also uncovered significantly more usability problems. However no significant
differences appeared between the Control and the ISO groups as well as between
the ISO and the Criteria groups. Keywords: User interface evaluation; Inspection methods; Ergonomic criteria;
Standards; Dialogue principles; Usability problems; Ergonomic quality | |||
| Managing the Use of Style Guides in an Organisational Setting: Practical Lessons in Ensuring UI Consistency | | BIBAK | 323-351 | |
| Nichole Simpson | |||
| This paper explores the use of Corporate Style Guides as a mechanism for
managing consistency at the user interface. The software design community is
becoming increasingly aware of the value of Style Guides in promoting
consistency and usability in designs. Style Guides form a valuable reference
point and management tool, and can offer particular advantage in cases where
distributed or outsourced design and development groups exist. Style Guides
also fill a gap in the development process, providing advice more specific than
the guidance contained in published standards, and more general than the design
specifications of a single system. They provide opportunities for the
improvement of group design activities and overcoming the limitations of an
individualistic approach. Style Guides can be shown to deliver tangible
financial benefits to organisations through the promotion of consistency of
design. However, it is recognised that the process of managing the use of Style
Guides is not well defined. This paper draws on lessons learned from a range of
projects concerned with providing Style Guides and Style Guide management
processes in commercial and industrial settings. Keywords: Corporate style guide; User-interface design; Cost-benefit analysis;
Consistency of design; Conformancy checking | |||
| Supporting the Group Creation of Formal and Informal Graphics During Business Process Modeling | | BIBAK | 355-373 | |
| Mark Pendergast; Kregg Aytes; James D. Lee | |||
| Since the 1960s, research in systems analysis and design has been performed
along two distinct tracts: the automation of software design, implementation,
and verification; and the elicitation of high level systems requirements.
Computer-aided software engineering, rapid prototyping, and more recently,
visual programming have been the tools developed for the automation of software
development. Enterprise Analysis, in the form of process and information
modeling, has been a primary area of focus for requirements development
research. The application of Electronic Meeting Systems technology to
Enterprise Analysis is a promising technology for the timely elicitation of
requirements from groups of subject matter experts. However, Electronic Meeting
Systems do not explicitly support the development of graphical models -- a
requirement for many process modeling techniques. This paper describes a
research effort to provide support for the creation of graphical business
models by groups. Design decisions were made based on use of the tools by
real-world groups, as well as a result of laboratory studies. One of the most
interesting findings was that users found it particularly efficient to be able
to enter model definitions through a textual interface and view computer
generated graphical views of the model. Keywords: Groupware; Collaborative drawing; IDEF; Computer-supported cooperative work;
Enterprise analysis; Collaborative applications; Electronic meeting systems;
Group support systems | |||
| Virtual Reality: An Overview of User-Related Design Issues | | BIBAK | 375-386 | |
| Stella Mills; Jan Noyes | |||
| Within the last couple of decades, Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged from its
early beginnings in simulators, and is now a realistic option in a number of
applications, the range and number of which are increasing annually. It has
also been heralded as the new future interface for allowing humans to
communicate with computers. Hence, given the continuing developments and rapid
advances in this area, it is timely to produce a Special Issue in Interacting
With Computers focusing on the user issues relating to the successful
employment of this technology. Keywords: Virtual Reality; Virtual environments; Human-computer interaction;
Usability; Applications | |||
| CLIMATE: A Framework for Developing Holistic Requirements Analysis in Virtual Environments | | BIBAK | 387-402 | |
| T. Conkar; J. M. Noyes; C. Kimble | |||
| Personal ([2] C Barnatt, Cyber Business Mindsets for a Wired Age, Wiley, New
York, 1995) computers and networks have transformed communications in the
workplace over the last decade. Tomorrow's society is likely to revolve around
the use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMCs) to eschew the geographical
distance between individuals ([27] N. Negroponte, Being Digital, Hodder and
Stoughton, 1995; [28] D. Norfolk, The virtual enterprise, Information Age
November Issue (1995) 32-39). A new dilemma for designers of this technology
will be discovering ways of humanising systems development and design. This
paper develops a framework called CLIMATE (Community, Language, Interaction,
and Medium in the Analysis of Telepresence Environments) which may ultimately
be used for capturing user and environment requirements. The virtual
environment that forms as a result of this CMC is rich in social nuances, such
as on-line friendships, communities and so on, that sometimes reflect the
elaborate cultures of real life ([37] H. Rheingold, The Virtual Community,
Minerva, 1995). CLIMATE is intended to help in capturing a more holistic
picture of requirements, in terms of the users, task, and environment. The
approach is inductivist, relying on gathering rich data from log transcripts,
participant observation and questionnaire surveys. It is intended that CLIMATE
will provide a step further towards integrating social and technical design
requirements in the application of CMCs. Keywords: Computer-mediated communications; Virtual environment; System design;
Requirements analysis | |||
| Interacting with Virtual Environments: An Evaluation of a Model of Interaction | | BIBAK | 403-426 | |
| Kulwinder Kaur; Neil Maiden; Alistair Sutcliffe | |||
| There is a need for interface design guidance for virtual environments, in
order to avoid common usability problems. To develop such guidance an
understanding of user interaction is required. Theoretical models of
interaction with virtual environments are proposed, which consist of stages of
interaction for task/goal oriented, exploratory and reactive modes of
behaviour. The models have been evaluated through user studies and results show
the models to be reasonably complete in their predictions about modes and
stages of interaction. Particular stages were found to be more predominant than
others. The models were shown to be less accurate about the exact flow of
interaction between stages. Whilst the general organisation of stages in the
models remained the same, stages were often skipped and there was backtracking
to previous stages. Results have been used to refine the theoretical models for
use in informing interface design guidance for virtual environments. Keywords: Virtual environments; Interaction modelling; Usability | |||
| Physicians in Virtual Environments Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction | | BIBAK | 427-452 | |
| Christian Krapichler; Michael Haubner; Andreas Losch; Dietrich Schuhmann; Marcus Seemann; Karl-Hans Englmeier | |||
| Modern tomography technologies like CT or MRI produce high-quality scans of
the human anatomy. While conventional computer-aided image analysis falls back
upon editing tomograms layer by layer, virtual environments offer enhanced
visualization, image analysis and manipulation of the three-dimensional data
sets. In this paper, the application of multimodal, user-oriented
human-computer interaction is presented, facilitating and accelerating work
with the tomographical data of individual patients. Hand gesture recognition is
a major component of the interface, completed by speech understanding and
further units like a 6-DOF mouse or acoustic feedback. Three-dimensional image
segmentation, virtual bronchoscopy and virtual angioscopy are typical examples
that illustrate the benefits of virtual environments for the realm of medicine. Keywords: Virtual reality; Man-machine communication; Human-computer interaction;
Multimodal interface; Medical imaging | |||
| Learning through Virtual Reality: A Preliminary Investigation | | BIBAK | 453-462 | |
| Stella Mills; Maria Madalena T. de Araujo | |||
| Our understanding of learning through the use of Virtual Reality (VR) is
still in its infancy but a small core of work is emerging that is of growing
importance. The literature is utilised to derive three design principles that
are pertinent to VR systems used for learning. These principles form the basis
for the design of a small VR world which was used for teaching a managment
technique to students in Higher Education (HE). Thus, this project naturally
divided into two stages: first, software was developed for Portuguese HE
students to learn the basic concept of apportioning resources subject to
constraints, while Stage 2 comprised a formative experiment to test for
differences in the learning of the technique. The conclusion was that overall
the traditionally taught group faired better, but not statistically
significantly better, than the software based group. Issues of enjoyment and
learning were also raised. More studies are needed before any generalities can
be drawn. Keywords: Virtual Reality; VR Systems Design; Learning through VR | |||
| Usability and Educational Software Design | | BIB | 463-466 | |
| David Squires | |||
| Predicting Quality in Educational Software: Evaluating For Learning, Usability and the Synergy between Them | | BIBAK | 467-483 | |
| David Squires; Jenny Preece | |||
| Teachers need to be able to evaluate predictively educational software so
that they can make decisions about what software to purchase and how to use
software in classrooms. The conventional approach to predictive evaluation is
to use a checklist. We argue that checklists are seriously flawed in principle
because they do not encompass a consideration of learning issues. More
particularly they fail to adopt a socio-constructivist view of learning. We
propose an approach that adapts the idea of usability heuristics by taking
account of a socio-constructivist learning perspective. This leads to a set of
'learning with software' heuristics. A notable feature of these heuristics is
that they attend to the integration of usability and learning issues. Keywords: Educational software evaluation; Usability; Constructivism; Checklists;
Heuristics | |||
| Learning Technology and Usability: A Framework for Understanding Courseware | | BIBAK | 485-497 | |
| J. T. Mayes; C. J. Fowler | |||
| This paper argues that the usability of educational software cannot be
measured in the same terms as other work contexts. This is because learning is
a by-product of understanding rather than an activity which can be supported
directly. Although it is best achieved through the performance of meaningful
tasks, these tasks need to be designed to support different kinds of learning.
We approach the problem through an attempt to derive a framework for
understanding courseware. Conceptual learning is characterized as a cycle,
involving the three stages which we term conceptualization, construction and
dialogue. These are mapped onto primary, secondary and tertiary courseware.
Each kind of courseware is discussed in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and
usability. Keywords: Educational software; Reusable courseware; Vicarious learning; Tertiary
courseware | |||
| Contexts for Evaluating Educational Software | | BIBAK | 499-516 | |
| A. Jones; E. Scanlon; C. Tosunoglu; E. Morris; S. Ross; P. Butcher; J. Greenberg | |||
| The evaluation of educational software is of concern to two particular
academic communities: HCI and educational technology. There is a danger that
usability features are considered at the expense of educational issues (and the
converse of this is of course equally true). This paper considers how the
notion and practice of evaluation in the educational community differs from
that in HCI and also identifies areas of overlap. It then describes how
particular influences and contexts have led one group of evaluators from the
educational community to develop a context, interactions, attitudes and
outcomes (CIAO!) model of evaluation for computer assisted learning (CAL)
evaluation in distance education. The application of this model is illustrated
by case studies from a recent evaluation project and related research. The
paper concludes with a discussion of the issues raised for both communities by
this model for evaluation. Keywords: Educational software evaluation; Contextual evaluation; CIAO! evaluation
framework | |||
| Why Human Error Modeling has Failed to Help Systems Development | | BIBAK | 517-524 | |
| Chris Johnson | |||
| Until the 1980s, human reliability analysis focused upon individual
erroneous actions. More recently, attention has shifted to the managerial and
organizational contexts that create the latent conditions for such failures.
Unfortunately, these developments have had little impact upon many industries.
The problems of technology transfer are less due to commercial neglect than to
the failure of human-factors' research to seriously consider the problems of
systems development. For example, most error-modeling techniques are poorly
documented. In consequence, errors are likely to be made when designers apply
error modeling techniques. There are further ironies. Many of these techniques
depend entirely upon the skill and intuition of human factors' experts. The
lack of professional accreditation procedures prevents companies from assessing
the quality both of those experts and their advice. Until these practical
problems are addressed, increasingly esoteric models of human and
organizational failure will be of little practical benefit. Over the last
5years, a number of researchers have become increasingly concerned to support
technology transfer between human error modeling and constructive systems
development [1]. As a result, workshops were staged in Glasgow (1997), Seattle
(1998) and Liege (1999). This special edition presents a collection of papers
from these meetings. Keywords: Human error; System failure; Management weakness | |||
| A Case Study of a Human Error in a Dynamic Environment | | BIBAK | 525-543 | |
| Marie-odile Bes | |||
| This joint project between C.E.N.A., L.A.M.I.H. and Percotec consisted in
evaluating various implementations of a principle of distribution of workload,
called dynamic allocation of tasks, between air traffic controllers and an
expert-system. Our work focuses on the analysis of a human error intervening
during these simulations. We present this case study in order to highlight the
specific difficulties encountered by operators in managing the temporal aspects
of a dynamic environment, such as they were unveiled in the work of De Keyser
[6] and relate it to Reason's [13] contribution exposed in his Generic Error
Modelling System. In conclusion we emphasise some parts of this model that
should be refined and enriched in order to encompass the temporal
characteristics of dynamic environments. Keywords: : Human Error; Dynamic environment; Verbal protocol analysis; Human
reliability; Human-machine system; Air Traffic Control | |||
| Automatic Reasoning and Help about Human Errors in Using an Operating System | | BIBAK | 545-573 | |
| Maria Virvou | |||
| Human errors occur frequently in the interaction of a user with an operating
system. However, current user interfaces of operating systems lack some
reasoning ability about user's intentions and beliefs. Intelligent Help Systems
(IHS) can provide additional reasoning and help. This paper presents a
discussion of the features of IHSs and a review of a few IHSs for users of
operating systems. Then it describes the research and results of employing a
cognitive theory of Human Plausible Reasoning Theory in error diagnosis for
users interacting with an operating system. This theory has formalized the
reasoning based on similarities, generalizations and specializations that
people use to make plausible guesses about questions. Here we exploit the fact
that plausible guesses can be incorrect and thus turned into human errors. The
error diagnosis is performed by the user modelling component of an IHS, called
RESCUER. Keywords: User-modelling; Error diagnosis; Human Plausible Reasoning; User interfaces;
Intelligent Help Systems | |||
| Toward a Model of Unreliability to Study Error Prevention Supports | | BIBAK | 575-595 | |
| F. Vanderhaegen | |||
| The paper reviews aspects of system development. It focuses on system
specification which aims at defining off-line error prevention supports such as
training programme, ergonomic improvement or rules modification and at defining
on-line error prevention supports such as assistance tools, automated tools or
human-machine interfaces. A model of unreliability is proposed to describe both
human and machine dysfunctions and to guide the specification of error
prevention supports. One of its uses is illustrated by an application in air
traffic control. The project is an experimental feasibility study which aims at
assessing the impact of automation on human behaviour. This study consists of
sharing tasks dynamically between a human air traffic controller and a computer
based tool. Results are analysed in the light of workload, safety and
unreliability. Keywords: Air traffic control; Error prevention support; Human reliability; Model of
unreliability; Safety analysis; System specification | |||
| A Study of Incidents Involving Programmable Electronic Safety-Related systems | | BIBAK | 597-609 | |
| C. Chambers; P. R. Croll; M. Bowell | |||
| This paper presents a study of 21 incidents in small manufacturing
enterprises involving electrical/electronic/programmable electronic (E/E/PE)
safety-related systems, originally investigated by the Health and Safety
Laboratory (HSL). The aim of this study is to highlight the causes of these
incidents and suggest common solutions to those causes. A fault schema suitable
for the classification of incidents of this nature is proposed. For each
incident, identified faults are labelled according to the fault schema and are
also denoted as primary, secondary or incidental. Examples of particular causes
are given. The prominent faults are further discussed with the goal of
highlighting the categories of faults most prominent in E/E/PE safety-related
systems. This pinpoints the areas where future work on incident prevention
should focus. Finally, mitigation techniques which could form part of an E/E/PE
safety-related system development methodology suitable for small manufacturing
enterprises are suggested. Keywords: Safety-related systems; Computer control systems; Fault schema; Small
manufacturing enterprises; Accident analysis; Health and safety | |||
| A Classification and Analysis of Erroneous Actions in Computer Supported Co-Operative Work Environment | | BIBAK | 611-622 | |
| David Trepess; Tony Stockman | |||
| In the past, CSCW systems have been studied with little consideration of the
social context in which they will be used (see Ref. [1]). A framework of social
context has been proposed [1] that takes the social aspects of a collaborating
community to be a vital consideration in the design of CSCW systems. This paper
aims to extend Mantovani's framework to deal with the issues of human error.
The social context plays a large part in the cause, detection, level of
consequence and recovery of erroneous actions in CSCW. This paper considers how
current classification of human errors might be adapted for application in
CSCW. A framework has been proposed which can be used in the analysis of the
social context of CSCW. Keywords: Computer supported co-operative work; Framework; Human error; Human error
classifications; Social context | |||
| Work Process Analysis: A Necessary Step in the Development of Decision Support Systems. An Aviation Safety Case Study | | BIBAK | 623-643 | |
| H. W. Allen; M. L. Abate | |||
| This paper demonstrates the importance of work process modeling and
supporting data analysis in system development. To illustrate the process of
modeling for system development, we describe how traditional task analysis was
used in our effort to understand the work processes associated with the Federal
Aviation Administration's (FAA's) airworthiness and operations surveillance
inspection activities. Further, the integration of risk assessment techniques
resulted in a validated task analysis providing a review of the as-is state of
surveillance activities. It is also shown how the as-is surveillance work
processes that resulted from these studies were used as the foundation for a
re-engineered (re-eng) surveillance work process model. We conclude by
describing a follow-on activity, the development of a safety critical work
process model, which reflects an integration of the as-is and re-engineered
work process descriptions, the human factors literature, inspection data
analysis, federal aviation regulations and identified areas of safety
criticality. Keywords: Work process analysis; Decision support systems; Aviation safety; Human
computer interface design; Task analysis; System design | |||
| A Co-Operative Scenario Based Approach to Acquisition and Validation of System Requirements: How Exceptions Can Help! | | BIBAK | 645-664 | |
| Neil Maiden; Shailey Minocha; Alistair Sutcliffe; Darrel Manuel; Michele Ryan | |||
| Scenarios, in most situations, are descriptions of required interactions
between a desired system and its environment, which detail normative system
behaviour. Our studies of current scenario use in requirements engineering have
revealed that there is considerable interest in the use of scenarios for
acquisition, elaboration and validation of system requirements. However,
scenarios have seldom been used to study inappropriate or exceptional system
behaviour. To account for non-normative or undesired system behaviour, it is
vital to predict ('what can go wrong') and explore the existence or occurrence
of 'exceptions' in a scenario when the system might be prevented from
delivering the required service. Identification of exceptions and inclusion of
additional requirements to prevent their occurrence or mitigate their effects
yield robust and fault-tolerant design solutions.
In this article, we present a prototype software tool called CREWS-SAVRE for systematic scenario generation and use. We describe the innovative features of the tool and demonstrate them with an example of tool's use. Further, we have identified three kinds of exceptions: generic, permutation and problem exceptions, and have derived complex taxonomies of problem exceptions. We have populated SAVRE with the taxonomies of generic, permutation and problem exceptions. The exceptions can be chosen by the requirements engineer to include them in the generated scenarios to explore the correctness and completeness of requirements. In addition, the taxonomies of problem exceptions can also serve as checklists and help a requirements engineer to predict non-normative system behaviour in a scenario. Keywords: Socio-technical system; Co-operative requirements engineering;
Scenario-based requirements engineering; Scenario generation; Exceptions | |||
| Human Factors in Requirements Engineering: A Survey of Human Sciences Literature Relevant to the Improvement of Dependable Systems Development Processes | | BIBAK | 665-698 | |
| Stephen Viller; John Bowers; Tom Rodden | |||
| Requirements engineering (RE) is an inherently social process, involving the
contribution of individuals working in an organizational context. Further,
failures in the RE process will potentially lead to systematic failures in the
products that are produced as a result. Consequently, the RE process for
dependable systems development should itself be considered as a dependable
process, and therefore subject to greater scrutiny for vulnerabilities to
error. Research on human error has typically focused on the work of individual
actors from a cognitive perspective. This paper presents a survey which
broadens the view on what contributes to human error by also examining work
from the social and organizational literature. This review was conducted to
inform efforts to improve the systems development process for dependable
systems, and in particular their requirements engineering process. Keywords: Human error; Group performance; Process losses; Organizational failure;
Process improvement; Dependable systems development | |||
| Human Error and Information Systems Failure: The Case of the London Ambulance Service Computer-Aided Despatch System Project | | BIBAK | 699-720 | |
| Paul Beynon-Davies | |||
| Human error and systems failure have been two constructs that have become
linked in many contexts. In this paper we particularly focus on the issue of
failure in relation to that group of software systems known as information
systems. We first review the extant theoretical and empirical work on this
topic. Then we discuss one particular well-known case -- that of the London
ambulance service computer-aided despatch system (LASCAD) project -- and use it
as a particularly cogent example of the features of information systems
failure. We maintain that the tendency to analyse information systems failure
solely from a technological standpoint is limiting, that the nature of
information systems failure is multi-faceted, and hence cannot be adequately
understood purely in terms of the immediate problems of systems construction.
Our purpose is also to use the generic material on IS failure and the specific
details of this particular case study to critique the issues of safety,
criticality, human error and risk in relation to systems not currently well
considered in relation to these areas. Keywords: Human error; Information systems failure; Risk; Safety critical systems | |||