From the Publisher:
Written by the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia, this book provides an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. Special features: emphasizes cost-effective methods that will help developers improve their user interfaces immediately, shows you how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects, provides step-by-step information about which methods to use at various stages during the development life cycle, and offers information on the unique issues relating to informational usability. You do not need to have previous knowledge of usability to implement the methods provided, yet all of the latest research is covered.

Usability Engineering

New technology is flexible in the sense that it provides practitioners with a large number of functions and options for carrying out a given task under different circumstances. However, this flexib...

How in the world did we ever get into that mode? Mode error and awareness in supervisory control

At first glance it seems absurd that busy people doing important jobs should want their computers to interrupt them. Interruptions are disruptive and people need to concentrate to make good decisions. However, successful job performance also frequently depends on people's abilities to (a) constantly monitor their dynamically changing information environments, (b) collaborate and communicate with other people in the system, and (c) supervise background autonomous services. These critical abilities can require people to simultaneously query a large set of information sources, continuously monitor for important events, and respond to and communicate with other human operators. Automated monitoring and alerting systems minimize the need to constantly monitor, but they induce alerts that may interrupt other activities. Such interrupting technologies are already widespread and include concurrent multitasking; mixed-initiative interaction; support for delegation and supervisory control of automation, including intelligent agents; and other distributed, background services and technologies that increase human-human communication.

People do not perform sustained, simultaneous, multichannel sampling well; however, they have great capacity to manage concurrent activities when given specific kinds of interface support. Literature from many domains shows deleterious consequences of human performance in interrupt-laden situations when interfaces do not support this aspect of the task environment. This article identifies why human interruption is an important human-computer interaction problem, and why it will continue to grow in ubiquity and importance. We provide examples of this problem in real-world systems, and we review theoretical tools for understanding human interruption. Based on interdisciplinary scientific results, we suggest potential approaches to user-interface design to help people effectively manage interruptions.

https://www.interruptions.net/literature/McFarlane-HCI02_1.pdf

The scope and importance of human interruption in human-computer interaction design

This chapter examines issues surrounding human performance at the sharp end, including those described as errors and those considered expert. It provides an introduction to the complexity of system failures and the term human error. Studies of incidents in medicine and other fields attribute most bad outcomes to a category of human performance labeled human error. For practitioners at the sharp end of the system, there are three classes of cognitive factors that govern how people form intentions to act: Knowledge factors—factors related to the knowledge that can be drawn on when solving problems in context. Attentional dynamics—factors that govern the control of attention and the management of mental workload as situations evolve and change over time. Strategic factors—the trade-offs between goals that conflict, especially when the practitioners must act under uncertainty, risk, and the pressure of limited resources.

Operating at the Sharp End: The Complexity of Human Error

Technological developments have made it possible to automate more and more functions on the commercial aviation flight deck and in other dynamic high-consequence domains. This increase in the degrees of freedom in design has shifted questions away from narrow technological feasibility. Many concerned groups, from designers and operators to regulators and researchers, have begun to ask questions about how we should use the possibilities afforded by technology skillfully to support and expand human performance. In this article, we report on an experimental study that addressed these questions by examining pilot interaction with the current generation of flight deck automation. Previous results on pilot-automation interaction derived from pilot surveys, incident reports, and training observations have produced a corpus of features and contexts in which human-machine coordination is likely to break down (e.g., automation surprises). We used these data to design a simulated flight scenario that contained a variety of probes designed to reveal pilots' mental model of one major component of flight deck automation: the Flight Management System (FMS). The events within the scenario were also designed to probe pilots' ability to apply their knowledge and understanding in specific flight contexts and to examine their ability to track the status and behavior of the automated system (mode awareness). Although pilots were able to 'make the system work' in standard situations, the results reveal a variety of latent problems in pilot-FMS interaction that can affect pilot performance in nonnormal time critical situations.

Pilot Interaction With Cockpit Automation II: An Experimental Study of Pilots’ Model and Awareness of the Flight Management System

The Applied Cognitive Work Analysis methodology has been specifically tailored to be the Cognitive Task Design portion of a high quality, affordable systems engineering process. The methodology is presented in its entirety from its knowledge elicitation beginnings to handoff to the software development team. Each step in the methodology is presented in ‘how to’ format, including design review and quality checkpoints that bring Cognitive Task Design to the same level of maturity as the best software engineering implementation practices. A very small-

Applied Cognitive Work Analysis: A Pragmatic Methodology for Designing Revolutionary Cognitive Affordances

Although human engineering features are widely appreciated as a potential cause of operating room incidents, evaluating the human engineering features of devices is not widely understood. Standards, guidelines, laboratory and field testing, and engineering discipline are all proposed methods for improving the human engineering of devices. New microprocessor technology offers designers great flexibility in the design of devices, but this flexibility is often coupled with complexity and more elaborate user interaction. Guidelines and standards usually do not capture these features of new equipment, in part because technology improvements occur faster than meaningful guidelines can be developed. Professional human engineering of new devices relies on a broad, user-centered approach to design and evaluation. Used in the framework of current knowledge about human operator performance, these techniques offer guidance to new equipment designers and to purchasers and users of these devices.

Evaluating the human engineering of microprocessor-controlled operating room devices.

Within ARDA's GI2Vis program, we developed a unique framework for the definition of decision support requirements for intelligence analysis tools. This framework, based on a first-of-a-kind integration of a model of inferential analysis and principles for designing effective human-computer teams from Cognitive Systems Engineering, has defined the essential support functions to be provided to the intelligence analyst(s). This model has proven to be extremely useful in assessing the support provided by a large set of visualization tools. This assessment has identified clusters of support functions that are addressed by many tools as well as key missing support functions. In this way, the Support Function Model has been used to identify gaps in the support function coverage of existing tools. This can serve as a valuable focusing mechanism for future design and development efforts. In addition, we believe this would be a useful mechanism to enhance cross-discussions among research teams involved in Cognitive Task Analysis efforts within the Intelligence Community. Having others integrate their analytic results with this framework would provide the mechanism for expansion of this model to become a more robust tool and have an even greater impact on the Intelligence Community.

Finding Decision Support Requirements for Effective Intelligence Analysis Tools

Initial results are reported from a multi-year, interdisciplinary effort to provide guidance and assistance for designers of intelligent systems and their user interfaces The objective is to achieve more effective human-computer interaction (HCI) for systems with real time fault management capabilities Intelligent fault management systems within the NASA were evaluated for insight into the design of systems with complex HCI Preliminary results include: (1) a description of real time fault management in aerospace domains; (2) recommendations and examples for improving intelligent systems design and user interface design; (3) identification of issues requiring further research; and (4) recommendations for a development methodology integrating HCI design into intelligent system design

Scott S. Potter

Papers

Applied Cognitive Work Analysis: A Pragmatic Methodology for Designing Revolutionary Cognitive Affordances

Evaluating the human engineering of microprocessor-controlled operating room devices.

Finding Decision Support Requirements for Effective Intelligence Analysis Tools

Making intelligent systems team players: Case studies and design issues. Volume 1: Human-computer interaction design

Case Studies: Applied Cognitive Work Analysis in the Design of Innovative Decision Support