Engineering psychology: Contribution to system safety

There has been a growing interest in the area of engineering psychology. This article considers some of the major accidents which have occurred in recent years, and the contribution which engineering psychology makes to designing systems and enhancing safety. Accidents are usually multi-causal, and the resident pathogens in the design and operation of human-machine systems can lead to devastating consequences not only for the workers themselves but also for people in the surrounding communities. Specifically, in each of the accidents discussed, operators were unaware of the seriousness of the system malfunctions because warning displays were poorly designed or located, and operators had not been sufficiently trained in dealing with these emergency situations. Since the 1940s machines and equipment have become more complex in nearly every industry. This, coupled with the continuing need to produce effective and safe systems, has resulted in psychology professionals being called to assist in designing even more efficient operating systems. In earlier times, a worker who made a mistake might spoil a piece of work or waste some time. Today, however, a worker's erroneous action can lead to dire consequences

The ergonomics of command and control

Since its inception, just after the Second World War, ergonomics research has paid special attention to the issues surrounding human control of systems. Command and Control environments continue to represent a challenging domain for Ergonomics research. We take a broad view of Command and Control research, to include C2 (Command and Control), C3 (Command, Control and Communication), and C4 (Command, Control, Communication and Computers) as well as human supervisory control paradigms. This special issue of ERGONOMICS aims to present state-of-the-art research into models of team performance, evaluation of novel interaction technologies, case studies, methodologies and theoretical review papers. We are pleased to present papers that detail research on these topics in domains as diverse as the emergency services (e.g., police, fire, and ambulance), civilian applications (e.g., air traffic control, rail networks, and nuclear power) and military applications (e.g., land, sea and air) of command and control. While the domains of application are very diverse, many of the challenges they face share interesting similarities

Automotive automation: Investigating the impact on drivers' mental workload

Recent advances in technology have meant that an increasing number of vehicle driving tasks are becoming automated. Such automation poses new problems for the ergonomist. Of particular concern in this paper are the twofold effects of automation on mental workload - novel technologies could increase attentional demand and workload, alternatively one could argue that fewer driving tasks will lead to the problem of reduced attentional demand and driver underload. A brief review of previous research is presented, followed by an overview of current research taking place in the Southampton Driving Simulator. Early results suggest that automation does reduce workload, and that underload is indeed a problem, with a significant proportion of drivers unable to effectively reclaim control of the vehicle in an automation failure scenario. Ultimately, this research and a subsequent program of studies will be interpreted within the framework of a recently proposed theory of action, with a view to maximizing both theoretical and applied benefits of this domain

Comparing verbal media for alarm handling: Speech versus textual displays

The rise of computers in command and control domains has meant that control operations can be performed via desk-based visual display terminals. This trend has also produced the potential to display information to operators in a variety of formats. Of particular interest has been the use of text-based displays for alarm presentation. There are possible limitations to the use of text for alarm presentation, not least of which is the need for a dedicated alarms display screen (or, at least, a display page). Given the capability of computers to synthesize speech, it is possible that speech-based alarms could generate the same information as text-based displays without the need for dedicated screen space. In this paper an experimental comparison of speech-based and text-based displays for presentation of alarms is reported. The findings show that speech leads to longer response times than text displays, but that it has minimal effect on the efficacy of fault handling. The results are discussed within the alarm initiated activities framework and implications for alarm system design are outlined

Behavioural compensation by drivers of a simulator when using a vision enhancement system

Technological progress is suggesting dramatic changes to the tasks of the driver, with the general aim of making driving environment safer. Before any of these technologies are implemented, empirical research is required to establish if these devices do, in fact, bring about the anticipated improvements. Initially, at least, simulated driving environments offer a means of conducting this research. The study reported here concentrates on the application of a vision enhancement (VE) system within the risk homeostasis paradigm. It was anticipated, in line with risk homeostasis theory, that drivers would compensate for the reduction in risk by increasing speed. The results support the hypothesis although, after a simulated failure of the VE system, drivers did reduce their speed due to reduced confidence in the reliability of the system

New graphical and text-based notations for representing task decomposition hierarchies: towards improving the usability of an Ergonomics method

The representation of task decompositions, in the form of sub-goal hierarchies and their related sequencing triggering and exit conditions, lies at the heart of hierarchical task analysis (HTA) and related techniques. Analysis of the conventional graphical and text-based notations for these representations, using the principles of cognitive load theory, identifies a number of features that may give rise to difficulties when reading and constructing HTA representations. A revised graphical notation is presented, derived from similar notations that are used in the software engineering and human factors domains. An equivalent text-based notation is also presented to facilitate the representation of the task decomposition tabular format, where additional details of the task can be captured. It is suggested that the use of these revised notations could improve usability when constructing and interpreting graphical and tabular representations of hierarchical task decompositions

Task analysis for error identification: Theory, method and validation

This paper presents the underlying theory of Task Analysis for Error Identification. The aim is to illustrate the development of a method that has been proposed for the evaluation of prototypical designs from the perspective of predicting human error. The paper presents the method applied to representative examples. The methodology is considered in terms of the various validation studies that have been conducted, and is discussed in the light of a specific case study

Learning the Designer's Preferences to Drive Evolution

This paper presents the Designer Preference Model, a data-driven solution that pursues to learn from user generated data in a Quality-Diversity Mixed-Initiative Co-Creativity (QD MI-CC) tool, with the aims of modelling the user's design style to better assess the tool's procedurally generated content with respect to that user's preferences. Through this approach, we aim for increasing the user's agency over the generated content in a way that neither stalls the user-tool reciprocal stimuli loop nor fatigues the user with periodical suggestion handpicking. We describe the details of this novel solution, as well as its implementation in the MI-CC tool the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer. We present and discuss our findings out of the initial tests carried out, spotting the open challenges for this combined line of research that integrates MI-CC with Procedural Content Generation through Machine Learning.Comment: 16 pages, Accepted and to appear in proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on the Applications of Evolutionary and bio-inspired Computation, EvoApplications 202