Human Factors Community Research Articles

The improvement of human-centred processes—facing the challenge and reaping the benefit of ISO 13407

Human-centred design processes for interactive systems are defined in ISO 13407 and the associated ISO TR 18529. The publication of these standards represents a maturing of the discipline of user-centred design. The systems development community see that (at last) Human Factors has processes which can be managed and integrated with existing project processes. This internationally agreed set of human-centred design processes provides a definition of the capability that an organization must possess in order to implement user-centred design effectively. It can also be used to assess the extent to which a particular development project employs user-centred design. As such, it presents a challenge to the Human Factors community, and indeed a definition of good practice may even be regarded by some as an unwelcome constraint. This paper presents the background to the process-level definition of user-centred design and describes how it relates to current practice. The challenges, benefits and use of a defined human-centred design process are presented. The implications for Human Factors and other disciplines are discussed. In Appendices A–D, the process terminology and the contents of ISO 13407 and ISO TR 18529 are described in more detail, and three examples are given (in Appendix D) of using this process improvement approach to improve the actual design methods in three organizations.

Journey's End: Will Vehicle Automation Make Skilled Drivers Redundant?

Recent advances in technology have meant that an increasing number of vehicle driving tasks are becoming automated. Such automation poses new problems for the human factors specialist, with particular concern about the effects of automation on driving performance. A body of research is building up which suggests that drivers cannot recover from automation failure, yet they can cope with a similarly critical scenario in manual driving. The current paper investigates whether recovery from automation failure is affected by level of driver skill. Learner drivers were compared to expert drivers under two levels of automation, with a failure of longitudinal control in each condition. Clear differences in response patterns were found, with more experts and fewer learners responding to the failure under high levels of automation. It is concluded that the issue of skill with automation is one which requires more attention than is currently forthcoming from the human factors community.

Designing for Medical Work Domains: Challenges, Directions, Opportunities

This purpose of this panel is to debate the challenges, directions, and opportunities for design in medical work domains. One of the ultimate goals is to have the Human Factors community establish a leadership position in medical design practice. The panelists will discuss various perspectives and issues related to problem identification, data collection, analysis, design, and implementation. These views set the stage for creating recommendations that can be implemented and have real impact.

Evaluation of Human Factors Design Guidelines for Traveler Information Systems

Within the human factors community, there is a growing concern regarding the nature and utility of human factors handbooks and guidelines materials. For example, it is well established that human factors guidelines following traditional formats for presenting information are not perceived as being useful, and are often ignored by designers. This paper describes the development and evaluation of human factors design guidelines for Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) and Commercial Vehicle Operations (CVO). A draft version of the guidelines was reviewed and evaluated by 32 experts in the field. The reviewers were asked to provide detailed comments on the guidelines and to complete a set of rating scales that addressed both general and specific features of the guidelines. Overall, the draft design guidelines were perceived by the ATIS design/research community as being clear, relevant, and easy-to-use. Importantly, they were seen as representing an improvement over existing human factors reference sources.

Issues and Concerns in the Design of Cockpit Displays of Traffic Information

The format and utility of cockpit displays of traffic information (CDTIs) are an important research and development topic within the aviation human factors community. The paper examines some of the more advance surveillance technologies that increase the amount and fidelity of information available to the cockpit.

Design Guidelines for Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS): The User Requirements Analysis

Past research has established that human factors guidelines following traditional formats for presenting information are not useful and are often ignored by designers. Within the human factors community, there is considerable uncertainty and concern regarding the nature and utility of human factors handbooks and guidelines materials. Indeed, many existing human factors reference materials have been criticized by designers for being “too wordy”, “too general,” and “too hard to understand.” The development of clear, relevant, and useful human factors guidelines requires a judicious mix of science and art to overcome such criticisms. This paper describes an on going effort to develop clear, relevant, and easy-to-use guidelines for the design of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) and Commercial Vehicle Operations (CVO). It focuses on the methods and results of a user requirements analysis conducted to identify the appropriate content, organization, and format of the ATIS/CVO guidelines.

Teaching Cognitive Systems Engineering

Our motivation for this paper is to stimulate discussions within the human factors community about teaching Cognitive Engineering at the undergraduate level. For the last fourteen years, the Cognitive Systems Engineering Laboratory at the Ohio State University has offered an undergraduate course in Cognitive Engineering (multiple offerings per year to Industrial Engineering, Industrial Design, Computer Science and Psychology students). In this paper, we will draw from our teaching experiences and describe our framework for teaching Cognitive Engineering.

Situation Awareness: Proceed with Caution

Situation awareness (SA) is a relatively new concept that has captured the imagination of the human factors community. This new concept is considered in the light of Benton J. Underwood's discussion about psychological concepts. In particular the distinction between SA as a phenomenon description (Level 2 concept) and SA as a causal agent (Level 3 concept) is discussed. The argument that SA is valuable as a phenomenon description draws attention to the intimate interactions between human and environment in determining meaning (or what matters) and reflects an increased appreciation for the intimate coupling between processing stages (e.g., perception, decision, and action) within closed-loop systems. However, I caution against considering SA as a causal agent. When SA is considered to be an object within the cognitive agent, there is a danger of circular reasoning in which SA is presented as the cause of itself. As a causal explanation, SA is a simple, easy-to-understand wrong answer that, in the end, will be an obstacle to research. As a phenomenon description, SA invites further research to discover causal relationships between the design of human-machine systems and the resulting performance.

Handheld Computer Terminals: Starting off Right the First Time

Advances in miniaturization and wireless communications are providing the computer industry with the impetus to design handheld, portable computer terminals. Until enough research and experience evolves from handheld terminals to build a literature on design factors and to develop design guidelines and standards that would provide starting points for product design, the human factors community must rely on its user-centered design approach of designing, prototyping, and testing to ensure a safe and usable form factor for such terminals. The methodology that was used in establishing the design criteria for such a terminal included literature research, focus groups with potential users, contextual field research, expert testimony, and primary laboratory research, including a grasp analysis and screen viewability, data entry, signature capture, and holsterability testing. The user-centered design process described here provided the information required to establish the basic design criteria that would assure user safety and task efficiency. It also revealed informational needs for the human factors community involved in the development of handheld computer terminals.

Human Factors Issues for Resolving Adverse Effects of Human Work Underload and Workload Transitions in Advanced Transportation Systems

A workshop was conducted in which the specific purpose was to build on earlier work by the National Research Council, Federal Government agencies, and the larger human factors community to: (1) clarify human factors issues pertaining to degraded performance in advanced transportation systems due to human work underload and workload transition; and (2) develop strategies for resolving these issues. The workshop affirmed that: (1) work underload and workload transition are issues that will have to be addressed by designers of human-automation operating configurations, if cost, performance, safety, and user acceptability are to be optimized, (2) human function allocation models, standards, and guidelines which go beyond simple capability approaches will be needed to preclude or seriously diminish the work underload and workload transition problems, and (3) the issues identified during the workshop, need resolution if these models, standards, and guidelines are to be achieved.

Making Human Factors Usable

Over the years, Human Factors as a discipline has matured, and evolved. This panel brings together a variety of participants who represent various aspects of the Human Factors community. It is the position of the participants that boundaries still exist between Human Factors professionals and the “users” they profess to assist. These boundaries take a variety of forms, including organizational, philosophical, and linguistic (i.e., the jargon of the Human Factors profession, and the jargon of their “users”). We believe that bridges must be built to span these boundaries, bringing together the Human Factors community and their customers-in effect, making Human Factors usable.

Human Factors Research Recommendations for the Development of Design Guidelines for Advanced Traveler Information Systems

This paper describes the outcome of a comprehensive literature review specifically conducted to assess research relevant to the design of advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) for automotive and commercial vehicle use. The goal of the literature review was to identify existing human factors guidelines applicable to the design of ATIS and gaps in the research precluding the development of comprehensive human factors guidelines for ATIS applications. A summary of ATIS research findings and research gaps is presented. Through presentation of both research findings and research gaps, it is hoped that interest will be sparked and focus will be provided for researchers in this growing application of human factors. Given the criticality of ATIS applications (both in terms of driver safety and public acceptance) and the visibility that will be provided to the human factors community from participation in ATIS design, human factors research leading to comprehensive and usable guidelines is extremely important.

A headsup on GUI styleguides

This article reports on a Special Interest Group meeting at CHI'92 to discuss issues associated with the development, deployment and use of design guidelines for Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). We discovered that styleguide practitioners (those who are responsible for developing commercial or inhouse guidelines) are desperately in need of moral support, advice on how to construct styleguides, and access to a sound, scientific base of HCI information that can be used to help make design decisions in the real world. The immediate challenges facing the Human Factors community are the need for solid and timely research to support guidelines, better transfer of research results to the real world, and the evolution of styleguide development into a systematic methodology that produces good guidelines and, therefore, good user interfaces.

Virtual Reality and Human Factors

The terms “Virtual Reality”, “Artificial Reality”, and “Cyberspace” have been prevalent in the popular press recently. There has also been considerable professional interest. (See Table 1 of recent conferences). This field is an outgrowth of three factors: 1) increases in available technologies of display, storage, and CPU along with new interface devices. 2) increases in the awareness of the importance of the “user interface” and 3) an increase in the awareness of the need for better means of collaboration. While “Virtual Reality” is arguably not completely new, it is only in the last few years that these technological and social trends mentioned above have resulted in the growth of “Virtual Reality” as a field. We argue that “Virtual Reality” is an important phenomenon for the human factors community in at least three distinct ways. First, like other new technologies, Virtual Reality requires human factors research to reach its full potential. Second, Virtual Reality offers the human factors professional an important new tool of investigation. Third, as a tool of communication and collaboration, virtual reality may serve as a medium for collaborative design and/or a means for communicating the results of human factors issues.

Designing Usable Documentation: New Directions for Human Factors

The Human Factors community has virtually ignored one of the most important components of the extended user interface, user documentation. Last year at the 34th Annual Meeting in Orlando there was only one paper on either the design or use of documentation. By comparison, there were approximately a hundred papers related to screen design for video display terminals. The same disparity shows up in the Human Factors Journal. Last year there were no papers on documentation and eleven on accessing information from video display terminals. This lack of research in the human factors of documentation is surprising for several reasons: First, documentation is ubiquitous and it is big business. Just about every software package and every piece of hardware comes with its own manual today. Second, the importance of documentation to the usability of a product is not a secret. Alphonse Chapanis, in his presidential address delivered at the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Human Factors Society, told the audience “A very large and important area of human factors engineering [has been] almost entirely neglected. This area consists of the language and the words that are attached to the tools, machines, systems, and operations with which we are concerned.” Third, there is no shortage of interesting applied research questions in this area. To name a few: — When and why do users turn to a manual? — Does format affect perceived usability? How? — How do people access information in a document? How can that access be made easier? — How do technical writers create technical instructions? — How can documentation be better integrated with online help and error support systems? Although all the participants on the panel have been actively studying the use of documentation, the focus of the panel will not be a recounting of past research. Rather the panelists will offer us direction, based on their extensive experience, for the next decade and beyond. Where are we going? What do we need to know so that we can build a science of documentation? Why have so many human factors practitioners shied away from documentation? How can we make significant improvements to the usability of documents? What form will the documentation of the year 2000 take, and how can human factors contribute to its usability?

A New Program for the Remote Training of Human Factors Professionals

The objective of this paper is to describe a new Human Factors Master's degree program available remotely through the University of Idaho's Video Outreach program. For coursework within the program, normal classroom lectures are videotaped in a dedicated facility and produced by a video production engineer. Students can then view the lectures in one of several video formats (including VHS) in any location asynchonously as their schedules allow. This approach makes it possible for students to receive the same information as on-campus students while maintaining full time employment and/or a remote residence. As of this writing, five courses have been videotaped and a sixth is in progress. Over 60 students have taken video courses to date. Methodologies for providing high-quality video information, the need of such a program in the human factors community, data on student performance within the courses, and students reactions and evaluations are discussed.

The Incidence of Disabilities in the United States

Data from the Census Bureau and other sources are reviewed, reconciled, and extrapolated to 1990 to provide a consistent view of the incidence of disabilities in the United States. Four major categories of disabilities are considered: sensory, motor, cognitive, and illiteracy. About a third of the population is affected to some extent by handicaps of these types. Severe impairments from sensory, motor, and cognitive disabilities affect about 15% of the population; severely limited literacy affects another 7%. With the number of disabled people so large and the human and economic impact so great, considerable national attention has been focused on the problem of increasing employment of the disabled. The human factors community can and should make a major contribution to this effort.

Human reliability analysis—why not turn to the human factors community?

In response to the Dougherty thesis that contemporary human reliability analysis (HRA) methods are inadequate, this paper proposes that credible assessments of these HRA methods adequacy can be obtained only by means of their full exploitation by human factors specialists as part of the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) process. The paper traces the history of human factors in PRA. It concludes that regarding PRA, only peripheral attention has been given to human factors; further that there has been almost a total absence of human factors specialists involved in the PRA process. The paper introduces and discusses a recent US Nuclear Regulatory Commission research initiative on a task analysis-linked evaluation technique (TALENT) concept for integrating human factors expertise into the PRA process, and fully exploiting state-of-knowledge HRA methods and data. The paper concludes that by means of TALENT implementation: (1) more credible assessments of HRA methods adequacy can be made, and (2) more realistic estimates of the overall impact of human error on complex high reliability systems' reliability and risk can be achieved.

Mental Models: Theory and Application in Human Factors

This review points out confusion surrounding the concept and use of mental models from the viewpoints of both human factors and psychology. Noted are the ways in which the notion is conceived according to the needs and approaches of different specialties, and the relationships of mental models to other forms of knowledge representation are considered. The manner in which the human factors community has and should utilize the concept in applications across a number of fields is addressed and discussed in relation to the psychological perspective.

Panel on Visual Interface Design

User interface design has many components. Usable computer interfaces should be easy to learn, result in high user productivity and high user satisfaction. There are a number of components in user interface design that affect the usability of the interface. Within the human factors community we tend to emphasize the ergonomic and cognitive components of the computer interface. There is another component that is frequently ignored, the visual interface design. This panel will present information on the visual component in various user-computer interfaces and will discuss the contributions of the visual designer to the interfaces and usability.