Beyond usability for safety critical systems: how to be sure (safe, usable, reliable, and evolvable)?

ABSTRACT

While a significant effort is currently being undertaken by the CHI community in order to apply and extend current usability evaluation techniques to new kinds of interaction techniques very little has been done to improve the reliability of software offering these kinds of interaction techniques. As these new interaction techniques are currently more and more used in the field of command and control safety critical systems the potential of incident or accidents increases. Similarly, the non reliability of interactive software can jeopardize usability evaluation by showing unexpected or undesired behaviors. Lastly, iterative design processes promote multiple designs through evolvable prototypes in order to accommodate requirements changes and results from usability evaluations thus reducing reliability of the final system by lack of global and structured design. The aim of this SIG is to provide a forum for both researchers and practitioners interested in safety critical interactive systems. Our goal is to define a roadmap of activities to cross fertilize usability, reliability and safety for these kinds of systems to minimize duplicate efforts and reuse knowledge in all the communities involved.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces

General Terms:
Human Factors, Reliability, Verification

Keywords:
human error, reliability safety critical systems, safety, usability