Safety-critical interaction: usability in incidents and accidents

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen an increasing use of sophisticated interaction techniques in the field of command and control systems. The use of such techniques has been required in order to increase the bandwidth between the users and the systems and thus to help them deal efficiently to increasingly complex systems. These techniques come from research and innovation done in the field of HCI but very little has been done to improve their reliability and their tolerance to human error. It can be difficult to know how to assess the risks that such systems can create for the successful operation of safety-critical systems. One consequence of this is that interaction issues are almost entirely missing from international development standards in safety-critical systems, such as IEC615098 or DO 178B. This SIG will provide a forum for academics and industrials to exchange research problem as well as best practice in the field of safety critical interactive systems.

REFERENCES

• 1: Philippe Palanque , Fabio Paternó , Bob Fields, Designing user interfaces for safety critical systems, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.30 n.4, p.37-39, Oct. 1998 [doi>10.1145/310307.310359]
• 2: C.W. Johnson and C.M. Holloway. A Survey of Causation in Mishap Logics. Reliability Engineering and Systems Safety journal, vol. 80,n° 3, pp. 271--291, 2003
• 3: Robert Fields , Fabio Paternò , Carmen Santoro , Sophie Tahmassebi, Comparing design options for allocating communication media in cooperative safety-critical contexts: a method and a case study, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.6 n.4, p.370-398, Dec. 1999 [doi>10.1145/331490.331492]
• 4: S. Pocock, M.D. Harrison, P.C. Wright and P. Johnson. THEA: A technique for human error assessment early in design. In Hirose, M., editor, Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT'01 IFIP TC.13 International Conference on human computer interaction, pages 247--254. IOS Press 2001.
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.5 PATTERN RECOGNITION
      I.5.5 Implementation

Additional Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.4 INPUT/OUTPUT AND DATA COMMUNICATIONS
      B.4.3 Interconnections (subsystems)

  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
      D.2.4 Software/Program Verification

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.1 Public Policy Issues

General Terms:
Reliability

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