Lecture 18- Human Factors + Aviation

Question 1

What is human factors often called?

Answer 1

Ergonomics

Question 2

What is the definition for human factors?

Answer 2

Scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods in order to optimize human wellbeing and overall system performance

Question 3

What areas of psychology does human factors most closely relate to?

Answer 3

cognition, perception, neuroscience

Question 4

When did human factors really take off as an area + why?

Answer 4

World war 2
Needed a way to optimize the use of planes (this why aviation is so far ahead of other areas- a lot of the findings found in aviation can be applied to other areas).

Question 5

What are the 3 ‘characteristics’ of human factors and the three outcomes that result from them? (Dul et al. 2012)

Answer 5

• Use a systems based approach
• Design driven
• Outcome focused

These outcomes are performance, safety and user satisfaction

Question 6

What aspects of design does human factors focus on?

Answer 6

• Equipment: Usability= how easy is it to use + how effective? What movements do people have to make (is this doable for the population that needs to use it?)?
• Tasks: Work out what is normally done and what needs to be accomplished. Devise steps to make processes more efficient making sure no key elements are missed. Lots of checklists are used so nothing is missed.
• Environment: light, temperature, noise, vibration. How can these elements be changed to optimize performance?

Question 7

How can human factors be used for personal selection and training? What do these processes overlap with?

Answer 7

• Processes overlap with task design
• Work out everything you need to do in the job: pick someone who is capable for these tasks/ the role
• Develop a training program to teach individuals in performing the role efficiently based on the tasks that need to be done

Question 8

What is the difference between using human factors for personal selection/ design a training program and organizational psychology?

Answer 8

They overlap but human factors emphasize the people themselves whereas organizational psychology focus on what we need the people to do

Question 9

How is human factors used for incident and accident analysis?

Answer 9

• How design of systems could have influenced the accident
• Often times we place too much trust in the tech and there are lots of warning signs/ near misses that people don’t pay attention to (e.g. pike river). People should be monitoring/ not missing the warning signs

Question 10

What is design induced error? Provide an every day example…

Answer 10

• Factors in design that could have influenced error/ accident
• It’s not all down to the human tech should be designed to avoid mistakes
• Light switches (don’t map to obvious configuration so have to turn on and off to figure out which one), Door handles, stove tops etc.

Question 11

What is the flying fortress (1940s, USA) an example of?

Answer 11

• Design induced error
• At the time there was a lot of accidents due to pilot error. Organizational psychology was used for pilot selection and when people kept crashing this selection was deemed flawed. But researchers noticed certain types of errors occurred consistently in certain planes (a pattern). Pilots often crashed on the runway before landing. It was found that the switch for the landing gear was next to the landing flaps and they were the same shape: easy to get confused. This is an example of design induced error: after changes the switch design the incidences reduced. It wasn’t the individual at fault but the tech!

Question 12

Why do we care more about design induced error in planes as opposed to some of the examples from before?

Answer 12

Cause in planes you can’t make mistakes: it’s life or death. Why aviation is so ahead of it’s time.

Question 13

A serious design induced error is high on both….

Answer 13

• Criticality

- Likelihood

Question 14

What is the human error template?

Answer 14

• Define a specific task that a human needs to do
• Break this task into a series of small steps
• Each step evaluate both the criticality and the the frequency of error against the 12 error modes
• If it fails on a combination on these then the system needs to be changed

Question 15

Why is criticality hard to access?

Answer 15

• Although some things are universally critical: death

- Other aspects are not and depend on the individual + what is important to them

Question 16

What is user centered design and how does it contrast with technology centered design?

Answer 16

• Considers how a person functions and designs according to this with ergonomics invovled in the planning not just as an afterthought
• Contrasts, with tech centered design where the human is viewed as needing to fill in the gaps for the technology and often the developer is frustrated or views individuals as stupid if they can’t work it out

Question 17

In user centered design what people should designers conduct tests with?

Answer 17

• Depends on what the product is and who needs to be able to use it
• If it is widespread/ public e.g. self checkout at supermarket then everyone not just the average person but the extremes of society as well
• If it is a tool used in a professional setting then can assume the person will be trained and have some expert knowledge

Question 18

At what stage are individuals invovled in user centered design?

Answer 18

• At all stages!
• They use it how they would in real life, give feedback, the designer makes changes and the process repeats with different individuals

Question 19

What is automation?

Answer 19

-The execution by a machine agent (usually computer) of a function that was previously carried out by a human

Question 20

Is automation binary (all or nothing)?

Answer 20

No can automate to varying degrees

Question 21

According to Parasuraman et al. 2000 what are the four stages at which automation can occur and the proposed optimum levels for each?

Answer 21

• Information acquisition: equivalent to human sensory processing (high automation level). Things we would normally spot ourselves it helps us to find.
• Information analysis: working memory, inferential processes (high automation level) e.g. predicting a plan course and telling us if we will hit anything.
• Decision selection: equivalent to human decision making. Would need some sort of input either from human or previous two steps to do this. (Should be high in low risk tasks and low in high risk tasks)
• Action implementation: replaces human voice, hand actions etc. Doesn’t need to be invovled in action making the decision but can be. (moderate level)

Question 22

How is work load a consideration for automation?

Answer 22

Should only be implemented if the workload for humans is decreased. A poorly designed system can increase mental energy needed to run it.

Question 23

How is reliability and trust a consideration for automation?

Answer 23

• If system is not reliable human won’t trust it to perform the task and will essentially have to do the task anyway
• Alternatively, if place too much trust become complacent. The tech may then make a mistake (it’s never going to perfect) and then who do you blame?

Question 24

How might skill degradation be an issue with automation? What could potentially resolve this issue?

Answer 24

• If we don’t practice skills we lose them
• Potential solution: Automatic level is not always high or low, allow human operator to have some input. Situation intense automation takes over, when task load is low give more control so don’t lose their skills and stay engaged

Question 25

What is an economic consequence of automation?

What is an ethical one?

Answer 25

• Economic: job loss, the jobs that are created will be for educated people not those low down e.g. taxi drivers will be gone if have automated vehicles
• Ethical: who do you save (the trolley problem)

Question 26

What is trust as it related to automation?

Answer 26

A cognitive state that usually influences the actual, behavioral dependence on automation

In other words how much we trust the computer to performance a task well likely reflects how much automation we program in. This judgement of trust is based on how many errors are experienced.

Question 27

What is complacency? Why does it arise?

Answer 27

When we allocate our attention to other tasks (less focus on the primary task cause we feel the automation has it covered)
Occurs when we allocate a disproportionate amount of trust to automation= errors result

Question 28

What is adaptive automation? And the different levels at which this can occur?

Answer 28

• When you vary function allocation during system operations. Different levels of aid provided according to the context/ situation. Automation take control when work load is high/ stressful situation but let the worker take back control when it is manageable (low stress situation). This means individuals won’t lose sills but will avoid complacency and errors.
• System driven is when the machine makes the decision of swapping between computer and individual controlled. This allocation can be automatically done by the computer or manually by the person (i.e. you decide what level of work you can handle in a given situation). Alternatively could be driven by physiological states of person which indicate their stress level.

Question 29

What is the disadvantage of systems driven adaptive automation as opposed to individual driven?

Answer 29

• System driven automation= might increase the systems unpredictability I.e. you don’t know when you will have to act and when decisions will be taken care of for you (have to go from 0 to 100).
• But if responsibility is given to the human this is an increased work load (not ideal).