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Research Needs for Human Factors (1983) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 1-11

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From page 1...
... 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW In the last several years the public has become sensitized to the importance of equipment designed to accost modate its human users. In the course of events at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant many residents of Harrisburg were evacuated because of the accident precipitated by operators misinterpreting their instruments.
From page 2...
... The disciplines that may be applied to a particular problem include psychology, cognitive science, physiology, biomechanics, applied physical anthropology, and industrial and systems engineering. The systems range from the use of a simple tool by a consumer to multiperson sociotechnical systems.
From page 3...
... The resultant designs incorporate features that take advantage of unique human capabilities as well as build in safeguards to avoid or reduce the impact of unpredictable human error. On the international Scene this collection of activities has been called ergonomics, meaning the study of work.
From page 4...
... HUMAN DECISION MAKING A central issue in the understanding of human performance is human decision making. It has become even more important with the increased role of automation in complex modern systems ranging from military command, control, and communication systems to aircraft and process control systems.
From page 5...
... creating a common frame of reference from which to assess judgments among a group of experts; (2) formulating questions for experts in a way that is compatible with their mental structures or cognitive representations of a problem; (3)
From page 6...
... Another key concern in supervisory control is prediction and the control of human error. Our understanding of this topic is in its infancy.
From page 7...
... At the level of design, there are three major questions: how to design supervisory control tasks to accommodate human capabilities and limitations; how to organize and display the information needed to carry out these tasks; and how much control to delegate to the human versus the automatic parts of the system. USER-COMPUTER INTERACTION Since computers are already playing a major role in most new system developments, including supervisory control systems, issues of facilitating the learning and use by both computer professionals and novices has been accorded a chapter of its own.
From page 8...
... Effective design of sophisticated software implies understanding of human knowledge sytems and the ability to represent not only what a user knows but also how a user makes inferences from that information. There is a need for models of users' understanding of the system with which they are interacting, a problem that is important for supervisory control applications as well.
From page 9...
... From necessity, human factors practitioners have adopted or developed a variety of applied methods for acquiring or organizing information related to human characteristics that arise in the context of system design, development, and evaluation. Examples of these methods are task analysis, information flow analysis, collection and analysis of survey data, evaluation of physical mock-ups, and the structured walk through.
From page 10...
... Documenting existing applied methods, however, wil l not fulfill the methodological needs for all current and future system design purposes. Advances in computer technology applied to automation and supervisory control systems and computer systems themselves all have profound methodological implications for the analysis and description of the roles people play in these sytems.
From page 11...
... It is therefore timely and appropriate that the committees first report of research needs in human factors emphasizes the importance of understanding fundamental cognitive processes and their role in interactive and supervisory control systems.


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