Antony Hilliard

The Need for Human Factors in the Sustainability Domain

Curbing the over-harvesting of the earths resources by the developed and developing world cannot be achieved solely by technological solutions. This paper reviews the literature on how reductions in energy consumption can be achieved through behavioral interventions. The literature shows that feedback, a consequence intervention, has been shown to be more effective than antecedent interventions in correcting erroneous heuristics and biases as well as encouraging both efficiency and curtailment behaviors. However, few feedback studies approach the feedback design problem systematically. Human Factors specialists have an opportunity to contribute their expertise in human-machine systems to help address these deficiencies and aid in shifting our societies toward sustainable resource consumption.

Winning solar races with interface design

Solar car racing is both a highly competitive sport and a test arena for tomorrows renewable-energy applications. This article describes the design of a graphical interface for solar car race strategy planning. The coupling, unpredictability, and size of the solar car racing environment present tough challenges to racing strategy teams. Representation-aiding techniques provide a useful approach for managing this complexity, translating difficult problems into visual analogues that are better suited to human information processing.

Energy Management in Large Enterprises A field study

Energy managers are responsible for controlling business energy consumption. Wider adoption of energy management behavior would enable more efficient energy systems; however the costs of current energy management tools, tasks and training are beyond many small enterprises. Efforts to support more widespread energy management would benefit from better understanding the expert cognitive work performed at large enterprises. A preliminary study of this work was conducted by interview and participant observation. Energy managers apply skill in energy analysis, business management, and agreeable communication to cost-effectively monitor and report business-relevant energy findings. These activities are complicated by uncertainty in energy data and variability in business structure, which introduce tradeoffs between costs of social data interpretation and maintenance of complex datasets and models. To help clarify debate on appropriate design of energy management tools, tasks, and training, we propose four human-centered research topics of cues, trust, strategies, and sensors.

Representing energy efficiency diagnosis strategies in cognitive work analysis.

This article describes challenges encountered in applying Jens Rasmussens Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework to the practice of energy efficiency Monitoring & Targeting (M&T). Eight theoretic issues encountered in the analysis are described with respect to Rasmussens work and the modeling solutions we adopted. We grappled with how to usefully apply Work Domain Analysis (WDA) to analyze categories of domains with secondary purposes and no ideal grain of decomposition. This difficulty encouraged us to pursue Control Task (ConTA) and Strategies (StrA) analysis, which are under-explored as bases for interface design. In ConTA we found M&T was best represented by two interlinked work functions; one controlling energy, the other maintaining knowledge representations. From StrA, we identified a popular representation-dependent strategy and inferred information required to diagnose faults in system performance and knowledge representation. This article presents and discusses excerpts from our analysis, and outlines their application to diagnosis support tools.

Ecological interface design for solar car strategy: From state equations to visual relations.

Renewable energy technologies present a distinct set of challenges for human problem solving and decision making. Solar car racing typifies opportunities for human factors engineering to support human performance in renewable energy domains, for example through computer interface design. Derivational and topographical adequacy are introduced as useful considerations to guide development of representation-aided interfaces and system instrumentation requirements. Implications for generalizability to emerging renewable energy applications are discussed.

Communicating a Model-Based Energy Performance Indicator

Monitoring energy performance can help organizations make better efficiency investment and operational decisions. However, key energy performance indicators can be difficult to interpret because they blend effects of real system changes and statistical model behavior. We designed an explanatory energy model report for a commercial energy-monitoring product. The design was guided by a task analysis based on user observation, interviews, and designer participation. It was refined with usability heuristics, task walk-throughs, and tabletop discussions. Our collaborator is incorporating the design into its next product revision.

Demonstrating CWA Strategies Analysis: A Case Study of Municipal Winter Maintenance

Widespread acceptance of Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) as a framework for design of complex sociotechnical systems is dependent on how well the theoretical foundations can be applied to real-world systems. Although literature on CWA has many application examples, the first phase, Work Domain Analysis, is over-represented. Later phases such as Strategies Analysis, the third phase of CWA, can provide comparable insight to designers. Understanding how activities can be performed can be instrumental in designing work support tools that are robust to changing priorities and conditions. In this paper, a Strategies Analysis is applied to the City of Toronto Municipal Winter Maintenance Program to illustrate how an analysis can be conducted. Both a traditional Strategies Analysis in decision-making terms and a novel Strategies Analysis in work domain terms are presented.

Keeping the Lights On Across the Continent

Operators need new visualizations to help them monitor increasingly complex power grids at wider geographical scopes. We developed a work domain analysis of power grid operations from interviews, focus groups, and observations. The work domain analysis helped determine information requirements for a wide-area monitoring design concept that follows ecological interface design principles. We validated the design concept in a usability evaluation, achieving an above-benchmark System Usability Scale score of 77 out of 90. This work domain analysis and ecological interface design process will equally apply to the design of other power grid monitoring displays.

A graphic form with emergent properties for monitoring renewable generation stations

Electric transmission grid reliability and resilience are challenged by increased use of intermittent renewable generation. This paper describes a straightforward, short-term approach to support grid operators monitoring fleets of renewable generators: designing displays using emergent visual features to communicate functional properties. An example wind generator graphic form and integrated meteorology display page are described. This graphic design distinguishes four practically significant functional operating modes of most wind turbines using a compact, familiar barchart format that can be implemented in almost any control system.

Applying Work Domain Analysis to Scope Micro- or Scaled World Simulator Design: A Petrochemical Domain Case Study.

Interactive human-in-the-loop simulators are widely recognized as a cost-effective and safe way to train workers in challenging work situations, and to more tractably research human performance. However, developing lower-fidelity microworld or scaled world simulators remains a challenge, as there are no systematic methods to guide simulator design. This article presents how the modeling distinctions used in Work Domain Analysis (WDA) can be applied to support designers in making and explaining decisions on simulator scope. Three examples are demonstrated in a petrochemical case study.