Chris Baber

What really is going on? Review of situation awareness models for individuals and teams

The concept of situation awareness (SA) is frequently described in the literature. Theoretically, it remains predominantly an individual construct and the majority of the models presented describe SA from an individual perspective. In comparison, team SA has received less attention. SA in complex, collaborative environments thus remains a challenge for the human factors community, both in relation to the development of theoretical perspectives and of valid measures and to the development of guidelines for system, training and procedure design. This article presents a review and critique of what is currently known about SA and team SA, including a comparison of the most prominent individual and team models presented in the literature. In conclusion, it is argued that recently proposed systems level distributed SA approaches are the most suited to describing and assessing SA in real world, collaborative environments.

Command and control in emergency services operations: a social network analysis

There is increasing interest in the use of social network analysis as a tool to study the performance of teams and organizations. In this paper, processes of command and control in the emergency services are explored from the perspective of social network theory. We report a set of network analyses (comprising visualization, a selection of mathematical metrics, and a discussion of procedures) based on the observation of six emergency service incidents: three fire service operations involving the treatment of hazardous chemicals, and three police operations involving immediate response to emergency calls. The findings are discussed in terms of our attempts to categorize the network structures against a set of extant command and control network archetypes and the relationship between those structures; comments on the qualities the networks display are put into the contexts of the incidents reported. We suggest that social network analysis may have a valuable part to play in the general study of command and control.

Virtual reality and augmented reality as a training tool for assembly tasks

In this paper we investigate whether virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) offer potential for the training of manual skills, such as for assembly tasks, in comparison to conventional media. We present results from experiments that compare assembly completion times for a number of different conditions. We firstly investigate completion times for a task where participants can study an engineering drawing and an assembly plan and then conduct the task. We then investigate the task under various VR conditions and context-free AR. We discuss the relative advantages and limitations of using VR and AR as training media for investigating assembly operations, and we present the results of our experimental work.

Event analysis of systemic teamwork (EAST): a novel integration of ergonomics methods to analyse C4i activity

C4i is defined as the management infrastructure needed for the execution of a common goal supported by multiple agents in multiple locations and technology. In order to extract data from complex and diverse C4i scenarios a descriptive methodology called Event Analysis for Systemic Teamwork (EAST) has been developed. With over 90 existing ergonomics methodologies already available, the approach taken was to integrate a hierarchical task analysis, a coordination demand analysis, a communications usage diagram, a social network analysis, and the critical decision method. The outputs of these methods provide two summary representations in the form of an enhanced operation sequence diagram and a propositional network. These offer multiple overlapping perspectives on key descriptive constructs including who the agents are in a scenario, when tasks occur, where agents are located, how agents collaborate and communicate, what information is used, and what knowledge is shared. The application of these methods to live data drawn from the UK rail industry demonstrates how alternative scenarios can be compared on key metrics, how multiple perspectives on the same data can be taken, and what further detailed insights can be extracted. The ultimate aim of EAST is, by applying it across a number of scenarios in different civil and military domains, to provide data to develop generic models of C4i activity and to improve the design of systems aimed at enhancing this management infrastructure.

The comfort assessment of wearable computers

This paper presents a tool to measure the comfort of wearable computers. The comfort rating scales (CRS) measure wearable comfort across 6 dimensions. These dimensions are Emotion, Attachment, Harm, Perceived change, Movement and Anxiety. This paper also presents two studies in which the CRS have been used to assess the comfort of two types of wearable technology currently being developed at the University of Birmingham, these are the SensVest and the /spl chi//sup 3/. The results of the studies show that the CRS can be used to aid designers and manufacturers focus on what modifications are needed to wearable computer design to make them more comfortable. They also show that assessments of wearable computer comfort must be made in situations and environments to which the computer will ultimately be introduced.

Ergonomics of wearable computers

Wearable computers represent a new and exciting area for technology development, with a host of issues relating to display, power and processing still to be resolved. Wearable computers also present a new challenge to the field of ergonomics; not only is the technology distinct, but the manner in which the technology is to be used and the relationship between user and computer have changed in a dramatic fashion. In this paper, we concentrate on some traditional ergonomics concerns and examine how these issues can be addressed in the light of wearable computers.

Workload and the use of automatic speech recognition: the effects of time and resource demands

Abstract Previous research has indicated that workload can have an adverse effect on the use of speech recognition systems. In this paper, the relationship between workload and speech is discussed, and two studies are reported. In the first study, time-stress is considered. In the second study, dual-task performance is considered. Both studies show workload to significantly reduce recognition accuracy and user performance. The nature of the impairment is shown to differ between individuals and types of workload. Furthermore, it appears that workload affects the selection of words to use, the articulation of the words and the relationship between speaking to ASR and performing other tasks. It is proposed that speaking to ASR is, in itself, demanding and that as workload increases so the ability to perform the task within the limits required by ASR suffers.

Uses of accelerometer data collected from a wearable system

This paper presents work, assessing the use of accelerometers in wearable systems for a number of applications. It discusses and demonstrates how body mounted accelerometers can be used in context aware computing systems and for measuring aspects of human performance, which may be used for teaching and demonstrating skill acquisition, coaching sporting activities, sports and human movement research, and teaching subjects such as physics and physical education. Analysis is restricted to considerations as to how raw data can be used, and how simple calculations of quantities of data in the time domain, can be used. The limitations of the use of such data are discussed.

Contrasting paradigms for the development of wearable computers

In this paper, current applications of wearable computers are reviewed and categorized according to dimensions of “time” and “reference.” The time dimension is based on whether the system uses information that is stored, information that is current, or information that can help in predicting future events. The reference dimension is concerned with the type of application, event, task, environment, person, or artifact. Each of these categories can be described in terms of its temporal features (stored, current, or predicted). It is proposed that these dimensions distinguish wearable computers from their desk-bound counterparts, and this raises the question of appropriate paradigms for wearable computers. A user-centered methodology is then presented and illustrated by paramedic and fire-fighter applications.

From ethnography to the EAST method: A tractable approach for representing distributed cognition in Air Traffic Control

Command and control is a generic activity involving the exercise of authority over assigned resources, combined with planning, coordinating and controlling how those resources are used. The challenge for understanding this type of activity is that it is not often amenable to the conventional experimental/methodological approach. Command and control tends to be multi-faceted (so requires more than one method), is made up of interacting socio and technical elements (so requires a systemic approach) and exhibits aggregate behaviours that emerge from these interactions (so requires methods that go beyond reductionism). In these circumstances a distributed cognition approach is highly appropriate yet the existing ethnographic methods make it difficult to apply and, for non-specialist audiences, sometimes difficult to meaningfully interpret. The Event Analysis for Systemic Teamwork method is put forward as a means of working from a distributed cognition perspective but in a way that goes beyond ethnography. A worked example from Air Traffic Control is used to illustrate how the language of social science can be translated into the language of systems analysis. Statement of Relevance: Distributed cognition provides a highly appropriate conceptual response to complex work settings such as Air Traffic Control. This paper deals with how to realise those benefits in practice without recourse to problematic ethnographic techniques.