Leena Norros

Developing human factors/ergonomics as a design discipline

This paper deals with internal challenges that the human factors/ergonomics (HFE) research faces when wishing to strengthen its contribution to development of work systems. Three established characteristics of high-quality HFE, i.e., HFE takes a systems approach, HFE is design-driven, and HFE focuses on two closely related outcomes, performance and well-being, are taken as a starting point of a methodological discussion, in which conceptual innovations, e.g. adopting the technology-in-use perspective, are proposed to support development of HFE towards the high-quality aims. The feasibility of the proposed conceptual choices is demonstrated by introducing a naturalistic HFE analysis approach including four HFE functions. The gained experience of the use of this approach in a number of complex work domains allows the conclusion that becoming design-driven appears as that most difficult quality target for HFE to reach. Creating an own design discipline identity in a multi-voiced collaboration is the key internal challenge for human factors/ergonomics.

Hidden roles of the train driver: A challenge for metro automation

Abstract In the year 2014, the Helsinki Metro is planned to be fully automated. This automation means that the metro trains will be computer-driven and monitored remotely from a stationary control room. To investigate the challenges related to this scenario, we decided to study the ways in which the current train drivers contribute to the metro system. We conducted three separate but interrelated studies, which were based on the Core-Task Analysis method. Our results suggest that there is much more to driving the metro train than meets the eye. The drivers do not only operate the train on track and its doors at stations, but they also contribute to a variety of other important, albeit more hidden, functions in the metro system. For example, the drivers anticipate, observe, interpret, and react to events in the surrounding environment. Furthermore, they are a significant interaction link between different actors of the metro system. Our conclusion is that if the identified critical roles of the drivers are not accounted for, a migration to a fully automated metro system can affect the quality of service and raise safety issues. In addition to automated metros, the results of this research can be applicable to automation implementations also in other domains.

Core task analysis in accident investigation: analysis of maritime accidents in piloting situations

This article discusses the difficulties in utilising accident analysis as the basis for the development of complex socio-technical systems, and how to improve accident analysis to better meet such aims. It focuses on two themes: accident models and experts’ involvement in accident investigation. The article describes the development of a new core task analysis-based method for accident analysis. It also elaborates on the method by presenting summarising results of an investigation in which several maritime accidents were first analysed case-by-case, followed by a comparative analysis and a synthesis. The latter phases aimed at providing evident-based generic explanations for the accidents. The accidents occurred in Finnish coastal waters during sea or canal piloting between 1997 and 2000. The authors participated in both phases of the investigation for which the Finnish Accident Investigation Board was responsible. The presented method is argued to promote solutions to two current problems in accident investigation: generalisation from the results, and integration of the experts’ work.

Performance-based usability evaluation of a safety information and alarm system

Evaluation of the appropriateness of information technical systems for complex professional usage in safety-critical contexts poses significant methodical and practical challenges. In this study, the usability of a Safety Information and Alarm Panel (SIAP) in a nuclear power plant control room was tested. An integrated validation concept was used that included a new approach to measuring system and operator performance in complex work environments. The tested system was designed to aid the operators in severe disturbance and emergency situations. It had already been implemented at a nuclear power plant. The study was conducted in a full-scope training simulator. The results verified that an acceptable level of performance could be achieved when using the SIAP. When the operators practices were analysed by a habit-centred analysis, it was discovered that the effects of the SIAP differed between crews and between test scenarios. Thus, the SIAP tended to promote coherence of practices but reduce situatively attentive action. In diffuse task contexts the tool failed to support the shift supervisors control of the overall process situation, his awareness of the crews work load and his ability to update the crews awareness of the process. The operators reported that the system supported their process control activity and reduced stress in the situation, but the shift supervisors and operators also noticed some possible negative effects of the tool. These subjective evaluations corresponded to the effects observed in practice. The results revealed the complexity of the implementation of new tools into professional practice. It was proposed that a validation project should focus on the trajectory of development of the entire distributed cognitive system instead of comprehending validation studies as tests of the effects of information systems on a pre-defined process output. Formative evaluation criteria are needed in projecting distributed cognitive systems.

Design of joint systems: a theoretical challenge for cognitive systems engineering

In this paper the “joint systems approach” will be discussed. The approach is considered as a new paradigm in cognitive systems engineering (CSE). Its central idea, that human and technology form a functional unity, is as such not new. Why, then, has this idea become so appealing right now? In the first part of the paper we seek answers to this question by analysing the current situation in product design. The conclusion is that the focus of design is shifting from single products to intelligent environments. This change in focus induces tensions into the design process that urge for solutions. One of them is re-conceptualising the relationship between human and technology, precisely what the joint system approach is about. Three different joint system approaches are considered: the joint cognitive systems approach (JCS), the Risö extended CSE approach, and the joint intelligent systems (JIS) approach proposed by us. Comparisons are made with regard to how these approaches understand the joint system to be organised. While the JCS approach focuses on the human–technology relationship, the other two consider this relationship as embedded in a context of object-oriented activity. As a consequence, environment becomes included in the joint system. In JIS approach we propose the use of the semiotic concept of habit to characterise the ways of functioning of the joint system. “Habit” is a tool for identifying generic patterns in the situation-specific behaviour of the system. Defining habits enables expressing the meaning or purpose of the system’s functioning. In the end of the paper, we propose a design process model for the development of JIS. This approach is aimed at designing systems in usage i.e. to design of practices.

Systems usability framework for evaluating tools in safety---critical work

This paper presents a methodology with which evaluation of control rooms in safety–critical industry has been carried out. The results of two cases of evaluation in nuclear power plants (NPP) are presented to elaborate the method thoroughly. The evaluation methodology draws from conventions of human factors and usability evaluation methods but adds an activity theoretical viewpoint by considering different control room functions in a purposeful activity system. A control room has three functions in an activity: instrument, psychological tool, and a communicative tool. The introduced evaluation approach allows understanding of quality of the control room on the level of outcomes it produces, work practices that it consolidates, and the user experience it creates. The evaluation approach is demonstrated by presenting baseline evaluations of two hybrid NPP control rooms that were carried out before major upgrade projects were implemented. Hybrid control room refers to a state in which modern and original hardwired technological solutions are in use simultaneously.

Systems Usability — Promoting Core-Task Oriented Work Practices

A new concept of systems usability is introduced. Systems usability provides a holistic activity-oriented perspective to evaluation of the appropriateness of ICT–based smart tools. The concept has been developed in empirical studies of work in complex industrial environments. The nuclear power plant domain is used here to exemplify the systems usability concept and the method developed for evaluating it. In the chapter, we first identify four practical challenges that the current approaches in usability studies face: task analysis, data collection methods, usability measures, and inferences concerning the interface. As a solution to tackle these challenges we, then, introduce our concept of systems usability. To reach the demands of systems usability, work tools must fulfill all three functions of tools: the instrumental, psychological, and communicative. Because systems usability is visible in practices of using the tools we, finally, demonstrate how the developed method labeled contextual assessment of systems usability (CASU) is used for evaluating systems usability.

Core-Task Design:A Practice-Theory Approach to Human Factors

This book focuses on design of work from the human-factors (HF) perspective. In the approach referred to as Core-Task Design (CTD), work is considered practice, composed of human actors, the physical and social environment, and the tools used for reaching the actors’ objectives. This book begins with consideration of an industrial case, the modernization of a nuclear power plant automation system, and the related human-system interfaces in the control room. This case illustrates generic design dilemmas that invite one to revisit human-factors research methodology: Human factors should adopt practice as a new unit of analysis and should accept intervention as an inherent feature of its methodology. These suggestions are put into practice in the CTD approach, according to which three general design functions are performed, those being: -understand-to-generalize—empirical analysis of the work at hand, -foresee-the-promise—creation of concepts for future work, and -in ervene-to-develop—participatory development and design of work. For fulfillment fulfillment of each of the design functions, several CTD methods are introduced. The methods are aimed at modeling the core task and analyzing how the actors actually take the core task features into account in order to achieve balance between potentially conflicting demands in action. Thereby, new understanding of the core task is acquired. Further methods focus on projecting the roles and functionality of technologies in the future work and on implementing changes to the work. Specific studies of the nuclear power plant’s control-room renewal constitute an example demonstrating a core task and the associated methods. We argue that the CTD approach offers clear utility for the design of future technology, work, and everyday services and environments. CTD utilizes achievements of practice theory in the social sciences to generate a creative synthesis of Cognitive Work Analysis, semiotic analy is of practice, and the cultural-historical theory of activity. Core-Task Design facilitates dialogue among human-factors experts, design engineers, and end users in their joint development of work. The intended audience of this book is students, researchers, and practitioners of human factors, industrial art and design, and instrumentation and control-system design.

Operators' orientations to procedure guidance in NPP process control

Resilience in nuclear power plant (NPP) process control depends, among other things, on balance between operators’ autonomy in online decisions and pre-defined guidance for operations. Striking balance between these inherent demands of process control belongs to the strategic decisions by the management, but finally balancing takes place at the sharp end, by the operating personnel. We studied operators’ basic assumptions about the role of operating procedures in action. Conceptions of 62 control room operators at two Finnish NPPs were queried. Answers were classified into theory-based categories, i.e., interpretative, confirmative or reactive orientations. Orientation is an epistemic attitude to work that influences the process and content of sense making in situations that require action. In both NPPs, the confirmative orientation, emphasising the importance of acting according to rules, prevails, which corresponds to the expectations set by the organisations. It was also found that orientations reflect the operator roles and their demands: Among turbine operators, the interpretative orientation is significantly more prevalent than among the reactor operatorsxa0as regards control of action. All operators consider interpretative orientation as a characteristic of a “good operator”. It is concluded that interpretative orientation represents an epistemic attitude to NPP operator work, in which autonomy based on operators’ professional competence and procedure usage is not seen opposite to each other, but intertwined into a practice. Identification interpretativeness as an epistemic attitude relevant in action extends the notion of “intelligent use of procedures” proposed earlier, by elaborating the inherent logic and ethos of operators’ procedure usage. It is recommended that appropriation of interpretative orientation should be actively supported as a means to facilitate resilience in NPP activity.

Evaluating the potential of new technological tools for safety critical work

Abstract Defining user requirements of complex human–system interaction technologies and testing the fulfilment of these requirements in the end-product are issues of design practice that are currently not solved in an optimal way. In the current paper several dilemmas of “task-artefact-cycle”, “abstraction level of requirements” and the “tendency for conservative decisions” in requirement definition and testing are tackled. A new simulation method is proposed to tackle these design dilemmas in a case study on emergency response (ER) activity. Modelling and simulation are used as means to anticipate future activity, and the concept of “zone of proximal development” serves to illustrate the change in work demands of the ER activity. One of the key issues in ER is to create a realistic and timely understanding of the situation and to identify adequately the needs for action, the Common Operational Picture (COP). In the project, prototypes of new technological tools were designed to facilitate creation of an appropriate COP. First, normal emergency response activity was modelled. Then, the modelled situation and corresponding activity were enacted by competent actors as undisturbed as possible. Parallel to this, a second activity took place. This involved two professional fire fighters acting in the roles of incident commander and supporting officer. They observed the actual demands of the situation and the activities of the first responder actors. They also observed the available information provided by the new technologies. In the present paper the focus is on the presentation of the design and evaluation methodology. The demonstration of the methodology in a complex design task indicates the feasibility of the approach.