Designing for error HIC Basic topics.

1. HCI notes
TOPIC
DxE Designing to fit human capabilities
Designing
for error
1. What are the human capabilities?. Human factors
2. Human errors vs. design errors
3. Three different design approaches
HCI notes: Designing for error

2. 1. What are the human capabilities?
HUMAN CAPABILITIES
What are the human capabilities?
■ Question too broad.
It involves at least two sets:
One with human average capabilities (in a particular context)
and other one with human disabilities (also in a certain context)[topic
Design for special needs].
It can be bounded in a context: HCI.
What are the human capabilities in relation to the use of
computers? (Digital Tools)

3. 1.
LIMITATIONS AND CAPABILITIES
Physical Cognitive Social behavior
motricity perception
agility memory
resistance behavior
... limited attentional resources
...and we are back to the
topic of human models (HCP)

4. 1.
HUMAN FACTORS
multidisciplinary field (psychology, engineering, industrial design,
statistics, operations research and anthropometry)
understand the properties of human capability
[human factor science]
apply this understanding to the design, development
and deployment of systems and services.
[human factor engineering]
focuses on how people interact with tasks, machines (or computers),
and the environment with the consideration that humans have limitations and capabilities.
Evaluate "Human to Human," "Human to Group," "Human to Organizational," and "Human to Machine
(Computers)"
methods Focus groups | Iterative design | Meta-analysis | Task analaysis | Think aloud protocol | User
analysis | wizard of Oz

5. 2. Human error vs. design error
Human error?
Phobos 1 (1988) | In 1988, the Soviet Union's Phobos 1 satellite was
lost on its way to Mars. Why? According to Science magazine, "not long
after the launch, a ground controller omitted a single letter in a
series of digital commands sent to the spacecraft.

6. 2.
“People err. That is a fact of life.
People are not precision machinery
designed for accuracy”.
Donald Norman
Cognitive Errors (“Mistakes”) Non cognitive Errors
Mistakes are errors in choosing an (“slips & lapses”)
objective or specifying a method of slips are errors in carrying out an
achieving it intended method for reaching an
objective
"The division occurs at the level of the intention:
(A person establishes an intention to act)
If the intention is not appropriate, this is a mistake.
If the action is not what was intended, this is a slip."

7. 2. Error password message

8. 2.
How many passwords you drive in your daily life?
How many of them are repeated?
How many are small variations of the same?
Me?. About 17
email1 Bank account
email 2 Bank online pass This is very far from
work email Upf user the “magic number 7”!
computer 1(home) Upf library user (out from human capabilities)
computer 2 (work) website user
server work snapfish
Spotify hosting
Facebook Skype
George A. Miller
Linkedin ...
How do we solve it?...

9. 2.
with unsafe passwords!
Use common and Repeat the same password
predictable passwords. for everything
Human error?...NO!
why?.. Designing for error: outside human capabilities.

10. 3. Three different design approaches
Approaches to prevent design errors...
Designing for error...
occurs because the designer ignores (some) human capabilities.
TECHNOLOGY-oriented HUMAN-centered
approach approach
(consider the human factor)

11. 3.
TECHNOLOGY-oriented HUMAN-centered
approach approach
■ Prioritizes computer based ■ needs, wants and limitations of end
information processing and users are given extensive attention at
technology-mediated each stage of the design process.
communications over human and
their communicative collaboration. UCD tries to optimize the design
around user.
human
Cooperative
design
Participatory
design
machine
Contextual
design

12. 3.
TECHNOLOGY-oriented HUMAN-centered
approach approach
Imprecise
Disorganized - Creative
Obedient +
Distractible Alerts to change
Emotional Inventive
human Illogical
Exact
Sorted
+ Not creative
Structured
-
Impossible to distract Insensitive to changes
machine Not emotional
Logics
Lacking imagination
Humans lost: All attributes
of people are negative while Humans win.
the attributes of the machines
are positive.
Norman (1998) The invisible computer

13. 3.
TECHNOLOGY-oriented HUMAN-centered
approach approach
Both views are complementary:
■ People stand out for their qualitative skills. Those
decisions are made flexible, because they perform both
human qualitative and quantitative assessments.
■ The machines are noted for their quantitative skills.
Take logical decisions based on the quantitative
evaluation of numerically specified variables and
machine independent of context.

14. 3.
ACTIVITY-centered
approach
Musical instruments, the clock, writing systems...
Why are such non-Human-Centered Designs
so successful?
All them have:
arbitrary divisions, decisions and complexity. Artificial and unnatural.
It takes people time to learned and become skilled.
The reason for Norman is in the
Activity-centered Design
Develop with a deep understanding of the activities that were to be performed.
Activities ≠ Task: an activity is a coordinated, integrated set of tasks.
Example: Mobil phone Activity= communication | Task= looking up numbers. dialing. SMS...

15. 4.
REFERENCES
Norman, D. A. (1990). Commentary: Human error and the design of computer systems. Communications of the ACM, 33, 4-7.
Norman, Donald (1998) The Invisible Computer. Boston, MIT Press.
Bogdan Calin (2006) Statistics from 10,000 leaked hotmail passwords.
http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords/
infosecurity.com (2009)
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/3779/many-people-use-same-password-on-all-websites-says-cpp/
Hotmail leak: Most popular password? 12345
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/hotmail-leak-most-popular-password-12345-641321
Humans factors. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors