Human Factors & HOP
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Bainbridge: Ironies of Automation – and What Is Left for the Human.
In 1983 Lisanne Bainbridge wrote five pages for a control engineering journal. Her finding: we automate whatever can be automated, and the human gets the…
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What a Workaround Keeps Quiet
In American hospitals, nurses stuck barcodes to doorjambs so they didn’t have to scan at the bedside. The workaround is sensible, and it defeats the…
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Conklin: Pre-Accident Investigations, When Incidents Are the Second-Best Option
Todd Conklin inverts safety work: the most valuable investigation is the one you run while nothing has happened yet. A book note on the mindset…
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Field Guide to Understanding Human Error – a note on Sidney Dekker
A book note on Sidney Dekker’s classic: why “human error” is never the end of an investigation, but its beginning. With the tools Local Rationality,…
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People are not the weak link
US Airways 1549, Hudson 2009: what saved Sully that day wasn’t the procedure. A case for questioning the standard “human error” diagnosis, and what it…
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How our mental picture can endanger us
Why “false alarm” is one of the most dangerous terms in everyday firefighting work. How the mental picture we bring into an operation shapes our…
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The New View of Human Error
A short introduction to Old View versus New View. Why “human error” is rarely the cause but rather a property of complex systems, and what…
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Reaching optimal Human Performance through effective System Design
How do you design automation in complex socio-technical systems so it supports human performance rather than hinders it? Three steps: understanding tasks, assessing stability, designing…