Ecological Interface Design (EID)

1. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • INTRODUCTION • an attempt to extend the benefits of direct manipulation interfaces (DMI) to complex work domains • Unanticipated Events • thee broad areas for events • familiar events • unfamiliar, but anticipated events • unfamiliar and unanticipated events • unanticipated events are the major cause of life-threatening accidents  mistakes

2. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • PROBLEM FORMULATION • Fundamentals • an interface  a control system  control theory • the Law of Requisite Variety states that complex systems require complex controllers • physical systems can be described by a set of constraints • every good controller must be, or possess, a model of the system it is controlling

3. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • The Structure of the Design Problem • two questions pertinent to interface design • Abstraction hierarchy as a psychologically relevant form of representing the constraints in a work domain in a way that operators to cope with unanticipated events • domain and operator as the organism-environment reciprocity • SRK taxonomy as a useful framework for describing the various mechanisms that people have for processing info

4. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • THE ABSTRACTION HIERARCHY • What Kind of Hierarchy? • the AH the class of stratified hierarchy by Mesarovic et al. (1970) • the AH specified by a means-end relationship between levels • the AH not a specific representation but rather a framework for developing representations for various work domains • five levels of constraints for process control systems – functional purpose, abstract function, generalized function, physical function, physical form

5. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • Coping with Unanticipated Events: A Historical Overview • accident-causing errors by human operators with unfamiliar situations not anticipated by designers • the AH, which provides a framework for identifying and integrating the set of goal relevant constraints that are operating in a given work domain • as a set of models of the system, each defining a level of the hierarchy • higher levels represent relational info about system purpose, whereas the lower levels represent more elemental data about physical implementation

6. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • Psychological Relevance • higher levels are less detailed than lower levels  makes complex systems look simpler • explicitly goal-oriented  an efficient form of search • possible to meaningfully map problem solving protocols onto an AH representation of the domain • subjects’ problem solving trajectories would begin at a high level of abstraction and gradually focus in on lower levels, thereby exploiting the goal-related constraint provided by the hierarchy

7. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • MULTIPLE LEVELS OF COGNITIVE CONTROL • three levels of info (signals, signs, or symbols) vs. three levels of cognitive control SBB (automated behavior patterns), RBB (a set of cue-action mappings), and KBB (PS operations on a symbolic representation) • The Power of Perception • three levels of cognitive control into two general categories • perceptual processing (SBB, RBB) – fast, effortless, parallel • analytic PS (KBB) – slow, laborious, serial, more error prone due to WM

8. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • two characteristics of complex work domain • highly skilled and extensive experience in controlling the system • interface design needs specific application – generality not important • make perceptual processing an attractive possibility • empirical evidence?  Brunswick (1956), Hammond et al. (1987) • perception can be very effective  not always leads to superior performance but the conditions characteristics of complex work domains are propitious for perceptual processing

9. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • The Propensity for Perceptual Processing • Two Examples • Klein(1989) – a series of naturalistic DM in the domain of firefighting, military operations, engineering design; nonroutine events • Expect that DM as analytical rather than recognitional • Surprisingly, experts often relies on recognitional DM • Mental model less taxing, advantage for experience • Quickly generate plausible action alternatives rather than the complete set of possible alternatives • Recognitional DM much quicker than analytical • Kirlick(1989) – complex, supervisory control task

10. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • More Examples and What Can Go Wrong • Hollnagel (1981) – surface/ deep control in process control • Fischoff et al. (1978), Smith (1989) in management DM • Skill and Task Effects • Task complexity, experience – which level of cognitive control • Necessary to understand how the levels are related and what the activities associated with each other • Interaction Between Levels • A framework for interface design must take this into account

11. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • Implications for Interface Design • SBB in the form of time-space signals, RBB by familiar perceptual forms (signs), KBB by meaningful structures (Symbols)

12. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • ECOLOGICAL INTERFACE DESIGN • The Principles • SBB – To support interaction via time-space signals, the operator should be able to act to directly on the display, and the structure of the displayed information should be isomorphic to the part-whole structure of movements • RBB – Provide a consistent one-to-one mapping between the work domain constraints and the cues or signs provided by the interface • no consistent mapping between perceptual cues and actions  procedural traps–TMI

13. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • For operator to often effectively control by perceptual cues rather than by KBB  mental economy • KBB – Represent the work domain in the form of an abstraction hierarchy to serve as an externalized mental model that will support knowledge-based problem solving • Limitations • Three issues pertaining to the use of AH • designers’ knowledge of the constraints governing the system • Robustness – empirical research needed • Limitations due to sensor technology • generalizability

14. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • WHAT IS THE CONTRIBUTION OF EID? • Communicating the Information to the Operator • Direct Manipulation Interfaces: • DMI allow users to directly act on what they see in the display but lack of the explanation of human information processing capability – SRK framework • Object Displays: • Mapping the higher order perceptual relationships onto goal-relevant variables • Directly relevant to EID principle 2 – to support RBB, the perceptual cues (signs) should directly specify the process constraints

15. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • Technology-Driven Display Design: • Computer graphics for building interfaces for complex technical systems – mimic or schematic diagrams • EID is top-down while technology-based is bottom-up • Representing the Complexity in the Domain • Operator Function Model: • Another formalism as an alternative to the AH • OFM (Mitchell and Miller, 1986) – a discrete control model • What data should be displayed? • How should those data be organized into screens? • How should context sensitivity be built into the display? • How can information be presented at various levels of detail?

16. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • Mappings are nondeterministic • Miller (1982) – structural vs. behavioral representation • A structural representation is one in which the structures that define the system are defied directly in some set of objects (AH) – complex systems where unanticipated events are the biggest threat to system safety • a behavioral representation is a representation of a dynamic system whose elements consist of system behavior (OFM) – situations where operators are required to dynamically select the relevant subset of data to carry out predictable tasks

17. Ecological Interface Design (EID) • EMPIRICAL EVALUATION • DURESS (Dual Reservoir System Simulation) a thermal-hydraulic process simulation • Physical/functional (P+F) interface and physical (P) interface • Functional variables to the higher levels of the AH • the P+F interface superior diagnosis performance to the P interface, primarily for experts • The higher-order functional info in the P+F interface is important for diagnosis, justifying for including higher levels of the AH in an interface • Superiority of the P+F interface in the memory task