Accounting for Individual and Situation Characteristics to Understand the User Behaviour when Interacting with Systems during Critical Situations

Abstract

Human error studies tend to focus on identifying the relationship between human activity, errors and their consequences. Accidents and incidents report analysis has been the path followed by several authors in the human error studies field, as it will be discussed in this paper. However, error reports tend to detail technical aspects of the error occurrence but fail to explore the human-behaviour component that might have influenced it. In order to investigate the human behaviour and its relation with accidents and human errors the authors propose to observe individuals working during critical situations, while adopting a methodological approach supported by an experimental protocol, to ensure a rigorous systematization of the data gathering and analysis. This paper presents a cognitive model which accounts for the knowledge of the individual and situation characteristics when analysing the user behaviour during critical situations. It also presents the supporting experimental protocol, and discusses its application in the context of a decision making aid system, employed during maritime pollution crisis management.