User-centered methods are insufficient for safety critical systems

  • Authors:
  • Harold Thimbleby

  • Affiliations:
  • Future Interaction Technology Laboratory, Swansea University, Wales

  • Venue:
  • USAB'07 Proceedings of the 3rd Human-computer interaction and usability engineering of the Austrian computer society conference on HCI and usability for medicine and health care
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

The traditional approaches of HCI are essential, but they are unable to cope with the complexity of typical modern interactive devices in the safety critical context of medical devices. We outline some technical approaches, based on simple and "easy to use" formal methods, to improve usability and safety, and show how they scale to typical devices. Specifically: (i) it is easy to visualize behavioral properties; (ii) it is easy to formalize and check properties rigorously; (iii) the scale of typical devices means that conventional usercentered approaches, while still necessary, are insufficient to contribute reliably to safety related interaction issues.