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Seeing the woods for the trees: the problem of information inefficiency and information overload on operator performance

Dadashi, Nastaran; Golightly, David; Sharples, Sarah

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Authors

Nastaran Dadashi

David Golightly

SARAH SHARPLES SARAH.SHARPLES@NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK
Professor of Human Factors



Abstract

One of the recurring questions in designing dynamic control environments is whether providing more information leads to better operational decisions. The idea of having every piece of information and increasing situation awareness is so tempting (and in safety critical domains often mandatory) that has become an obstacle for designers and operators. This research examined this challenge within a railway control setting. A laboratory study was conducted to investigate the presentation of different levels of information (taken from data processing framework, Dadashi et al., 2014) and the association with, and potential prediction of, the performance of a human operator when completing a cognitively demanding problem solving scenario within railways. Results indicated that presenting users with information corresponding to their cognitive task (and no more) improves the performance of their problem solving/alarm handling. Knowing the key features of interest to various agents (machine or human) and using the data processing framework to guide the optimal level of information required by each of these agents could potentially lead to safer and more usable designs.

Citation

Dadashi, N., Golightly, D., & Sharples, S. (2016). Seeing the woods for the trees: the problem of information inefficiency and information overload on operator performance. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 49(19), 603-608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2016.10.628

Journal Article Type Conference Paper
Conference Name 13th IFAC/IFIP/IFORS/IEA Symposium on Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems
Start Date Aug 30, 2016
End Date Sep 2, 2016
Acceptance Date Apr 22, 2016
Online Publication Date Nov 9, 2016
Publication Date Nov 9, 2016
Deposit Date Jun 20, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal IFAC-PapersOnLine
Print ISSN 2405-8963
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 49
Issue 19
Pages 603-608
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2016.10.628
Keywords Human Computer Interaction, Decision Support System, Usability Engineering
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/783971
Publisher URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896316322406
Additional Information Published in IFAC Papers Online, 1474-6670

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