HUMAN ERRORS

IN UX DESIGN
Assignment for the fulfillment of course work of executive phd,
semester 3

Submitted By:
Anjali Verma
9 2 2 A R 5 0 01
Semester 3,
Executive PhD, NIT
Rourkela
 UX DESIGN- HUMAN ERROR
DIFFERENT CONCEPTS

 1 . Interface features and operator errors

 [Link]'s handling
 3. Mental workload
 4. Psychological aspects of human error
 5. Error categorizations
 6. Error production
 7. Error detection
 8. Cognitive aspects of decision making
 9. Heuristic and biases in human decision making
 UX DESIGN- HUMAN ERROR
DIFFERENT CONCEPTS

Most modern systems are designed with built-in error-

prevention mechanisms, but this is often not the case for

websites and mobile applications. No human is perfect, so

we’re prone to error. When systems aren’t designed to deal with

human error, we end up exasperated and annoyed.

 INTERFACE FEATURES AND OPERATOR
ERRORS

Human Error
 Human operators are one of the biggest sources of
errors in any complex system. Mostly these errors
are attributed to a poorly designed human-computer
interface (HCI).
COMPLEX SYSTEM ARE DESIGNED AND
WORKS WITHIN FOLLOWING MODEL
 PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN
ERROR

 Human beings are of ten needed to be the fail-safe in an automated

system. These Operator s under the circumstances of boredom or
panic, under the stance of stress can take wrong decision and Error
occurs.
 when the user is not routinely involved in the control of the system,
they will tend to become bored and be lulled into complacency. This
is known as operator drop-out. Since the user's responsiveness is
dulled, in a real emergency situation, he or she may not be able to
recover as quickly and will tend to make more mistakes.
 Stress is also a major contributing factor to human error. Stressful
situations include unfamiliar or exceptional occurrences, incidents
that may cause a high loss of money, data, or life, or time critical
tasks. Human per formance tends to degrade when stress levels are
raised.
 INTERFACE FEATURES AND OPERATOR
ERRORS
 So the Interface between Human and computer should
be designed carefully. It should give clear instructions
on the case of panic how to take informed decision.
 High false alarm rates will make the operator ignore a
real alarm condition.
 Methods for determining the effectiveness of an HCI,
such as heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthroughs,
and empirical evaluations are often cumbersome.
 System designers must insure that the HCI is easy and
intuitive for human operators to use, but not so simple
that it lulls the operator into a state of complacency
and lowers his or her responsiveness to emergency
situations.
 PROBABILITY OF ERRORS FOR
DIFFERENT REASONS
Description Error Probability

General rate for errors involving high stress levels 0.3

Operator fails to act correctly in the first 30 minutes of an emergency

0.1
situation
Operator fails to act correctly after the first few hours in a high stress
0.03
situation

Error in a routine operation where care is required 0.01

Error in simple routine operation 0.001

Selection of the wrong switch (dissimilar in shape) 0.001

Human-performance limit: single operator 0.0001

Human-performance limit: team of operators performing a well
0.00001
designed task

General Human-Error Probability Data in Various Operating Conditions

 ERROR PRODUCTION

Sources of Human Error

 Automated systems are extremely good at repetitive
tasks. However, if an unusual situation occurs and
corrective action must be taken, a human operator is
needed handle the emergency.
 Operators are assigned to passively monitor the
system when there is no problem, and is only a fail-
safe in an emergency.
 This is a major problem in HCI design, because when
the user is not routinely involved in the control of the
system, they will tend to become bored and be lulled
into complacency. This is called operator drop-out.
 ERROR PRODUCTION

Sources of Human Error

 In Operator drop-out situation, responsiveness is
dulled and in a real emergency situation, he or she
may not be able to recover as quickly and will tend to
make more mistakes.
 If the operator is routinely involved, he/she will
make mistakes and adapt to the common mode of
operation, but again the persistent mental model of
the system in its normal mode of operation he will
tend to ignore the Data showing error.
 So the data error shall be displayed with high level of
prominence in the HCI model.
 ERROR PRODUCTION

 Stress is also a major contributing factor to human

error. Stressful situations include unfamiliar or
exceptional occurrences, incidents that may cause a
high loss of money, data, or life, or time critical
tasks.
 Human performance tends to degrade when stress
levels are raised. Intensive training can reduce this
affect by making unusual situations a familiar
scenario with drills.
 The failure rate can be as high as 30% in extreme
situations. Unfortunately, the human operator is our
only option, since a computer system usually cannot
correct for truly unique situations and emergencies.
 ERROR PRODUCTION

 The HCI must be designed so that it provides enough

novelty to keep the user alert and interested in his or
her job, but not so extremely complicated that the
user will find it difficult to operate.
 Also it should be designed in such a way that the
occurrence of errors are as less as possible.
 ERROR CATAGORISATION

The two types of human errors are

 Slips and
 Mistakes
A slip occurs when a person's intended goal is correct, but
something goes wrong in the execution.
A mistake occurs when the goal is incorrect, either due to a
lack of understanding of the system or a misinterpretation of
the system itself.
To fix these errors, we need to test and apply dif ferent
strategies.
 For slips, designers should focus on low -level interface
solutions.
 For mistakes, designers should improve the system's
underlying structure and feedback.
 MODES HANDLING

Modes are a frequently misunderstood UI concept,

they are often confused with different visual
representations of the same data, or features located
in a separate part of an application.
 Definition: Modes are different interpretations of the
user input by the system, depending on the state
which is active. Ex: The most classic example of a
mode is the use of the Caps Lock key on a typical
keyboard: With the Caps Lock key off, pressing the
key for the letter a in a text editor will display lower-
case a. With Caps Lock on, the same action will
result in an upper-case A. Thus, the Caps Lock key is
a mode switcher.
 MENTAL WORKLOAD

Mental workload’ is a way of describing the mental

stress and strain of being busy at work. Excessive
‘mental workload’ often leads to slips, mistakes,
misunderstandings, omissions and other errors. These
include:
 Active and passive vigilance tasks.
 Problem recognition and diagnosis
 Formulation and implementation of plans of actions
 Prioritisation of plans of action.
 Remembering to do things.
 Making prompt decisions based on the integration of
experience and an understanding of current situations.
 Coping with unexpected events
 MENTAL WORKLOAD

It is possible to have too low a mental workload so that

mistakes are caused by boredom or inattention because target
events and noteworthy occurrences are so infrequent that they
are simply not expected. Some examples illustrate dif ferent
aspects of the notion of ‘high mental workload’:-
 A pilot dealing with an emergency with too many things to do.
 A general practitioner (family doctor) with too many patients
to see in a short a space of time.
 A design team with a cumbersome quality procedure that
must be adhered to, (though it hinders rather than helps the
design process), and a set of impossible deadlines and project
based cost pressures.
Each of these cases are different, yet in each case, mental
workload can lead to poor decision-making, planning and
performance.
 BIASES IN HUMAN DECISION MAKING

 Bias is the way humans interpret and evaluate the context and
information about something according to how these are presented
or how they perceive these through the lens of their values and
beliefs
 The HCI must provide intuitive controls and appropriate feedback to
the user. Many HCI's can cause information overload.
 Another way to over whelm the operator is to have alarm sensitivity
set too high. If an operator gets an alarm for nearly ever y action,
most of which are false, he or she will ignore the alarm when there
is a real emergency condition.
 The HCI must also have a confidence level that will allow the
operator to assess the validity of its information. The operator
should not have to rely on one display for several sensor s.
 Also, several different displays should not relay information from
the same sensor. This would give the user the unsubstantiated
notion that he or she had more information than what was available
 HEURISTIC

There are several heuristics for judging a well designed user

interface, but there is no systematic method for designing safe,
usable HCI's. It is also dif ficult to quantitatively measure the safety
and usability of an inter face, as well as find and correct for defects

Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic evaluation involves having a set of people (the evaluators)
inspect a user interface design and judge it based on a set of
usability guidelines. These guidelines are qualitative and cannot be
concretely measured, but the evaluators can make relative judgments
about how well the user inter face adheres to the guidelines.
 HEURISTIC

A sample set of usability heuristics:

 Simple and natural dialog
 Speak the users language
 Minimize the user s memor y load
 Consistency
 Feedback
 Clearly marked exits
 Shor tcuts
 Precise and constructive error messages
 Prevent errors
 Help and documentation
 HEURISTIC

 This technique is usually applied early in the life cycle of a system,

since a working user inter face is not necessar y to carr y it out. Each
individual evaluator can inspect the user inter face on his or her
own, judging it according to the set of heuristics without actually
having to operate the inter face.
 This is purely an inspection method. It has been found that to
achieve optimal coverage for all inter face problems.
 Heuristic evaluation can achieve good results with as few as three
evaluators. Heuristic evaluation is good at uncovering error s and
explaining why there are usability problems in the inter face.
 Once the causes are known, it is fairly easy to implement a solution
to fix the inter face. This can be extremely time and cost saving
since things can be corrected before the user inter face is actually
built.