Human factors/ergonomics to support the design and testing of rapidly manufactured ventilators in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: This paper describes a rapid response project from the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors (CIEHF) to support the design, development, usability testing and operation of new ventilators as part of the UK response during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: A five-step approach was taken to (1) assess the COVID-19 situation and decide to formulate a response; (2) mobilise and coordinate Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) specialists; (3) ideate, with HFE specialists collaborating to identify, analyse the issues and opportunities, and develop strategies, plans and processes; (4) generate outputs and solutions; and (5) respond to the COVID-19 situation via targeted support and guidance.

Results: The response for the rapidly manufactured ventilator systems (RMVS) has been used to influence both strategy and practice to address concerns about changing safety standards and the detailed design procedure with RMVS manufacturers.

'Remixing Rasmussen': The evolution of Accimaps within systemic accident analysis.

Throughout Jens Rasmussen's career there has been a continued emphasis on the development of methods, techniques and tools for accident analysis and investigation. In this paper we focus on the evolution and development of one specific example, namely Accimaps and their use for accident analysis. We describe the origins of Accimaps followed by a review of 27 studies which have applied and adapted Accimaps over the period 2000-2015 to a range of domains and types of accident.

Designing a ticket to ride with the Cognitive Work Analysis Design Toolkit.

Unlabelled: Cognitive work analysis has been applied in the design of numerous sociotechnical systems. The process used to translate analysis outputs into design concepts, however, is not always clear. Moreover, structured processes for translating the outputs of ergonomics methods into concrete designs are lacking.

Combining network analysis with Cognitive Work Analysis: insights into social organisational and cooperation analysis.

Unlabelled: Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) allows complex, sociotechnical systems to be explored in terms of their potential configurations. However, CWA does not explicitly analyse the manner in which person-to-person communication is performed in these configurations. Consequently, the combination of CWA with Social Network Analysis provides a means by which CWA output can be analysed to consider communication structure.

A practical approach to glare assessment for train cabs.

The assessment of glare is a key consideration in the design of a railway driver's cab. However, unlike assessment of other factors, such as forward visibility, there are no standardised approaches for performing assessments of glare. This paper describes an approach for assessing the impact of glare in a full size mock-up of a railway cab.

Human performance under two different command and control paradigms.

The paradoxical behaviour of a new command and control concept called Network Enabled Capability (NEC) provides the motivation for this paper. In it, a traditional hierarchical command and control organisation was pitted against a network centric alternative on a common task, played thirty times, by two teams. Multiple regression was used to undertake a simple form of time series analysis.

What could they have been thinking? How sociotechnical system design influences cognition: a case study of the Stockwell shooting.

Understanding why an individual acted in a certain way is of fundamental importance to the human factors community, especially when the choice of action results in an undesirable outcome. This challenge is typically tackled by applying retrospective interview techniques to generate models of what happened, recording deviations from a 'correct procedure'. While such approaches may have great utility in tightly constrained procedural environments, they are less applicable in complex sociotechnical systems that require individuals to modify procedures in real time to respond to a changing environment.

A formative approach to developing synthetic environment fidelity requirements for decision-making training.

This paper describes a new approach for developing design specifications for synthetic environments that support decisions making training. The approach starts by modelling the constraints governing decision-making activity in the real world. A focus is placed on what could happen in the decision-making process, rather than what does or what should.

Translating concepts of complexity to the field of ergonomics.

Since 1958 more than 80 journal papers from the mainstream ergonomics literature have used either the words 'complex' or 'complexity' in their titles. Of those, more than 90% have been published in only the past 20 years. This observation communicates something interesting about the way in which contemporary ergonomics problems are being understood.

A new approach for designing cognitive artefacts to support disaster management.

The public display of information is not a new phenomenon; whiteboards (and blackboards before them) have commonly been used to share information. Once annotated, these collaborative information sources have clear benefits for cognition, reducing the burden on short-term memory and supporting parallel processing. This paper introduces a structured approach for considering the design and development of these cognitive artefacts with the aim of enhancing system performance.

A systemic approach to accident analysis: a case study of the Stockwell shooting.

This paper uses a systemic approach to accident investigation, based upon AcciMaps, to model the events leading up to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Underground station in July 2005. The model captures many of the findings of the Independent Police Complaints Commission's report in a single representation, modelling their interdependencies and the causal flow. Furthermore, by taking a systemic approach, the analysis identifies further considerations related to the suitability of the Metropolitan Police Service's organisational structure to support rapid-paced operations, where reliable identification of a suspect is not possible.

Does advanced driver training improve situational awareness?

Over 70 years of experiential evidence suggests that a specific form of advanced driver training, one based on an explicit system of car control, improves driver situation awareness (SA). Five experimental hypotheses are developed. They propose that advanced driving should increase the number of information elements in the driver's working memory, increase the interconnection between those elements, increase the amount of 'new' information in memory as well as the prominence of existing information, and that finally, it should stimulate behaviours that help drivers evolve better situations to be aware of.

From telephones to iPhones: applying systems thinking to networked, interoperable products.

An expanding array of consumer products have the facility to have things added in and plugged on, their firmware upgraded, and as yet un-thought of future capability supported. In short, more and more products can be connected to something and/or someone, and in doing so are slowly adapting to the current day state of modernity that is called 'the information age'. Inevitably, this brings with it changes in the way that products should be thought about and designed.

Crash dieting: the effects of eating and drinking on driving performance.

Previous research suggests that compared to mobile phone use, eating and drinking while driving is more common and is seen as lower risk by drivers. Nevertheless, snacking at the wheel can affect vehicle control to a similar extent as using a hands-free phone, and is actually a causal factor in more crashes. So far, though, there has not been a controlled empirical study of this problem.