CMT: 18th Feb ‘08

 

Paola’s class today started by demanding the papers she asked us to search on safety critical systems; “Alarm” domain, and designing for complex systems.We then moved on towards identifying few issues related to organisational/ societal factors affecting the design/perception and response relating to Problems with Alarms, analysis of the problems, organizational and–Historical analysis of failure to respond to alarms.In the paper “an analysis of problems with auditory alarms: Defining the roles of alarms in process monitoring tasks” by Yan Xiao and F Jacob Seagull of University of Maryland School of medicine and University of Illinois at Urban-Champion. We also discussed historical artefacts; views about the problems alarm is intended to solve.

Click here for the paper: Alarm review

The perception or view of alarms varies in different domain.

The weight attached to procedures makes a substantial difference in designing industrial or everyday products.

What is the role of historical approach?

What are the organizational/societal factors that induce larger number of disruptive alarms; why do they induce these alarms?

Finishing the design-customization is the only way that users can, in an intelligent way, put chunks in the cracks that the designer left between their designs and the users’ idiosyncratic ways of doing things, not appropriately.

Next week assignment is to send by Wednesday two papers on safety critical domains, from 2005 forward to date.

PDE: 22nd Feb ‘08

No session for this week. Individually working on our projects.