The Concept of Human Error and the Design of Reliable Human-Machine Systems

The concept of human error is unreliable as a basis for design of reliable human-machine systems. Humans are basically highly adaptive and 'errors' are closely related to the process of adaptation and learning. Therefore, reliability of system operation depends on an interface that is not designed so as to support a pre-conceived operating procedure, but, instead, makes visible the deep, functional structure of the system together with the boundaries of acceptable operation in away that allows operators to 'touch' the boundaries and to learn to cope with the effects of errors in a reversible way.

The concepts behind such 'ecological' interfaces are discussed, an it is argued that a 'typology' of visualization concepts is a pressing research need.