Abstract
Systems whose design is primarily aimed at ensuring efficient, effective and safe working, such as control rooms, have traditionally been evaluated in terms of criteria that correspond directly to those values: functional correctness, time to complete tasks, etc. This paper reports on a study of control room working that identified other factors that contributed directly to overall system safety. These factors included the ability of staff to manage uncertainty, to learn in an exploratory way, to reflect on their actions, and to engage in problem-solving that has many of the hallmarks of playing puzzles which, in turn, supports exploratory learning. These factors, while currently difficult to measure or explicitly design for, must be recognized and valued in design.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beyer H, Holtzblatt K (1998) Contextual design. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco
Blandford A, Wong W (2004) Situation awareness in emergency medical dispatch international. J Human Comput Stud 61(4):421–452
Brown E, Cairns P (2004) A grounded investigation of immersion in games. In: ACM conf. on human factors in computing systems, CHI 2004, ACM Press, pp 1297–1300
Charmaz K (2006) Constructing grounded theory. Sage, Beverly Hills
Costea B, Crump N, Holm J (2005) Dionysus at work? The ethos of play and the ethos of management. Cult Organ 11(2):139–151
Csikszentmihalyi M (1990) Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. Harper and Row, New York
Furniss D, Blandford A (2006) Understanding emergency medical dispatch in terms of distributed cognition: a case study. Ergon J 49(12/13):1174–1203
Garbis C (2002) Exploring the openness of cognitive artifacts in cooperative process management. Cogn Tech Work 4:9–21
Garris R, Ahlers R, Driskell J (2002) Games, motivation and learning: a research and practice model. Simul Gaming 33:44–467
Heath C, Luff P (1992) Collaboration and control: crisis management and multimedia technology in London underground line control rooms. Comput Supported Coop Work 1:69–94
Hollan JD, Hutchins EL, Kirsh D (2000) Distributed cognition: toward a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. ACM Trans CHI 7(2):174–196
Hollnagel E (1998) Cognitive reliability and error analysis method (CREAM). Elsevier Science, Oxford
Hollnagel E (2005) Human reliability assessment in context. Nucl Eng Technol 37(2):159–166
Hollnagel E, Woods DD, Leveson N (eds) (2006) Resilience engineering: concepts and precepts. Ashgate, UK
Hutchins E (1995) Cognition in the wild. MIT Press, Cambridge
Kauppi A, Wikström J, Sandblad B, Andersson A (2006) Future train traffic control: control by re-planning. Cogn Technol Work 8:50–56
Kilgore D (2001) Critical and postmodern perspectives on adult learning. New Dir Adult Contin Educ 89:53–61
Luff P, Heath C (2000) The collaborative production of computer commands in command and control International. J Human Comput Stud 52(4):669–699
McCarthy J, Wright P (2004) Technology as experience. MIT Press, Cambridge
Pledger S, Horbury C, Bourne A (2005) Human factors in LUL—history, progress and future. In: Wilson J, Norris B, Clarke T, Mills A (eds) Rail human factors: supporting the integrated railway. Ashgate, Hampshire, pp 497–507
Reason J (1990) Human error. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Reiber L (1996) Seriously considering play: designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educ Tech Res Dev 44(2):43–58
Rochlin G (1999) Safe operation as a social construct. Ergonomics 42(11):1549–1560
Sengers P, Boehner K, David S, Kaye J (2005) Reflective design. In: Bertelsen OW, Bouvin NO, Krogh PG, Kyng M (eds) Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on critical computing: between sense and sensibility. CC ‘05. ACM Press, New York, pp 49–58
Stearn M, Clarke T, Robinson J (2005) Baseline ergonomics assessment of signalling control facilities. In: Wilson J, Norris B, Clarke T, Mills A (eds) Rail human factors: supporting the integrated railway. Ashgate, Hampshire, pp 262–271
Wenger E (1999) Communities of practice: learning meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to all the staff at London Underground who contributed to this study in any way, and to anonymous referees of an earlier version of this paper for constructive criticism. This work was partially funded by EPSRC grants GR/S67494 and GR/S67500.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, P., Blandford, A. & Back, J. Questioning, exploring, narrating and playing in the control room to maintain system safety. Cogn Tech Work 11, 279–291 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-008-0116-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-008-0116-1