Engineering automation in interactive critical systems

Abstract

This SIG focuses on the engineering of automation in interactive critical systems. Automation has already been studied in a number of (sub-) disciplines and application fields: design, human factors, psychology, (software) engineering, aviation, health care, games. One distinguishing feature of the area we are focusing on is that in the field of interactive critical systems properties such as reliability, dependability and fault-tolerance are as important as usability or user experience. The SIG targets at two problem areas: first the engineering of the user interaction with (partly-) autonomous systems: how to design, build and assess autonomous behavior, especially in cases where there is a need to represent on the user interface both autonomous and interactive objects. An example of such integration is the representation of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (where no direct interaction is possible), together with aircrafts (that have to be instructed by an air traffic controller to avoid the UAV). Second the design and engineering of user interaction in general for autonomous objectssystems (for example a cruise control in a car or an autopilot in an aircraft). The goal of the SIG is to raise interest in the CHI community on these aspects and to identify a community of researchers and practitioners interested in those more and more prominent issues of interfaces for interactive critical systems. The expected audience should be interested in addressing the issues of integration of mainly unconnected research domains to formulate a new joint research agenda.