The effect of a hazard depends on the operators awareness of it. Accordingly, we need to define two states of the hazard:

• Explicit hazards, of which the operators are aware, though they might fail to handle in time.  If the operators are aware of the hazard, they may try to cope with it, namely, to enforce the system to resume its normal situation .
• Latent hazards, which might result in an operational surprise. If the operators are not aware of the hazard, subsequent operation might violate the rules, ending up with an incidence .

The “Oops” reaction

Often, people do not admit their basic need to learn by exploration, and they feel ashamed about the undesirable results

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Don Norman’s book The Design of Everyday Things .

Assuring situation awareness

Display all relevant information on screen to make the user aware of the variables and parameters that may affect the system behavior in response to action.

Updated on 19 Jul 2016.