Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001

Front Cover
Palgrave Macmillan, Jan 17, 2004 - Business & Economics - 312 pages
Machines dominate our lives, from alarm clocks that wake us up in the morning to radios that lull us to sleep. Most of our interactions with automated machines and computers are problem-free, but more often than we would like, they can be irritating and confusing. This is frequently harmless, such as a VCR recording the wrong show, but when it involves a critical system like an autopilot or medical device it can be a matter of life or death. Taming HAL seeks to explain these miscommunications between humans and machines by exploring user interfaces of everyday devices. Degani examines thirty different systems for human use, including watches, consumer electronic products, Internet applications, cars, medical equipment, navigation systems onboard cruise ships, and autopilots of commercial aircraft. Readers will discover why interfaces between people and machines all too often do not work and what needs to be done to avoid potential tragedies.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Part
6
Foundations
9
Machines and Maps
11
Users and Maps
21
Nondeterminism in UserMachine Interaction
35
The Crash of Korean Air Lines Flight 007
55
Part Two Characteristics of Machines and Principles of User Interaction
67
Navigation and Internet Interaction
135
Part Three User Interaction with Automated Control Systems
147
On a Winters Night
149
Incorrect Blood Pressure
163
Procedures Synchronization and Automation
177
Automation in Modern Aircraft
200
Automation Protections and Tribulations
214
Verification of UserMachine Interaction
238

Characteristics of Machines and Frugal AirConditioners
69
Cordless Phones and Population Stereotypes
79
VCRs and Consistency Problems
88
The Grounding of the Royal Majesty
100
Walkin Interfaces and Internet Applications
121
Beyond the Interface
256
Conclusions and Observations
274
Notes
283
Index
305
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Asaf Degani is a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Georgia Tech and is on advisory boards of several start-up companies. Degani lives in Palo Alto, C.A.