Automation

COSTANZA: Provide an example of how a participant modified behavior to adapt to the booking system

A participant was booking farther in advance and booking more slots that would preemptively cover unforeseeable changes in their schedule

COSTANZA: What is the purpose of Agent B?

Agent B is a booking system used to book time slots of washing machine use in a way to help minimize the cost of a wash by charging a battery when the electricity is cheapter

ONNASCH: What stages of automation does an alarm system represent?

An alarm system represents a very basic form of automation that is used to gather and analyze information about a task to be able to let an operator know about potentially critical states or events and support the users decision-making and attention allocation. (First two stages - acquisition and analysis)

ONNASCH: What is reliability as it applies to an alarm system?

Describes operators' tendency to rely on the alarm system when it indicates that the monitored process runs properly and the operators accordingly do not have to take evasive action

What are the automation philosophies?

Left-over principle: functions that cannot be assigned to machines are left for operators to carry out Compensatory principle: functions are assigned based on juxtaposing human-machine capabilities Complementarity principle: function allocation aims to sustain and strengthen human ability to perform efficiently

What are the four levels of automated control of vehicles?

Level 0 - no automation Level 1 - Function-Specific Automation (one or more control functions operated independently) Level 2 - Combined Function Automation (automation of at least 2 primary control functions working in unison) Level 3 - Limited Self-Driving Automation (driver can cede full control under certain traffic/environmental conditions) Level 4 - Full Self-Driving Automation (perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor conditions for entire trip)

ONNASCH: What is the MATB and how is it relevant to this research?

Multi-Attribute Task Battery: a multi-task flight simulation consisting of many tasks. What they use for the task experiment: but only compensatory tracking the resource management, and the system monitoring were implemented

STRICKLAND: Does Watson understand human language in all situations?

No, originally Watson understood language mostly in the situation of Jepordy clues and answers but now Watson is being trained to recognize language related to a few specific types of cancer

ONNASCH: What tasks does the operator retain when working with an alarm system?

Objective of the system is to support complex supervisory control tasks of operators. Relieve operators from continuous monitoring while still staying in the loop as alerts inform them when to shift attention to a critical system state. More efficient task management and priorities, as well as reduced workload

CARLSON: What is a supervisory control system?

Operators perform the duty of monitoring and typically only take over control when the automated system fails or encounters a situation that it is not designed to handle

What are the reasons for automating a system?

System becomes more complex; automation gives precision, stability, and speed; Automation is used for increased safety, reliability, economy, and comfort

COSTANZA: What is the purpose of the study?

The purpose of this study is to explore what asking people to "plan ahead" and therefore cause a disruption in their system of practices and see "the extent to how this impinges upon tacit and taken for granted expectations and disrupts the ways in which "the structures of everyday life or ordinarily and routinely produced." We wish to elucidate the sociotechnical issues involved in realizing the advantages offered by smart grid technologies by elaborating how users actually understand a future smart grid.

STRICKLAND: Why is this automation a goal for the hospital?

This automation would allow Watson to replicate the decision-making process of an oncologist with access to every medical journal and the expertise of the top specialists

STRICKLAND: What will Watson do?

Watson is being trained to be used as a tool for doctors in providing advice and a second opinion about suggested treatment options for cancer patients

What is complacency?

When the operator of an automated system believes the automated system has it handled and doesn't pay as much attention or isn't as careful

ONNASCH: Was there a difference in the ability of a participant to detect a failure based on the reliability of the alarm system?

Yes, control group only detected around 70% of engine malfunctions, and detection rates increased with alarm-support even in the lowest reliability condition up to 90% but not a difference based on reliability of different systems.

ONNASCH: What is a possible effect of a miss?

affect operators' monitoring strategies in non-alarm periods. The more critical events missed, the more operators must shift attention to the alarm supported task and raw data to compensate for this unreliability

ONNASCH: What is a false-alarm prone alarm system?

alarm system alerts an operator too often as not every alert corresponds to a critical event

ONNASCH: What is a miss-prone alarm system?

alarm system can fail to alert the operator by missing critical events

What stages of a system process can be automated?

all stages can be automated (acquire, analyze, decide, act)

ONNASCH: Where were the biggest differences in performance as a result of alarm system reliability?

attention allocation

COSTANZA: Why did they choose laundry as the type of household work?

because it involves much more than simply washing and drying clothes; it is enmeshed in the ordering of people's everyday routines and is dependent on many other factors unrelated to laundry themselves

COSTANZA: What is UbiComp?

concept in software engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear everywhere and anywhere

CARLSON: What is Mechanical Turk?

crowd sourcing internet marketplace enabling people to coordinate use of human intelligence to perform tasks or fill out surveys; through Amazon and allows participants to be paid for filling out surveys

ONNASCH: What is a possible effect of false alarms on the operator's behavior?

delayed responses towards an alarm as operators know from experience that many of the alarms provided by the system do not correspond to actual malfunction

What stages of a system process should be automated?

depends on the system and situation but monitoring and implementation are most likely to be automated

ONNASCH: How did the alarm system work?

gave a visual red alert that appears above the gauges whenever the alarm system detects a parameter deviating from its nominal value. However identification of the affected gauge and corresponding reset of parameter is still performed manually

CARLSON: How important is human intervention in the automated system's decision making for the car? The medical system?

human intervention in the automated system's decision making for the car would be very important to potentially avoid accidents; less important for the medical system because humans would get the last say anyways

CARLSON: Why is understanding an operator's trust of automation important?

if operator doesn't have enough trust or distrusts a system the may refuse to use it or misuse it and are less likely to take advantage of the system's capabilities. If people trust the system too much they are unlikely to monitor the system to the necessary degree and many not notice and miss times when they should have taken corrective actions

ONNASCH: Did the participants' ability to detect failures improve over time?

in control group, yes because they adapted their behavior to the characteristics of the alarm system over time and were able to compensate effectively for its unreliability

What do latent errors have to do with automation?

increased responsibility in automation increases responsibility for system performance on the system designer and successful system performance depends on the designer's ability to predict complex combinations of events

CARLSON: Table 1 contains a column labeled Mean. What does that number represent?

mean score taken from the Likert scale and shows which factors have greater influence on the trust of the respondents

ONNASCH: Given figure 1, explain the participant's task

monitor compensatory tracking in the upper middle position (required to keep a randomly moving cursor in the center target position by applying appropriate control inputs via joystick), resource management beneath (compensate for fuel depletion by pumping fuel from supply-tanks into the main tanks), system monitoring in the upper left display corner (four engine gauges with moving pointers participants monitor for abnormal values that occur randomly)

COSTANZA: What are the three key features of Agent B?

slot booking interface (allows users to schedule washes), software agent (running in background that monitors and predicts the price and charges battery when electricity is cheaper), notification system (reminders and price change alerts)

What is the task-artifact cycle?

tasks depict requirements for designed artifacts, which in turn suggests possibilities and limitations for redefined tasks and so on... automation does not replace human activity, it changes it

COSTANZA: In a 'smart' household energy system, what does 'smart' refer to?

the ability of systems to support the consumer in monitoring and controlling their home energy consumption

COSTANZA: How well did the participants understand the booking system's purpose, i.e., predicting the cost of charging a battery?

they understood the purpose of the system and booking procedure pretty well and most highlighted it as a tool of organization with a particular emphasis on an awareness of cost and economic budgeting

CARLSON: The survey about the automated car contains this item: 'your understanding of the way the car works'. The survey about the automated medical system contains this item: 'your understanding of the way the machine works'. The importance of those items differs between the car and the medical system. How do you interpret this difference?

understanding of system influences trust a lot more in cars than in medical systems; based on whether the automated system is used directly by the end-user or whether it is utilized by a mediator