Course content

The course will teach students to understand how to create safety critical designs with particular focus on safety. In order to accomplish this, knowledge is provided in theories of cognitive ergonomics, situation awareness and principles of display design.

Some of the major topics covered are as follows

The history of industrial human machine interfaces and safety critical systems
Understanding human error
Understanding human perception
Displays and Controls
Alarms
Situation awareness

These topics will be explored in depth through the examples in ship control rooms (ship bridge), (or) nuclear control rooms (or) air traffic control rooms (ATCs) (or) safety critical systems in the healthcare sector.

Learning outcome

On completion of this course, the students will at the level of:
Knowledge:
- Demonstrate how cognitive & physical abilities impacts safety in safety critical designs.
- Demonstrate the difference between traditional methods of design & the ones suitable for safety critical designs.
Skills:
- Create concepts for safety critical designs that take into consideration users and use context.
- Iteratively develop safety critical designs from early non-functional sketches to mock-ups.
General Competence:
- Understand safety in the context of safety critical design.

Learning methods and activities

-Lectures
-Group work
-Homework Assignments related to Project work
-Project work

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Courses in ‘Probability & Statistics’ and ‘Introduction to Human Factors/Ergonomics’ are recommended.

Required previous knowledge

There are no compulsory pre-requisites for this course.

Course materials

Johnson, Jeff (2014) Designing with the Mind in Mind. 2nd ed., Elsevier Science. ISBN: 978012407914.

Selected Journal and Conference papers