Ironies of automation (Bainbridge, 1983) is a foundational paper on what has been learned from automating work, or adding automation to tools people use for work. Ironies of artificial intelligence (Endsley, 2023) adds new observations on how LLM-powered systems have both similar and also new kinds of issues and opportunities. I also explain my approach to designing LLM systems.
#hci
LLMs are helpful and should be used with intent. Use them as tools to enhance your abilities while deliberately maintaining the fundamental skills you need to perform when the automation fails.
Expert group for EU has published Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. The document specifies a list of requirements the systems should meet to be considered trustworthy. They also define a rough framework and an assessment list to offer guidance on practical implementation. The objective is to empower humans and offer them meaningful work instead of replacing them. Augmenting human abilities is an approach I'm happy to advocate for.
Some years ago I tried building a platformer game (PC / Android) and found the experience interesting from the UX point of view. This is my recap of what I remember. TLDR: You can cheat to make it feel more like a game. Physics simulation rarely makes a good platformer (although Trine might beg to differ). At least you'll need to fine-tune your character movement physics.
How increasing automation shifts human operators from active participants to system supervisors — and why that creates serious problems in security-critical domains.
Situation awareness and distributed situation awareness are interesting concepts, but how does it map to the real world? How can we as designers take the concept and use it to guide our designs, to support rather than hinder the situation awareness of the end users?
An overview of Stanton et al.'s Distributed Situation Awareness model — a systemic view of awareness that spans both human and non-human agents in complex systems.
Situation awareness (SA) is a concept that describes how people stay entangled into events happening around them. SA model can be used to design systems so that they support users acquiring and maintaining situational awareness. Mica R. Endsley is one of the most cited researchers on SA, and has created a formal definition of SA.
Notes from Nielsen's keynote comparing web UX in 2016 vs 2004. Task success is up but findability remains the biggest problem — information architecture still matters most.
A recap of Gould & Lewis's 1985 paper, which argued for early user focus, empirical measurement, and iterative design — principles that still sound radical in many organisations today.
A look at a 2010 Finnish study on the usability of electronic patient record systems, where doctors rated most systems between poor and adequate. In Finnish.
A brief introduction to the ISO 9241-210 standard for human-centred design — its four core activities and six principles. In Finnish.
An introduction to Norman's Seven Stages of Action model and how understanding how people plan and perceive can make software interfaces more intuitive.
When people can't use a device, they blame themselves. They shouldn't — bad design is almost always the culprit.