Patterns for designing safety-critical interactive systems
Andrew Hussey, Michael Mahemoff · 1999
Users of safety-critical systems are expected to effectively control or monitor complex systems, with errors potentially leading to catastrophic consequences. For such high-consequence systems, safety is of paramount importanceandmustbedesignedintothehuman-machineinterface. There are many case studies available which show how inadequate design practice led to poor safety and usability, but concrete guidance on good design practices is scarce. This paper argues that the pattern language paradigm---which is widely used in the software design community---is a suitable means of documenting appropriate design strategies. We discuss how typical usability-related properties (e.g., flexibility) need some adjustment to be used for assessing safety-critical systems and document a pattern language which is basedon corresponding "safety-usability" principles. Keywords: Safety-critical, user-interface, usability, design patterns. 1 Introduction 1.1 Background A system's usability can...