Linking Context to Evaluation in the Design of Safety Critical Interfaces

The rate of introduction of new technology into safety critical domains continues to increase. Improvements in evaluation methods are needed to keep pace with the rapid development of these technologies. A significant challenge in improving evaluation is developing efficient methods for collecting and characterizing knowledge of the domain and context of the work being performed. Traditional methods of incorporating domain and context knowledge into an evaluation rely upon expert user testing, but these methods are expensive and resource intensive. This paper will describe three new methods for evaluating the applicability of a user interface within a safety-critical domain (specifically aerospace work domains), and consider how these methods may be incorporated into current evaluation processes.