Designing for Situation Awareness: An Approach to User-Centered Design (Paperback)

by Mica R. Endsley (Author), Betty Bolte (Author), Debra G. Jones (Author) "We are living in the 'information age'..." (more)
Key Phrases: projected fuel usage, planned cruise altitude, fuel sufficiency, National Transportation Safety Board, Comprehension Level, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book is directed at human factors researchers and practitioners who are engaged in designing systems to support Situation Awareness (SA) in a wide variety of areas and is liberally illustrated with actual design examples.

About the Author
Mica R. Endsley, Betty Bolte and Debra G. Jones, SA Technologies, USA

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: CRC; 1 edition (July 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074840967X
• ISBN-13: 978-0748409679
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #347,059 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Designers of Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Support Tools, October 11, 2006

By	Susanne Jul (Kihei Maui HI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a Should Read for anyone involved with the design of information technology to support complex problem-solving and decision-making in any setting. It's a Must Read for anyone working with highly dynamic situations or critical situation management, including emergency and disaster response. Dr. Endsley and her co-authors not only lay out a very thorough explanation of the design challenges imposed by human cognitive behaviors and limitations, but also review in depth the research that reveals these behaviors and limitations. They then present a very comprehensive set of guidelines for addressing these challenges in design.

Chapter 4 should be required reading for all user interface design practitioners and students. In this chapter, Dr. Endsley (who comes from the human factors and ergonomics field) and her colleagues lay out a much better description of the process of designing and developing user interface software than any I have seen anywhere in the human-computer interaction or software engineering literature.

This book is the result of years of exhaustive research that sets a gold standard for use-inspired basic research. It is useful to researchers as well as practitioners. I am in awe of the quality of the work and the quality of the results.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interface Design is a Life and Death Matter, July 26, 2007

By	Ross Morrissey - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The correspondence between this work and that of Alan Cooper (The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity and About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design) are staggering. Dr. Endsley and her co-writers rail about how a technology focus leads to poor user interfaces, and recommend a user-centered design approach including "Goal-directed Task Analysis." Alan Cooper rails about how a technology focus leads to poor user interfaces and recommends a user-focused approach he calls "Goal-Directed Design." The difference between this book and Cooper's books is the wealth of dramatic examples and underlying research in Designing for Situation Awareness.

Situation Awareness refers to the OO of the OODA loop - getting input from the environment - Observing - and understanding the significance of that input now and in the future - Orienting. It is a concept used widely in aviation, medicine, and the military - areas where life and death decisions are routinely made based on situation awareness.

One study cited in this book identifies flawed situation awareness as the root cause of 88% of aircraft crashes due to human error. In the remaining 12% the wrong decision was made or there was a problem with execution. With these sobering figures, this book lays out design guidelines to enhance situation awareness.

A formal situation awareness design approach would involve realistic prototyping and rigorous testing as you'd expect for anything related to aviation or medicine. This book provides 50 concrete design principles in six different areas to assist this formal design cycle, but as the book says: "These principles can be applied to a wide range of systems from a variety of domains where achieving and maintaining SA [Situation Awareness] is challenging."

Anyone designing interfaces to support situation awareness or quick comprehension - like performance dashboards - can learn from this book. Unlike software design examples, the examples in this book contain flight numbers and phrases like "killing all aboard" that underscore how very critical situation awareness is, and how driven the authors are to help raise the standards of design.

The only minor criticism I can level is a feeling that this book was rushed together; but with the critical importance of the topic I can see why. I look forward to the recently announced second edition.