Abstract

Technological advances in the field of information and interactive systems mean that increasing numbers of factors and criteria are considered to assess quality during the design, development and evaluation process. In this context, concepts such as quality of use and user experience have appeared and in many cases are replacing or supplementing existing usability properties to identify the quality of the interaction process. In this paper we describe and analyze the evolution of the different concepts to identify the quality of the interaction on information systems and we help to characterize and locate each quality factor in one dimension and a specific range of the process of use, and consider the relationships and overlap between these concepts.

Abstract

Socio-Technical Systems (STS) such as Air Traffic Management Systems (ATM) are considered as complex as they encompass interactions involving humans and machines deeply influenced by environmental aspects (e.g. weather conditions) and by the overall organizational structure in which they are deployed in. Within such STS, interactive systems are omnipresent allowing operators to interact with the underlying system. Such interactive systems must be both usable (i.e. enabling users to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively while ensuring a certain level of operator satisfaction) and resilient to adverse events including software malfunctions (e.g. automation degradation) as well as interaction related problems (e.g. human errors or interactive system failures). Current techniques, methods and tools do not allow to model STSs as a whole and thus to analyze both usability and resilience properties. This paper proposes a multi-models based approach for the modelling and the analysis of partly-autonomous interactive systems for assessing their resilience and usability. The approach integrates 3 modelling techniques: Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) (focused on organizational functions), Human-centered Assessment and Modelling to Support Task Engineering for Resilient Systems (HAMSTERS) (centered on human goals and activities) and Interactive Cooperative Objects (ICO) (dedicated to the modelling of interactive systems). The principles of the multi-models approach is illustrated on an example for carefully showing the extensions proposed to the selected modelling techniques and how they integrate together. A case study dealing with aircraft route change due to bad weather conditions demonstrates the scalability and benefits of the approach.