Beyond Levels of Automation: Developing More Detailed Guidance for Human Automation Interaction Design

There is growing recognition of a need to go beyond levels of automation frameworks to provide more detailed guidance for design of effective human automation interaction (HAI). Here we present some design questions that are important for designers of HAI to address as they develop the requirements for the software architecture and user interfaces for automated aids. This set of guiding questions has grown out of our experience in developing a series of successful collaborative automation systems for airlift planning and scheduling. We illustrate through examples how answers to these high-level questions helped inform the HAI design decisions we confronted. The set of questions are offered in an attempt to broaden the discussion of how best to provide guidance to system developers confronted with HAI design challenges.