Error Categorization and Analysis in Man-Computer Communication Systems

This paper briefly examines traditional approaches to human reliability and presents a technique which permits the system designer to derive a mutually exclusive and exhaustive set of operator error categories in a man-computer system. These error categories are defined in terms of process failures and provide the system designer with a qualitative index suitable for determining error causes and consequences. The technique is demonstrated, and the utility of the resulting error categories is evaluated in the context of two studies on a military information processing system. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of detectable and non-detectable errors and a suggestion for determining the impact of errors on ultimate system goals.