Time design: analysing human temporal control behaviour in dynamic real-time systems

This paper presents work aimed at supporting the design of temporal aspects of socio-technical systems. Time design is a framework for (a) analysing and representing temporal properties of the work domain, (b) generating design options that support timely, flexible and dependable function servicing, and (c) providing knowledge about the characteristics and biases of human temporal control behaviour. In support of the latter end, two microworld experiments that investigated temporal control decisions in a supervisory control task are presented. These experiments manipulated event rate, the duration of event rate blocks, the availability of online and offline event rate information, and the accuracy of this information. The studies identified conditions where attention to temporal information decreased and the use of conservative temporal control strategies increased