What happens when operators misunderstand the design and designers misunderstand the operators? Couple of partial extracts from Busby & Hibberd’s 2002 article which explored accident report sources to construct mismatches between operator and designer assumptions. PS. Check out my YouTube and recent Critical Control / barrier vid: https://youtube.com/@safe_as_pod?si=iUaDPJynPemQRZhY Shout a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/benhutchinson Extracts: · Designers may… Continue reading What happens when operators misunderstand the design and designers misunderstand the operators?
Tag: safety in design
Haddon 1974: Why do we blame people instead of fixing a poorly designed system?
Why do we blame people for failing to compensate for a poorly designed system? A cool extract from Baker & Haddon’s 1974 article about people and poor design (in my view, Haddon is among the GOATs). They argue that ‘traditionally’ (lolz those silly dark age people of yesteryear, not like us modern elites who stopped… Continue reading Haddon 1974: Why do we blame people instead of fixing a poorly designed system?
Knowledge in the head vs the world: And how to design for cognition. Norman – Design of Everyday Things
Here Don Norman discusses knowledge in the head vs knowledge in the world – from The Design of Everyday Things. Extracts:· “Every day we are confronted by numerous objects, devices, and services, each of which requires us to behave or act in some particular manner. Overall, we manage quite well” · “Our knowledge is often quite incomplete,… Continue reading Knowledge in the head vs the world: And how to design for cognition. Norman – Design of Everyday Things
Learning from experience
More practical wisdom from the late, great Trevor Kletz. This explored a few elements of learning from experience – like the problems of just blaming people or changing procedures. First he targets the focus on changing procedures instead of improving designs. First, our first step should be, wherever reasonably practicable, is to remove the hazard… Continue reading Learning from experience
SafetyInsights.org 