International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 49– No.17, July 2012 26 User Centred Design Approach to Situation Awareness Nuka Nwiabu School of Computing The Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, United Kingdom Ibrahim Adeyanju Computer Science & Engineering department Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Ogbomoso, Nigeria ABSTRACT Situation awareness is a variety of cognitive processes employed by operators in a complex and dynamic environment to understand the current state of the environment in order to know its future state. Information systems designed on the principle of situation awareness adopt the technique of user-centred design (UCD) methodology. A UCD approach involves users in system development process to make the system meet end-users requirements. Such user-friendly systems result in better decision making and optimal performance. In this paper, we model situation awareness with agile user-centred development method for predicting hydrate formation during crude oil drilling. The design is implemented with Case-Based Reasoning, an experiential machine learning paradigm, to expand the scope of the decision-making module. General Terms Information Systems, Human Computer Interaction. Keywords Situation awareness, User-centred design, Case-based reasoning, Agile delopment. 1. INTRODUCTION The attempt to find a solution to human errors using decision support systems (DSS) sometimes leads to more complexity, greater errors and more cognitive load [1]. Some findings have shown that automation of tasks has caused more problems than it has solved mostly due to decision support systems being technology-centred, i.e. a situation where systems are design without much emphasis on end-users' requirements. End-users' requirements include their information processing need. Human beings naturally have an information processing bottleneck and as such can only attend to limited volume of information at a time [1]. Decision support systems that place less emphasis on users’ information processing needs do not always result in good performance [2]. An over-reliance on automation, and poor human monitoring capabilities was said to have contributed to circumstances of the accident involving an American airline, Boeing 757 that struck a mountain at Colombia on the 20 th of December, 1995 while descending for landing [1]. Metzger et al [3] carried a study on training and design of methods to solve the problem of over-reliance on automation. Users can be made to overcome over-reliance on automation, and have good control over information systems either by giving them some special training or by designing systems using alternative methods or both. The result of the study suggests that design and training reduces users’ complacency on automation as they provide users with the flexibility in attention strategies needed in multi-task environments. The problem associated with user’s over -reliance on automation can be addressed by adopting the user-centred design (UCD) approach in developing situation awareness systems. UCD supports user's goals and tasks, user's way of processing information to make decision, and the user's control and knowledge of the system [4]. UCD is a design philosophy that puts the intended users of a system at the centre of its design and development by involving the users at key stages in the project to ensure that the system meets their requirements. Donald Norman [5] defined user-centred design as “a philosophy based on the needs and interests of the user, with an emphasis on making products usable and understandable”. One of the techniques adopted in our proposed user-centred design is scenarios. Scenarios represents the entire activities, describing the social settings, resources, and goals of users, looking at the “big picture” of how a work is done and not a narrow description of the task [6]. Scenario analysis in this work helps in one of the fundamental tasks in object-oriented design which is developing a problem domain model [7]. Scenarios are simplified to produce a set of propositions that are subjected to objected-oriented analysis which in turn generate objects. The objects are identified, and the methods and interactions that would produce the behaviour are defined [8]. These processes are achieved by using domain knowledge and object-oriented system design skills to elaborate on the explicit knowledge provided by the scenarios. This method cannot be possible using functional specification alone. Although, traditional functional specifications are easily understood by system builders as the specifications are well laid out in non redundant order as expected in the system, they may not be user-centred. Functional specifications focus on the technology of the system and do not express the psychological or work context for the technology in use such as users actions, goals, and expectations, which could make the actions to be meaningful or problematic [8]. Scenarios are open-ended, as they are used in design; new questions emerge, which can be answered only by returning to the user [9]. This makes scenarios a helpful technique for user-centred design, but on the other hand, system’s features in scenarios are embedded in complex narratives that are intended to illustrate how each of the features affect a user’s specific task experience, and how the features interact within and across tasks. These specific system functions or features may appear in several scenarios which require a great deal of care to understand the different contexts for those features [8]. To integrate human computer interaction (HCI) concerns with software engineering, UCD is integrated to agile iterative development. Iterative development is one of the software development approaches since the early days of software development. Iterative approaches would have by now replaced the single-pass waterfall model but for the fact that waterfall method gives somebody a feeling of knowing exactly what the end result will be, and how much the process is going to cost, the method is in use in some quarters, especially amongst managers [10]. But, the waterfall model fails to adapt to discoveries made during the design and implementation phase. There is hardly the opportunity to make adjustments once the analysis phase is over. In normal situations, end-result of projects changes as it runs over a