views), with tabs for switching these views while the
original UI has only the table view. This difference
can be analysed based on concepts of the FMC
model and the SL artefact. If the Table View fails by
any reason related to the communication aspect (any
SL layer, e.g. semantically, user cannot understand
the meaning of information), the original UI doesn’t
provide any alternative solution for users because
there is no other path to communicate from SAPOP
to user. The proposed UI provides another path of
communication for users through the channel Time
View as Figure 5 depicts. In the concepts of the SL,
the difference in the channels Table View and Time
View are located at Semantic and Social layers
because the signs were changed. The choice of other
type of view provided by the redundant strategy is
related to the user safety in choosing the
communication channel involving the SL six levels.
Moreover, this strategy doesn’t impact users who
prefer the table view (or any interaction objects of
the original version) because it remains present on
the proposed SAPOP UI. The redundancy allows the
minimum impact for expert users (users who are
already adapted to table view) or users with table
familiarity and extends UI to a new category of
users. The redundancy is not limited to the two
options; it can be extended to include more users
with different abilities.
The communication perspective with the
redundancy strategy contributes for inclusive design
underlying the FMC model. The UI designer can
define safety strategies for the channels which
involve critical information. The SL helps to define
how this critical information is communicated to the
users providing better situational awareness and
either avoiding hazardous consequences.
The drawback of this communication perspective
is the growing of the FMC model, which may be
huge and complex because of the high complexity of
the communicational structure. Developing all the
artefacts is considered hard work because the
number of agents and channels may be very
extensive and, consequently, developing all SLs is
also expensive. Visualization tools may allow the
presentation of the model with a configurable filter
to allow visualizing each fractal dimension
separately, zooming in and out to show only the
agents and channels needed for a specific
consideration.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Communication is a fundamental factor to be
addressed in critical systems. Semiotics provides a
good foundation for analysis and design regarding
communication. This paper proposed a procedure for
focusing on interaction design based on artefacts of
Organisational Semiotics combined with the Fractal
Model of Communication (FMC). The case study
involved the space system SAPOP, which provides
support for scientific satellite payload operation. If it
fails, satellite missions can be lost leading to high
financial loss. This work presented a
communication-based solution for interaction
design, which uses redundancy as strategy to cope
with the critical aspects of interaction with this
system.
The FMC represents agents and channels of
communication with unlimited fractal dimensions.
In this way, the communication model can be
presented in several granularity levels, including
detailed information for each channel, with the six
layers of communication analysis of the Semiotic
Ladder (SL). The FMC and the SL provide support
for designing the structure of communication
containing information regarding the physical world,
the empiric, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and
social aspects with potential hazards and
correspondent actions. The procedure reaches the
goal leading the FMC to the interaction design and
to the identification of UI design problems of the
SAPOP system. Due to communication perspective,
the challenge for applying the redundancy strategy
for interaction design was accomplished.
Nevertheless, it may grow in complexity presenting
many agents and channels making the reading
difficult and demanding knowledge in several
domain contexts.
The communication perspective may provide
contributions to usability itself, because it is not only
related to "easy to use", but also to "easy to
communicate" providing users with better situational
awareness and, consequently, diminishing the hazard
possibilities related to “human (interaction) error”.
As further work, the UI proposed as a wireframe
needs to be evaluated qualitative and quantitatively
using other methodologies including those
specialized in the critical system field.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais
INTERACTION DESIGN AND REDUNDANCY STRATEGY IN CRITICAL SYSTEMS
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