Integrating Gaming Research and Practice in the Design of User Interface of (partly)-Autonomous Safety-Critical Systems

International audienceIntegrating more and more automation in systems is the classical approach followed by designers and engineers to support operators in the command and control tasks of more and more complex systems. However, designing automation and designing interfaces for operating systems that are (partly) automated is a very complex activity altering in depth the development process of these systems. In the early days such automation was rather limited and thus easier to manage even though bad designs have been widely and frequently reported (e.g. [12, 15]). Entertainment computing and gaming is a large research and industrial domain receiving an ever growing interest that has been facing such issues since the very first games. Early on games were involving autonomous objects and (later) automation-based tools for supporting (and evoking) extremely demanding and challenging cognitive, perceptive and motor activities. This paper reports on work that has been carried out in the area of games and provides a set of design guidelines, processes and evaluation techniques applicable to the domain of safety-critical interactive command and control systems