Expert Critics in Engineering Design: Lessons Learned and Research Needs

Human error is an increasingly important and addressable concern in modernday high-technology accidents. Avoidable human errors led to many famous accidents, including Bhopal, the space shuttle Challenger, Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez, and Three Mile Island. Many hundreds of thousands of nonfamous accidents occur each year that are equally or more avoidable. Dramatic examples make the local headlines, such as car crashes, train and plane wrecks, and military-related operations mishaps. Less dramatic consequences happen even more frequently because of millions of mundane errors that appear daily in the products we use (for example, poorly designed cars), the processes we are affected by (for example, banking or healthcare institutions), and the automation that surrounds us (for example, unfriendly computers that expect us to adapt to their interfaces).