Human factors evaluation – Why? What? When?

An abstract of the technical paper presented at:
The American Nuclear Society 9th International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control and Human-Machine Interface Technologies
Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
February 22–26, 2015

Prepared by:
A. Salway
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) staff were part of the technical steering committee that developed the new Canadian Standards Association standard N290.12, Human factors in design for nuclear power plants. In this context, and with the intention of updating the current CNSC regulatory documents, a review of good practices for approaches, processes and activities related to human factors in design was conducted. This paper describes the results of this review for the specific topic of “evaluation” in human factors in design.

“Evaluation” is a term that encompasses inspection-based evaluations, usability testing, verification, and validation. This paper describes why evaluations are carried out, what they involve, and when they are conducted in the system design process. The application of evaluation approaches beyond the design process is also considered.

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