Balancing benefits and costs of autmated task allocation in mobile surveillance
conference paper
Motivation - Automated task allocation systems are prone to errors (e.g. incorrect advice) due to context events. Empirical assessment is needed of how the costs of incorrect task allocation advice relate to the benefits. Research approach - Claims regarding benefits and costs are tested in a team surveillance task in a synthetic task environment. Eighteen teams of three trained students handled incidents while using a mobile support prototype providing task allocation advice. For half of the incidents, context events caused this advice to be incorrect. To assess the costs and benefits of using this prototype, task performance, situation awareness and trust were compared between two conditions; with and without task allocation advice. Findings - Incorrect advice slows response time and handling time and causes more misunderstanding, but not more decision errors or team communication, compared to no advice. No effects of incorrect advice were found on situation awareness and trust. Research Limitations and Implications - This study shows that costs in time are higher than the benefits of accurate allocation. Professional end-users would perform better on the surveillance task. Originality/Value - This research is a first step to help designers balance costs and benefits of context-aware systems in critical domains. Take away message - When time-pressure is high, automated support could be worse than no support.
Topics
Mobile computingNotificationPolice surveillanceTask allocationAutomation trade-offContext-aware computingTeamsAutomated supportAutomated tasksBenefits and costsContext-aware computingContext-aware systemsCosts and benefitsCritical domainDecision errorsEmpirical assessmentEnd-usersHandling timeMobile surveillanceResearch approachResearch limitationsResponse timeSituation awarenessSurveillance taskTask allocationTask environmentTask performanceTeam communicationTeamsAutomationCostsErrorsLaw enforcementMobile devicesMonitoringPortable equipmentResearchUser interfacesErgonomicsMobile CommunicationsPoliceCommunicationUser interfaces
TNO Identifier
409739
Source title
ECCE 2010 - European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2010: The 28th Annual Conference of the European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics, 28th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2010, ECCE 2010, 25 August 2010 through 27 August 2010
Files
To receive the publication files, please send an e-mail request to TNO Repository.