ABSTRACT
Bainbridge (1983) wrote a landmark paper that identified a set of ironies of automation – based around the consequence that “the more advanced a control system is, so the more crucial may be the contribution of the human operator”. These ironies covered the effect of automation on manual and cognitive skills, operator attitudes and considered both the impact of requiring an operator to monitor whether an automated system is working effectively, and the implications for the operator if they are required to intervene in control of the automated system. The nature of the proposed ironies were generally the unintended side-effects of automation that in many of Bainbridge’s examples actually potentiallyworsened, rather than improved, the situation for the operator and the effectiveness of the system as a whole. The systems primarily considered by Bainbridge were those that typically aimed
to “replace human manual control, planning and problem solving by automatic devices and computers”. She acknowledges that even these highly automated systems still involve humans in a number of roles, including monitoring, maintenance and future development. The systems considered by Bainbridge primarily fall into higher level of automation, categorised for example by Parasuraman et al. (2000) as ranging from automatically executing actions and informing the human operator, to
the computer deciding everything, acting autonomously and “ignoring the human”. More and more however we encounter automated technologies that rather than taking over task elements, advise or guide us on how to complete tasks, such as in navigation support systems or integrated automation within word processing applications. Critically, we also often have the opportunity to choose the manner and extent of use of the automation available. This paper specifically considers three of the ironies identified within Bain-
bridge’s landmark paper, and discusses their relevance to a set of example recent case applications. In addition, the paper discusses whether any new ironies are emerging with the use of current pervasive automated technologies. The three ironies of automation that will be specifically considered are (para-
phrased from Bainbridge (1983):
1. A designer who tries to eliminate the operator still leaves the operator to do the tasks which the designer cannot think how to automate.
