The HVHF Manifesto: Operational Characteristics of, and Design

Criterion for, High Velocity Human Factors

Moin Rahman
Principal Scientist
Design Integration-Human Factors
Motorola
Contact: moin.rahman@motorola.com (or) ergonomist@aol.com

Background
High Velocity Human Factors (HVHF) is a framework that has been developed to study
the cognition and action of human agents in mission critical domains (police, fire, etc.),
particularly when their mission undergoes a phase transition and enters into
nonequilibrium. A mission is said to have entered nonequilibrium when the agent is
thrust into a high stakes situation, with the possibility of imminent threat to life & limb
and/or catastrophic loss of other lives (cohorts or citizens) and property. (A mission is
said to be in equilibrium when the events are predictable and under control and the agent
experiences low to moderate stress.)

Event Dynamics
Even though HVHF events are difficult to generalize, given the novelty and uniqueness
of specific events and the variety of domains (police, fire, combat, etc.) in which they
occur, they are likely to manifest the following attributes from the perspective of the
human agent:
• Volatility: mission has entered a state of nonequilibrium where one or more
events occur rapidly (fast transients) – and whose trajectory is difficult to predict.
• Uncertainty: the volatility gives rise to uncertainty from the standpoint of the
human agent.
• Complexity: The number of event(s), and the high velocity in which they unfold,
combined with the drastic consequences of bad decisions results in the event
being perceived as complex.
• Ambiguity: The complexity gives rise to ambiguity (“fog of war”; decision
paralysis) as to what is the right course of action for the given circumstances.
• Temporal: The rapidity with which events unfold, force the human agent to make
decisions almost nonconsciously (action not deliberation; responding not
consideration; decision not planning.)

Emotional-Cognitive-Physiological Landscape
The key feature of HVHF is the major role of the evolutionarily adaptive, hardwired
mechanisms innate to the human agent – to ensure safety and survival – and its influence
on perception, cognition and decision making. The key features are as follows:

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1) High stakes (e.g., threat to life) results in several involuntary and nonconscious
adaptations by the agent:
a. Change in heart rate (initially there is a fall, followed by an increase in
heart rate.)
b. Increase in skin conductance (sweating)
c. Rise/fall in blood pressure, tensing/relaxing of muscles,
constriction/relaxation of intestines, etc.
d. Body is flooded with hormones and neurotransmitters to propel the agent
into action
e. The hormones modulate behavior by choreographing a series of cyclic
changes on the physiological response of the agent through a process
known as Allostasis (i.e., maintaining control through constant change;
e.g., blood pressure climbs and drops, the heart races and slows, the
intestines constrict and relax. This system of so-called allostasis, of
maintaining control through constant change, stands in contrast to the
mechanisms of homeostasis that keep the pH level and oxygen
concentration in the blood within a narrow and invariant range.)
f. Higher level cortical centers in the brain (reasoned cognition) go offline;
cognition, if any, is driven by the lower level cortical centers (a.k.a.,
“reptilian brain.”) [See Figure 1]
2) Perceptual and cognitive changes include, but are not limited, to the following:
a. Attentional tunneling (e.g., selective attention on threat stimulus, loss of
peripheral vision, etc.)
b. Emotion induced blindness (e.g., fixation on emotionally arousing
stimuli)
c. Auditory exclusion (selective hearing focused on the threat and a loss of
ambient hearing)
d. Altered perception of time (time dilation, slowing/speeding of event
perception rate)
e. Autovigilance (perception of threat in everything – living & non-living –
and everywhere)
f. Altered cognition (regressive behavior, behavior inhibition, response
competition, etc.)
g. Decision making (non-linear or even irrational decision making as there is
no time to meticulously consider all alternatives and choose the best
course of action. Some when styles of decision making used in these
circumstance are satisficing, hypervigilant decision making or
recognition-primed decision making)

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Figure 1: The Triune Brain shows the different cognitive capacities and cortical layers
associated with them. The two higher level layers (a.k.a., paleomamallian or
neomamallian brain) are significantly impaired or completely go offline under HVHF
conditions.

Designing HMIs for HVHF

The above sections provided an outline on the perceptual and cognitive changes that
human agents are likely to experience in HVHF conditions. In a nutshell, they can be
reduced to the following:
1) Perceptual distortions
2) Impoverished and/or abnormal Cognitions
3) Nonlinear decision making

To accommodate the altered states and a cognitively impoverished human agent in

HVHF conditions, a HMI should not require him/her to utilize the following cognitive
resources that may either be non-existent or significantly impaired:
1) Semantic & linguistic processing (inability to process language, symbols and
numbers)
2) Logical thought
3) Inferential reasoning

Thus mission critical elements of the HMI should enable interaction that requires little or
no mental effort. The means to this end can be realized by a model called Direct
Perception-Action Coupling (DPAC) that has been recently developed (Rahman,
Balakrishnan, & Bergin, 2010) and predicated on the work of the ecological psychologist,
James Gibson, and embodied cognition (the role of physical actions and their ability to
drive cognition).

The goal of DPAC is to facilitate direct perception (direct pickup of information) and
exploit affordances (action possibilities) in the design of mission critical HMIs.
Furthermore, the intent here is to eschew the semantic approach because of the loss of the

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higher cognitive capacities of the human agent due to intense emotional arousal. This has
been highlighted in the figures below.

Source: Djajadiningrat, T., Overbeeke, K., & Wensveen, S. (2002).

Semantic Symbolic Direct

Figure 2: Semantic/Symbolic vs. Direct Perception
The figure in the bottom show a traffic stop light may differ when it has been designed
for indirect (semantic/symbolic) vs. direct perception.

Design Criterion for mission critical HMIs

The preceding sections provided a primer on HVHF and portrayed the operational
characteristics of HVHF states. It behooves the product designer to understand these
states and leverage them to ideate solutions that are specific to the product, users and
usage styles. Because the recommendations that follow can only be generalized and may
not necessarily readily apply to one and all mission critical products.

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Next these recommendations are largely applicable only to the mission critical elements
of the HMI, which need to be operated under emergency conditions. For example, in the
case of a radio, they are likely to be the controls for emergency signaling, voice transmit
control (PTT) and frequency selector (channel control).

The generalized design criterion for HMI design is centered on the seven laws of High
Velocity Human Factors. The design criterion are also illustrated with examples where
appropriate.

Law of Relevance: Provide only information that is relevant to the event and can be used
to resolve the emergency situation.

As cognitive capacities diminish under stress a crowded and/or cluttered display [with
irrelevant information] or input console may not be optimal for the agent. These and
other related aspects of HMI design criterion are listed below:
- Minimize the density of information on multifunction displays. The
number of discrete pieces of information should be limited to three.
- The most relevant information with diagnostic relevance to the situation
should have salience, sometimes also referred to as feedforward. (enhance
their salience through the use of size, color, optical looming, etc.).
- Likewise the physical elements of the mission critical HMI, should be
enhanced for salience. For example, the emergency and transmit control
on a mission critical radio should be clearly delineated, marked with
sufficient salience, and should provide easy access and activation.
- Relevance, applies to not only information displays and physical controls,
but also auditory traffic. For example, voice traffic (chatter/incoming
transmissions) on a radio talk group that is neither relevant to the agent
nor has the potential to enhance the agent’s situation awareness should
NOT be delivered to the radio of the agent experiencing stress.

Law of Acceptance: Provide information in a format that can be processed by human

agents given their diminished cognitive capacities due to emotional arousal.

It is known that perception – vision, audition, etc. – is either distorted or narrows down
tremendously under stress. HMI design criterions for these situations are listed below:
- The HMI should present all important information in the central [foveal]
field of vision. (An agent who is experiencing cognitive or visual
tunneling) is unlikely to perceive information that is presented in the
periphery.)
- The amount and rate at which information is presented should be low.
(Under stress the ability of the agent to discern & discriminate information
that is presented rapidly is lost due to a phenomenon known as attentional
blink (AB) and/or emotion induced blindness.)
- The HMI should emphasize recognition over recall. The operator should
not be required to recall complicated rules or stored knowledge from

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 memory. The HMI should provide appropriate visual and/or tactual cues
to alert and guide the agent on system status and to perform necessary
actions. (An agent under stress is likely to suffer from degraded memory
and rely more on associative rather than deductive reasoning.)
- In the event it becomes necessary to penetrate an agent’s “bubble of
intense focus,” to communicate important information (e.g., evacuation
order for a firefighter), the enunciation should be amplified to a higher
than normal level of power. (For instance, an agent under stress
experiencing “auditory exclusion” may not hear alert tones & sounds that
are designed and emitted for low stress conditions where hearing
thresholds remain unaffected.)
- Below are a few suggested techniques, that are modality dependent, to
alert the agent by breaking into his highly focused bubble of attention.
i. Audition: tones and voices that communicate critical alerts should
be amplified to a high level to ensure that it registers with the
agent’s hearing thresholds that may have been altered due to
attentional tunneling.
ii. Vision: Flashing or optically looming animations may be necessary
to grab and channel attention to the critical visual stimulus that
communicates important information.
iii. Multiple modalities, including tactual, should be employed to alert
the agent. Although care should be taken that it does not result in
general pandemonium, which ends up hurting (cognitive overload)
rather than aiding the agent.
iv. All critical alerts should be persistent until the operator
acknowledges them and provides feedback that it has been
comprehended (simple cancelation of the signal may not be
sufficient as it doesn’t conclusively indicates that the agent has
either acknowledged or comprehended the “information content”
communicated by the alerting signal.)

Law of Transparency: Technology should not become a barrier to information that can
be directly perceived in the immediate environment.

Modern technology such as HUDs (Heads up Displays), augmented reality, HMDs

(Helmet mounted displays) may well serve the purpose of providing additional
information beyond the sensory capacities of the agent and/or augmenting the
information directly available in the immediate environment. However, the use of
additional layers of information should be carefully considered due to the following
reasons:
- Agent may get fixated on virtual information rather than tracking more
important real time information that can be directly perceived in the
immediate environment.
- The agent may confuse virtual (time-lapsed) with real [time] information.
These problems may arise when the operator experiences time dilation –

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 because the rate at which events are perceived are dramatically altered
under stress.

Technology should also exhibit another aspect of transparency – i.e., when a user under
emergency conditions wishes to accomplish a certain goal (e.g., broadcast a May Day
Call) he should literally perceive the presence of technology through its absence.
Meaning that the technology [HMI] provides the necessary affordance(s) to facilitate the
user to seamlessly, effortlessly, reflexively and nonconsciously interact with it to perform
the necessary action like triggering off the May Day Call. Thus mission critical
technology should exhibit this property of “presence-absence” (its present by its absence
making the user feel as though he is directly connected to the task) and/or as an extension
of his body in immediate space (peripersonal space). The latter is particularly applicable
to mission critical HMIs that might be worn on the person (e.g., remote speaker mic’s and
its controls in the case of a mission critical radio) or inside the police car cockpit.

Law of Clairvoyance: Technology should be clairvoyant (i.e., predict) the likely course
of action that might be desired by its user and attune itself to collaborate with the user in
a seamless manner. To fulfill this need, the system in general and HMI in particular,
should exhibit the following characteristics. (They are illustrated with examples).
- Technology should have the capability to anticipate the needs of the user
depending on the circumstances. For example, when an agent is asked to
report to a location where help is required, technology should advise him
on the best way to get there from current location, by advising him on
traffic levels, construction delays and other matters pertaining to his
safety.
- When a system detects May Day Call or Red Alert conditions, it should
prioritize the transmission of communication (voice & data) of agents that
are directly involved. This system should reserve and dedicate its
resources for this exigency.
- The design architecture (hardware & software) should be configured in
such a way that during high alert conditions mission critical applications
reliably run at the fastest possible speed – ranging from booting of system,
loading of applications, processing of voice/non-voice data, etc. This
might be facilitated by shedding or closing any unwanted applications that
might otherwise consume precious hardware/software resources.

Law of Absoluteness: Critical functions, such as emergency call placement, channel

selector, should have their own dedicated control elements that are accessible and
operable in an instant.
- Controls that are deemed “mission critical” should provide a physical
interface with excellent affordances that are unique to them on multiple
levels:
i. Unique form factors (to minimize confusion amongst themselves
and other non-critical controls)
ii. Salience in terms of size, color, etc.

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 iii. Feed forward that makes them intuitive by location, placement,
shape, etc., so that the user is not forced to read labels (semantics)
to figure out their purpose.
iv. Feedback should be unambiguous and each of these may even be
provided unique kinesthetic and tactile feedback.
- Because under extreme stress the user exhibits poor motor control due to
psychomotor agitation, critical controls should require gross motor actions
as opposed to fine motor control. Furthermore, uncontrollable rote
behavior replaces novel thinking or even skills acquired through routing
training. In other words, controls should be activated or deactivated by
large, sweeping motions and simple and straightforward turns or pushes.
This would usually require the control/activation surfaces to be large,
rugged and robust.

Law of Intelligence: Technology should be smart enough to take over operations when
agents are overloaded with other, more important tasks or be the agent’s proxy when he is
impaired.
- The system should be designed in a way that it ensures the safety of the
agent even when s/he may not be signal his predicament. For instance, the
system should sense, say, a man-down situation (entrapped or unconscious
user) and automatically broadcast an emergency May-Day call.
- The system should minimize unnecessary workload (e.g., irrelevant voice
traffic, signals, etc.) when the agent has to stay hyper-focused on limited
number of tasks or very closely track a particular target.

Law of Reliance: Technology should be fail-safe and foolproof and should

accommodate stress-induced human error.
- Mission critical elements of the HMI should be ultra-rugged and should be
able to take any amount of abuse (intended or unintended). The user
should have the confidence that gross motor actions and/or application of
unusual amount of forces will not disrupt the performance of the product
or system.
- The system should be designed to eliminate all types of false signals (e.g.,
false alarms, false positives and false negatives in terms of either issuing
warnings or for target (correct signal) acquisition.)
- The system should be fool-proofed so that affordances are not
misperceived under stress (e.g., mistaking a low-profile knob for a button)
or due to significant cognitive impairment.

Closing Comments
The earlier sections introduced the reader to the core principles of High Velocity Human
Factors. The previous section provided general design criterion for designing, products,
technologies and HMIs to accommodate the human agent who has been thrust into
nonequilibrium (confronted with imminent threat or a high stakes situations). These

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design criterions are somewhat general in nature, and, it thus, behooves the designer to
glean the essence of the ideas contained in them and ideate new solutions that might be
specific to the design problem on hand.

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