Applying usability engineering to user documents is essential for the safety of industrial workers. Traditional writing methods, applied to standards and procedures, are insufficient. Clarity and technical accuracy is not good enough to guide safe human performance. User documents must effectively guide or drive compliant behaviors to guarantee a company’s safe and efficient operation.
The challenge is in the guarantee. No document design can guarantee that all users exhibit expected safe and compliant behaviors. However, usability engineered documents can guarantee that the risk of comprehension errors is measurably reduced. By reducing comprehension errors, we reduce performance errors. Reducing performance errors significantly enhances workers’ safety. Safety and documentation cannot be separated.
Klaus Hofer
Founder and CEO CAT-i. A corporate psychologist by training, his passion for usability engineering was triggered by a serious incident that endangered the life of an unsuspecting hospital patient. In search of the cause, he found only opinions, judgmental answers and countless rules. This led him to the question: “How can well trained, focused and dedicated professionals make mistakes that could kill someone?” This question led him to a lifetime of research into the scientific principles that underpin the development of safer, more usable user documentation.
