How Can Man and Machine Trust Each Other and Work Better Together? Available to Purchase

Our traditional machines are operated by commands. But Increasing diversification and frequent changes in our environments make it more and more difficult for a designer to foresee the operating conditions. Therefore, designs are shifting from designer-centric to user-centric, because it is a user who knows the situation and can make decisions what he or she should do. So now machines should be designed to help a user understand the current situation better and to help him or her make better decisions. They need more flexibility to work better together with its user. But there are many examples, where although a machine is equipped with a wide variety of functions to cope with almost all sorts of situations, accidents occur due to a human error. Such typical case is CFIT (Controlled Flight into terrain) [1] in airplanes. Norman pointed out that simple mechanical objects can be trusted because their behaviors are so simple people know how to operate them. But machines are getting more and more complicated so a user does not know what to expect from them. And if it does not react to his or her expectations, a user sometimes gets very much emotionally upset and gets panicked. How can we solve this problem? A solution may be found in software development. Software was produced in the past just in the same way as hardware, with their functions fixed. But now software changed its product development style. Software first provides a user with simple functions and once he or she becomes familiar with this basic level of functions, it evolves to a little higher level. Through experience and feedback from a user, software evolves its function gradually and continually. It must be noted that most of our machines are not hardware or software alone. They are combinations of both. So we can develop such a machine which possesses a diversity of functions but reveals at the very early stage of operation a basic level of functions to a user, until he or she gets accustomed to it and puts confidence in it. And when he or she fully experiences this level and desires higher level functions, then the machine evolves. How a user cope with situations varies from user to user, but if a machine is customized this way, a user would trust our machines and would operate with full confidence in them.