Designing for Human-Centered Systems: Situational Risk as a Factor of Trust in Automation

As society continues to become advanced in technology, automation is increasingly implemented in systems reducing the need for human intervention. Although the system is the main focus in rendering the cognitive workload, the human's use in the system is the main component for successful performance. Trust is a prime factor in building a symbiotic relationship between human-automation interaction and further empirical research is needed to develop appropriate methods for designing trusted systems. These methods can be defined as identifying the prime factors of trust that influence the user's decision making. The focus of this paper looks at the factor of risk to determine if and how risk in a situational environment is an influencing factor of trust in automation. A Global Positioning System (GPS) was used as the automated platform, and participants went through a series of route planning sessions with varying levels of risk and hazards. It was found that as the level of risk increased on hazards, the use and trust of automation decreased.