Ergolight Historic Tools

Ergolight Operation Recording Suite (EORS)

The first project was a suite of software programs installed on Windows platforms, featuring:

  • Tracking the user's activity,
  • Detecting, using special indicators, instances of users putative experience of difficulty
  • Prompting the users to express their experience and their intentions
  • Recording the user's intention, employed by selection from a task breakdown
  • Reviewing the correspondence between the records of the user's activity and those of the user's intentions.

The user's activities were synchronized with the user's intentions by time stamps.

The method used in this project was disclosed in the CHI 1998 conference.

Ergolight 2000 solutions

The second generation consisted of specialized solutions:  usability testing features
GUI Tester

An upgrade of EORS, intended for installation at the customer site (in beta testing)

LabTester

Facilitating the work of usability testers in usability labs. In addition to the features of GUI-Tester, LabTester enabled usability testers to enter the user's intentions, and to manage the tests by task lists.

Ergolight specialized solutions

WebTester

This project targeted managers of web sites. It analyzed log files of the site visitors, stored on the servers. The analysis was by statistics of recurring activity, based on a model of site navigation.

The method for the statistical analysis was disclosed in a book about eCommerce research.

The methods of WebTester are used today for agile testing of the effectiveness of web sites, installed on Cloud and Edge mini-servers.

ModeTester

This project was a program targeting specific problems of user-machine coordination. Contrary to the first three projects, which targeted the testing stage, this program was used at the design stage, to identify error-prone controls. The program features included:

  • A tool for the designers to define the system operation, based on schemes representing the operational panels (user interfaces)
  • A means for the designers to define the operational rules, by reference to the operational panels
  • A program used to detect violations on good design practices
  • A reporter, used to generate report to the designers about design mistakes.

This method is used today in guidelines for assuring operator-machine cooperation.

AlarmController

This project is actually a set of applications of a methodology for alarm design. Common alarm controllers, which enable tradeoff of missed vs. false alarms, by controlling the alarm threshold. The method used by AlarmController is based on alarm protocols, which reduces the rate of nuisance while in alarm condition.

The alarm controller was developed by building prototypes for three applications:

  • A camera used for intruder detection
  • Medical monitors
  • Public alarms about environmental threats.

Today this method is used in guidelines for alarm design.

Ergolight in the 4th industrial revolution: adding human factors to system thinking