Display and Interface Design

Ecological Interface Design Two Decades On: Whatever Happened to the SRK Taxonomy?

“…This reveals more about how it is interpreted and used across different design applications, research institutes, and human factors and ergonomics practitioners, than would a review simply based on the number of papers citing EID (this would, for example, incur a bias toward those researchers more disposed to extensively report their use of the method rather than reflecting the number of actual applications of the method to interface and system design). Moreover, as aforementioned, this method of categorization excludes important work on the theoretical development of the EID approach (see, e.g., [29] and [30]); however, this is primarily a review of EID applications, not an exploration of EIDs theoretical underpinnings and advancements.…”

“…Hence, there are a number of texts exploring the theoretical foundations of the method that have not been included in this review. Two such examples stand out as providing excellent discussions of the method and its founding principles: Burns and Hajdukiewicz's book "Ecological Interface Design" [29] and Bennett and Flach's more recent work "Display and Interface Design: Subtle Science, Exact Art" [30]. Both texts provide thorough theoretical treatments of the method (particularly Bennett and Flach's), and both provide guidance for potential practitioners (particularly Burns and Hajdukiewicz's).…”

“…In their design tutorials, Bennett and Flach [30] describe how the presented interface supports each of the levels of behavioral control; however, they do not explicitly say how the SRK taxonomy guided design a priori. This could suggest that the SRK taxonomy is not only a means for guiding design, but also a set of criteria against which a design must be judged.…”

“…For example, take Bennett and Flach's [30] book on EID and its theoretical underpinnings. In addition to a thorough and detailed discussion on the foundations of EID, a number of "design tutorials" are provided.…”

“…Incidentally, decision ladders draw on the SRK taxonomy to describe human control behaviors (a point discussed by Bennett and Flach [30] and by Rasmussen in his original description of the models [23]). Of the eight entries citing the use of decision ladders, only three also make any reference to the SRK taxonomy [5], [48], [69], none of which do so in relation the decision ladders (i.e., the SRK is discussed separately).…”