Evaluating Human Error through Video Games

Human error probability even in the most trivial procedures can be more than zero. A small mistake or unintended slip in our daily life can go unnoticed, but in the use of complex medical technology results can be disastrous. Thus, the aim of this project was to investigate the erroneous behavior of participants under number entry procedures and within different circumstances which often appear in the medical domain. The methodology used for the investigation was a recently developed approach of using video games as a research instrument. Two layouts and four different conditions were developed within a game environment, to evaluate the performance of users in terms of error rate and speed of entry. Concurrently, our investigation also aimed on identifying types of errors common among groups. Results showed a small difference between the two layouts, for both error rate and speed of entry, proposing serial...