GPS devices, automation, and creepy men with chainsaws

I have been totally reliant on my GPS since I got to Rhode Island, and it has been mostly reliable. There have been a couple of errors, but nothing too drastic. Coming back from nearby Whole Foods last night, however, nearly gave me a panic attack. The route given to me by my GPS took me through a dark industrial park, past dimly lit residential areas, a giant warehouse with big loading docks, and a construction zone with a recently leveled building.

Did the GPS get me home? Yes. Did it take the shortest route? Yes. Did I have no choice but to fully trust the automation and hope that I wouldn’t encounter creepy men with chainsaws? Yes.

Automation is a wonderful thing, but it is distressing to be at the mercy of a machine. Yet, in many ideal futures, our cars drive for us so we don’t have to do any work. Except worry about creepy man with chainsaws.

Thankfully, there has been a lot of research on automation in the human factors literature. Much of the research examines how humans trust automation and how automation use changes after a failure. One of the better review articles is:

Parasuraman, R. & Riley, V. (1997). Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse. Human Factors, 39(2), 230-253. (link)

How I stopped worrying and learned to love my GPS

So I’m spatially challenged. I can follow maps, but I have no ability to create my own mental map of an area. However, my inability to form anything above route-based knowledge is for another post. What is worth mentioning is that I finally offloaded the cognitive challenge of navigating to a new GPS device, the TomTom Go 720. Most everyone knows how GPS devices work. You enter in an address or Point of Interest, and it calculates the best way to get you there, giving you turn-by-turn real time instructions. It’s really great.

There was a rocky start, though, and there was a learning period where I had to learn to trust the device. The voice commands are fairly demanding: “Turn right at So-And-So Drive.” The map shows you exactly where to turn, and it gives so much useful information. But there’s a strange loss of control that comes with trusting the device, even though you are, of course, fully in control of the car. The task of deciding where to turn next had been replaced by the task of deciding whether or not to trust the system. Whether the device really knew where it was taking me, or whether I should trust what I know and take a potentially longer route.

Learning to trust the system is directly tied to the body of literature that researchers automation. You should be reliant on it; it’s there to help, and you did buy it. GPS systems are assistive devices in their current state: they give you advice, and you can choose whether or not to follow it. It makes the task of navigation easier, but it adds a whole new layer of decision making: do you follow the advice to turn there, or do you follow your gut? And if you are worried about the trustworthiness of the system, is it really helping? Are things better because you’ve offloaded a difficult task to a computer?

After a while, I got used to it - most people do. The answer, at least with me, was training. After a few instances of navigating to a new location or avoiding a roadblock or getting around traffic, I trusted the GPS to save my butt and get me to where I was going. I was trained to trust the system, and my interactions with the system trained it to be more useful to me. I changed the settings of the device to adapt to my learning style and it learned some of my Favorite Locations and a little more about my driving preferences. I learned to feel more comfortable with it. This piece of automation goes with me almost all the time, and after a rocky start, I learned to rely on it.

Of course, over-reliance can be a bad thing:

(By the way, this really did happen in real life: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article707216.ece)