To Err is Human.

Once upon a time, in a strange and paradoxical land, a very wise cognitive scientist wrote some very wise words: "If error is possible, someone will make it."

That wise man was Don Norman, and I wisely emphasis his wisdom because at precisely 2.30pm yesterday I came back home, placed a photocopy of my driving license on the table and proceeded to make a cup of tea, only for my wayward mind to suddenly realise that I’d left my driving license in the photocopier!

fail.

And, given that catastrophe, I obviously did what any normal individual would do next: I accidently filled the kettle with milk....

fail (epically).

Now, before you think that I might be having a nervous breakdown, I'm not. I know this because: (1) The doctor lady said I wasn't a mental; (2) I make quite a lot of stupid errors.

In fact, we all do; if error is possible, someone will make it.

As it turns out, human error is not only ubiquitous, and normal, but part of our construction as human beings. According to James Reason (author of ‘Human Error’) it is "The price human beings have to pay for the remarkable ability to cope with very difficult informational tasks quickly." And, it’s this ability to simplify complex tasks, and to generalise from little snippets of information, that allows us to be the amazingly creative and robust human beings that we are. In the words of Ernst Mach: "Knowledge and error flow from the same mental sources, only success can tell one from another."

So it’s in the way our brains our formed, through the strange inter-connections of neurons, that error can materialise. But, the fundamental triggers of error can also transcend the boundaries of human biology and augment themselves into everyday design, everyday machines, situations, and tasks - trapping humans into the inevitable disasters of epic fail.

In 'The Design of Everyday Things' by Don Norman, error is defined in two flavors: slips and mistakes.

Slips occur when subconscious actions, required to complete goals, go wrong, and usually happen when intentions during habitual tasks are changed. They are more likely when we are distracted, bored, not concentrating, involved in multiple activities, or under stress.

If we deconstruct the photocopier error, for example, we can see a number triggers leading to err:

1. The mundane task - Boredom, leads to a lack on concentration.
2. Out of sight; out of mind - No reminders to cue the correct action.
3. Premature task completion - The main goal has been realised, yet the task has not been completed.
4. Completion distractions - At the end of the task the mind is computing the next task to complete, rather than thinking about the final action to complete the task.

Ultimately, these factors are a perfect breeding ground for what Norman calls the 'Loss of Activation Error.' In this case the activation of the goal to remove the license from the copier had totally decayed: leading to fail. And given that distraction, couple with the habitual nature, it’s not so out of the ordinary that I then proceeded to fill the kettle with milk!

These everyday slips, however, are only half of the story. Living along side them are also the mistakes: characterized by forming the wrong goals in the first place. These traitorous errors have a far more sinister character, simply because the incorrectly formed goals can seem perfectly reasonable at the time of conception - making them difficult to detect. Left unnoticed, these errors can then fester, unabated, and collude with other breakdowns, establishing the perfect conditions for space shuttles to explode, for to planes to fall out the sky, for nuclear power stations to melt to death, and for economies to implode - leaving us wounded, severely dead, or, in the worse case scenario, confused.

But panic not humanoids. Even though the perverted face of epic fail is cleverly plotting our downfall, Reason et al. have some fail safe advice:

1. Understand the causes of slips and mistakes and design to minimise them, or fix them.
2. Don’t simply explain away error - it allows breakdowns to fester.
3. As an individual, take the responsibility to make a point of recognising and mentioning bad design.
4. Social pressure is a big culprit in incubating error - change attitudes towards error, mention negative social structures, and don’t punish individuals for reporting mistakes.
5. Ensure that errors are detected quickly, and a pragmatic effort for recovery is made.

In the sprit of our age, it is far too easy to sit on our pedestals, high above nature, smugly twittering our friends to tell them how brilliant we are. The simple truth, however, is that everyday we are scarily close to falling off the pedestal, into a great big pile of our own excrement.

And sometimes we do. We humans are clever, but not as clever as you think, and now you are in on the secret too: to err is human.