Farry, R.
2026 | Ergonomics and Human Factors 2026 (forthcoming)
Adversarial Design Thinking for Organisational Architecture
Organisations can unintentionally create friction, dysfunction, and harm through the design of their structures, processes, and information flows. This paper introduces Adversarial Design Thinking, a parallel‐design method that applies a malicious‐insider mindset to organisational architecture to reveal these hidden vulnerabilities. A Red Team is tasked to design solutions that meet stated goals while maximising plausible, undetected organisational harm, while a Blue Team designs conventionally. Comparing their outputs surfaces latent risks, structural weaknesses, and unintended consequences that human‐centred approaches—often assuming good intent—may overlook. The paper presents the GHOST and Harm frameworks to support identification of adversarial design patterns, showing how organisational features can hide harm, degrade recovery, and allow dysfunction to accumulate. This lens strengthens organisational resilience and design quality.
More info on ADT >
Hillyer, C., State-Davey, H., Hooker, N., Farry, R., Bond, R., Campbell, J., Morgan, P., Jones, D., Vega, J., and Butler, P.
2023 | Ergonomics and Human Factors 2023
Human Factors Guidance for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS)
This paper outlines recent (2021/2022) work to produce Human Factors (HF) guidance to support the design, development, evaluation, and acquisition of Robotic and Autonomous Systems.
Farry, R.
2023 | Ergonomics and Human Factors 2023
Using SUS for Current and Future AI
The System Usability Scale (SUS) was assessed for its relevance and ease of use for assessing an AI capable of human-like interaction. Participants used SUS to assess Outlook, a contemporary consumer-grade AI interaction partners (smartphone digital assistants), and human teammates as a proxy ‘system’ for future human-like AI interaction partners. The results show that participants considered SUS to be relevant and easy to use for contemporary consumer-grade AI interaction partners, but not for human teammates. However, there was no meaningful difference in their ability to apply SUS between contemporary digital assistants, human teammates, and an email client. Thus, SUS can be used effectively for all of these kinds of systems.
Farry, R.
2020 | Ergonomics and Human Factors 2020
Predicting how people will respond to a disruptive event: The human factors response framework
System disruptions can have far reaching negative consequences. The extent to which a system can anticipate, absorb and adapt to a disruption is a characteristic of its resilience. As people are often fundamental to system resilience, an improved understanding of the people-related factors that underpin system resilience helps in predicting system vulnerability and the response to a disruptive event. The Human Factors Response Framework was developed to provide this improved understanding. The framework supports analysts in identifying relevant people-related factors within a system, and the prediction of the system’s resilience and the likely dominant response from key personnel. This paper provides a high-level overview of the framework, its development, and future research direction.
