90 percent of everything : Usability Blog

Written by Harry Brignull

James Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model of System Accidents is quite a useful way to to think about how failures can happen, even when you have multiple layers of “defence” in place. It’s been applied to things like aviation and medical safety, but it’s equally appropriate to apply it to your own design work. We’ve all worked on projects where a number of small unforeseen issues have lined up and created serious problems. James Reason elaborates:

“[T]wo important features of human error tend to be overlooked. First, it is often the best people who make the worst mistakes—error is not the monopoly of an unfortunate few. Second, far from being random, mishaps tend to fall into recurrent patterns. The same set of circumstances can provoke similar errors, regardless of the people involved. The pursuit of greater safety is seriously impeded by an approach that does not seek out and remove the error-provoking properties within the system at large.” – James Reason (2000)

Swiss Cheese Model applied to Air Safety (Astra Project)

What’s nice about this model is that it encourages you to look at the pattern of issues that occurred, rather than to simply ask an individual to “pay more attention next time”. It’s really more of a metaphor than a model, but it’s still useful to keep in mind during your project post-mortem meetings. You are doing project post-mortems, aren’t you?

We’re hiring a Senior User Experience Designer, which would put you in the same role as James Box, Cennydd Bowles (who is leaving soon) and myself. As a newcomer to the company, I thought it’d be useful for me to share a few thoughts:

• Great projects: the first thing I noticed when I started at Clearleft was the way sales work here. We get a fairly large volume of incoming calls from prospects, which allows us to be picky about the work we take on. We also tend not to have overly prescriptive work-plans. Proposals are written to allow flexibility, so you get to choose the right approach for your project. This makes it much more fun.
• Professional freedom: there’s no expectation for you to have your bum on the same seat for the exact same hours every day. There’s no macho “who can work the longest hours” nonsense here. You’re trusted to stay on top of your project work without being nannied.
• Time to write: if you sometimes feel like writing articles or blog posts at work, you can. In fact, it’s encouraged.
• Feisty discussions: Clearlefties often lunch together, share knowledge and chat. Never eat a sandwich alone again.
• Team support: if you get stuck on something, all you need to do is turn your neck and ask for an opinion. I’ve noticed everyone here is very willing to drop what they’re doing to help out. My work has improved hugely as a result.
• Conferences: have your say and help shape Clearleft’s conference line ups. Choose the conferences you want to go to without having to justify the use of your conference budget. UX is such a sociable industry – at Clearleft you get to fully enjoy this fact.
• Training: everyone here loves learning. Since I I started at Clearleft a few months ago, I’ve already had advanced analytics training and I’ve got some improv comedy training lined up (for public speaking).
• Healthy lifestyle: everyone here is experienced and knows what kind of life they want to lead. It’s a friendly and calm environment, punctuated by excitement rather than stress. I’ve never seen anyone panic about anything.




Interested? Apply here.