Ecological interface design and system safety: One facet of Rasmussen's legacy

•The focus of this manuscript is on CSE/EID and the role that it may play in improving system safety.•The decision making and problem solving literatures are reviewed for insights regarding effective decision support design.•Analytical tools (i.e., abstraction and aggregation hierarchies) for conducting work domain analyses are described.•Concrete examples are used to illustrate the need for ecological displays to span all levels of the abstraction hierarchy.•The role of graphical displays in supporting decision making, problem solving and system safety is explored in detail.

The focus of this manuscript is on cognitive systems engineering/ecological interface design (CSE/EID) and the role that this framework may play in improving system safety. First, the decision making and problem solving literatures are reviewed with an eye towards informational needs that are required to support these activities. The utility of two of Rasmussen's analytical tools (i.e., the abstraction and aggregation hierarchies) in conducting work domain analyses to identify associated information (i.e., categories and relationships) is discussed. The importance of designing ecological displays and interfaces that span the informational categories in the abstraction hierarchy is described and concrete examples are provided. The potential role that ecological interfaces can play in providing effective decision making (i.e., preventing accidents) and problem solving (i.e., dealing with accidents) support, thereby improving the safety of our socio-technical systems, is explored.