Abstract for NSF Human Centered Systems Workshop, Panel 2, Digital Battlefield

A Proposed Human Centered Methodology for Systems Design

Jack H. Hiller, Director Personnel Technologies, Dept. Army HQ

The suspension, postponement, and deletion of human factors engineering (HFE) and training development (TD) efforts during the development and procurement of weapons systems is a well known phenomenon. Reasons for this neglect are usually stated to be unexpected higher costs for higher priority engineering work that absorb human factors and training development budgets and erosion of time available. In the author's view, the reasons for postponement of human factors and training run deeper even than short budgets and time. Fundamentally, HFE and TD have relied on traditional job-task analyses to perform their own work, but in the initial stages of concept development and system design, job-task specifications have not been prepared and cannot be prepared because of hardware/software design uncertainties. Once the system concepts and designs have been ironed out, then HFE and TD are allowed entry. The obvious problem is that designers are then reluctant to change designs to satisfy HFE and TD issues. This paper presents a methodology that will enable HFE and TD to work with concept developers and systems designers as a part of the team at the beginning of projects. The methodology relies on three components: Specifications for total system functions (man, machine, and combination) in place of job-tasks; Reconfigureable networked part-task simulators; and Detailed combat scenarios that force total system functions to be performed repeatedly to support spiral development.