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Human Factors Design Drives System Performance

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 28 March 2021

Bottom Line Up Front:

Human performance is a major factor in overall system performance
Humans are increasingly the bottleneck for system performance
Human factors engineering design drives human performance and thus system performance

Why care about humans?

In many system development efforts, the focus is on the capabilities of the technology: How fast can the jet fly? How accurately can the rifle fire?

We can talk about the horsepower of the engines and the boring of the rifle until the cows come home, but without a human pressing the throttle or pulling the trigger, neither technology is doing anything. A major mistake many systems engineering efforts experience is neglecting the impact of the human on the performance of the system.

Ergonomics

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 17 January 2021

The term ergonomics was coined by Wojciech Jastrzębowski in 1857 to mean “the science of work”¹ with the goal of improving productivity and profit. He described the importance of physical, emotional, entertainment, and rational aspects of the labor and employee experience, but the context was squarely on factory-type production.

Over time, this has evolved into two, slightly different definitions.

Human Factors Engineering (HFE)

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 17 January 2021

Human factors engineering (HFE) is a broad and multidisciplinary field that designs and evaluates the human interfaces of a system.

Don’t stop reading — that definition masks a lot of complexity. Let’s break it down:

System

INCOSE defines system as “an arrangement of parts or elements that together exhibit behaviour or meaning that the individual constituents do not. Systems can be either physical or conceptual, or a combination of both.”

User Experience (UX)

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 17 January 2021

The term user experience was coined in 1993 by Don Norman while working at Apple. He intended it to encompass a person’s entire experience related to a product, from any feelings they had prior to using it, to first seeing it in the store, getting it home, turning it on and learning how to use it, telling someone else about it, etc.

I highly recommend this short video where Mr. Norman explains this history and also complains about the frequent misuse of the word:

DoD re-affirms importance of HSI in acquisition policy overhaul

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 27 September 2020

The US Department of Defense is overhauling it’s acquisition policy from a stale, process-driven approach to a new, outcome-driven approach. The new concept is called the Adaptive Acquisition Framework (AAF). Its goal is to remove bureaucracy and give government program managers more flexibility to adapt to the needs of their particular acquisition.

Learn from the mistakes of others

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 16 September 2020

The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience… i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business…
General James Mattis

The most successful people in any profession learn from the experiences of others. You can learn from their successes, sure. But don’t focus on doing things exactly they way they did, you’ll stifle your own innovation. Instead, understand their successes, extract relevant lessons, and forge your own path.

More importantly, learn from others’ failures and mistakes.

That’s why I publish a Reading / Listening List. As of the publishing of this article, 5 of the 6 recommendations are about poor engineering and design². I find these stories fascinating, enlightening, and valuable. By avoiding the pitfalls of the past, we improve the likelihood of success in our own projects.

It’s okay to make mistakes, but strive to at least make original mistakes.

A Functional Team is NOT an Integrated Product Team

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 12 July 2020

“My name is Inigo Montoya. You won a government contract. Prepare to deliver CDRLs.”

TL;DR: An Integrated Product Team (IPT) is a cross-functional group. If everyone on the team has the same background, that’s a functional or discipline team. There’s a difference.

Board man gets paid

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 22 March 2020

For years I’ve been advocating for the effective inclusion of human systems integration (HSI) in the systems engineering (SE) process. I had to address a persistent misunderstanding of what HSI is and how it relates to human factors; while that can be frustrating, I recognized that it wasn’t going to change overnight. Instead, I worked diligently to share my message with anyone who would listen.

Recently, my diligence paid off. I was contacted by a group putting together a proposal for a defense contract. The government’s request outlined their expectations for HSI as part of the systems engineering effort in a way that the proposal team hadn’t seen before. Someone on the team had heard me speak before, knew I had the right expertise they needed, and reached out to request my support.

Diversity in engineering careers

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 14 November 2019

I had the privilege to attend the Society of Women Engineers conference WE19 in Anaheim, CA last week. I left inspired and optimistic.

Speakers and panelists relayed their experiences over the previous decades. These women had been denied entrance into engineering schools, marginalized in the workplace, and forced to become ‘one of the guys’ to be accepted among their peers.

We’ve come a long way. It’s never been a better time to enter the workforce as a woman/person of color/LGBTQ/etc. Diversity in the workforce and leadership of engineering companies is on the rise, barriers are falling, and the value of diversity is being recognized. And yet, we still have so far to go.

We recognize that diversity is good for business ³ and companies are actively recruiting more diverse talent. Our organizational cultures are still adapting to this diversity. In many ways, we still expect all employees to conform to the existing culture, rather than proactively shape the inclusive culture we desire.

The Swiss cheese model: Designing to reduce catastrophic losses

Posted by Benjamin Schwartz on 21 July 2019

Failures and errors happen frequently. A part breaks, an instruction is misunderstood, a rodent chews through a power cord. The issue gets noticed, we respond to correct it, we clean up any impacts, and we’re back in business.

Occasionally, a catastrophic loss occurs. A plane crashes, a patient dies during an operation, an attacker installs ransomware on the network. We often look for a single cause or freak occurrence to explain the incident. Rarely, if ever, are these accurate.