By Jennifer McGovern Narkevicius, Ph D.
Flip the wall switch up…what happens? Lights go on. Each culture has these expectations for the behavior of things in the environment, expectations for the behavior of the system.
Human Factors practitioners contribute an understanding of human behavior and human performance to the system design trade space. This understanding contributes to design by incorporating design elements that maximize human capabilities and mitigate human limitations.
Training practitioners bring an understanding of human learning and application of learning to the trade space. This technical area delivers improved performance through effective and appropriate preparation of users.
The intersection of HFE and training is part of HSI and contributes design aspects for the system that result in better performance with less but better targeted training for use of a system that incorporates the limitations and capabilities of both human learning and human performance. Training in a well designed system can focus on the operational use of the system rather than on “how to work the thing.”
The solution includes educating our hardware and software design brethren to include human limitations and capabilities as problem constraints much as they select system components only with respect to resolve system hardware considerations. If a system will be designed for a particular population, we can improve performance by working within cultural expectations to achieve architectures and information flows that reduce training requirements and yield mission critical levels of performance.