Human-System Integration in the System Development Process

In April 1991 BusinessWeek ran a cover story entitled, "I Can't Work This ?#!!@ Thing," about the difficulties many people have with consumer products, such as cell phones and VCRs. More than 15 years later, the situation is much the same—but at a very different level of scale. The disconnect between people and technology has had society-wide consequences in the large-scale system accidents from major human error, such as those at Three Mile Island and in Chernobyl.

To prevent both the individually annoying and nationally significant consequences, human capabilities and needs must be considered early and throughout system design and development. One challenge for such consideration has been providing the background and data needed for the seamless integration of humans into the design process from various perspectives: human factors engineering, manpower, personnel, training, safety and health, and, in the military, habitability and survivability. This collection of development activities has come to be called human-system integration (HSI). Human-System Integration in the System Development Process reviews in detail more than 20 categories of HSI methods to provide invaluable guidance and information for system designers and developers.

Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• Executive Summary
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Human-System Integration in the Context of System Development, 2 The System Development Process
• 3 Human-System Integration and the System Development Process
• 4 Managing Risks
• 5 Case Studies
• Part II Human-System Integration Methods in System Development, 6 Defining Opportunties and Context of Use
• 7 Defining Requirements and Design
• 8 Methods for Evaluation
• Part III The Future: Scenarios, Conclusions, and Recommendations, 9 Scenarios for the Future
• 10 Conclusions and Recommendations
• References
• Appendix A Sponsors and Contributors
• Appendix B Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff
• Index