This project addressed concerns regarding the extent to which human factors (HF) information has been incorporated into systems design. A four month field study of HF design in industry was conducted to gain an understanding of the constraints and challenges facing designers. HF designers in industry were surveyed to learn their judgements of the value and cost associated with typical HF handbook information. This project also involved two studies of handbook usage. Results indicated that current HF handbooks may not be providing the information that designers need. It was found that the design process, in this case, was highly constrained with many interactions with designers from different disciplines. Solution concepts appeared early in the design process and in a holistic manner, suggesting that design prototypes and other context-rich sources of information may better support these designers.

Although there is substantial industry interest in the demonstrated performance benefits of EID, the methodology is perceived to be labor-intensive and potentially difficult to reproduce on a large scale. Industry representatives perceive these two issues as obstacles to using EID in practice. The ASM Consortium and Honeywell expressed an interest in making EID more tractable and accessible to industry. This project consisted of a case study of the EID process effort that took place in the UMP 00 project. By documenting the design process, a ‘case-based’ design guideline was generated. Capturing the process by which EID is done and abstracting heuristic guidelines is essential for determining to what extent EID can be fully utilized for industrial-sized applications.

The purpose of this project was to conduct research on how to design adaptive human-computer interfaces (HCI) for supervisory control of process control plants and aviation systems in practice. Such interfaces were context-sensitive in that the form or content of information changed as a function of plant or aviation system state, operator or pilot task, or some other goal-relevant dynamic variable. The project was built on CEL's previous work on cognitive work analysis (CWA) and Ecological Interface Design. This project also included research on aligning the application of CWA as the standard design method of human-computer interactive systems to conform to "ISO13407: Human Centered Design Process Standard." This was a collaborative project between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and CEL. Mr. Hori of MHI spent the project period as a visiting researcher in CEL.

The microcomputer revolution of the 1980s allowed economical development of simulations for a wide range of domains.  While classical stimulus-response representations are simplified to eliminate many phenomena of interest, conventional high-fidelity simulations of complex systems can produce very difficult to interpret results.  Abstract ‘microworlds’ such as DURESS II have shown some of the strengths of both extremes and have been widely used for human factors research.  Recently, a need has been identified for a theoretical framework to guide the design of simulators, the selection of appropriate levels of fidelity, and the generation of useful simulated scenarios.  This project generalizes from successful applications of Cognitive Work Analysis to military training simulators (Naikar 2002) and provides a theoretical basis for applying analysis results to design.

This exploratory project investigated the strategies and performance of subjects of various backgrounds on a small-scale design-like activity. The goal of the project was to understand the relationship between problem types and effective solution strategies for adaptive, functional problem solving, as well as the expertise factors which shape behaviour in such contexts. A novel task domain was proposed for use as a design microworld. Subjects of high and low spatial ability were asked to perform trials under various conditions related to the level of constraint in the problems. The results revealed that spatial ability and constraint level both had significant effects on subjects' performance. A speculative model was proposed as a potential mechanism through which spatial ability and constraint level may have combined to lead to the results observed.