A Performance Support Tool for Human Factors Design and Evaluation

Abstract

H-FAST (Human Factors Analysis Support Tool) is a research and development project with NASA to increase human factors awareness among design engineers, facilitate communication between human factors engineers and design engineers, and promote the application of human factors best practices earlier in the design cycle. H-FAST reduces the amount of in-person time needed for evaluations by Human factors specialists by organizing their body of knowledge and presenting it in a way that is usable by engineers throughout the design process. H-FAST also provides detailed guidance regarding human factors evaluations and the capability to store data and provide feedback on the results of these evaluations. H-FAST will improve the engineering design process by providing engineers with easy access to detailed human factors methods, relevant research, and subject matter expert contact information. This will empower engineers to create more usable systems, thus reducing the number of design iterations and resulting in higher-quality products. In this paper, we describe the identification and development of relevant human factors information that was included in the tool, discuss the methods and results of a user test at NASA, and provide an overview of how H-FAST can be extended to other domains such as commercial aviation, homeland security, and product design.