IAS™ — A Human Factors Methodology for Incorporating User Feedback into System Design

Abstract

“The window is too big.” “The window is too small.” “It's too loud.” “It's too quiet.” How does system design and development proceed to address the needs of the user when there is a general sense that users — and other stakeholder groups — are dissatisfied with a product, but the feedback is vague, inconsistent, and often times, conflicting? This situation occurs quite often, when designers and developers have only sparse, anecdotal information available to them about user response to a system, and there is no systematic collection or interpretation of user feedback. This paper uses a case study format to present Investigation-Analysis-Solution (IAS)™, a methodology for systematically collecting, quantifying, evaluating, prioritizing, and incorporating human factors feedback into the system design — or redesign — process. While the example project was executed for a large-scale military system, the IAS method and tools presented are applicable and transferable to any system development, design, or redesign effort.