RESEARCH:
UM, YEAH… IT is ROCKET SCIENCE
Systems designed for use by NASA are complex. These might include ground systems like mission control center or flight deck design. Either way, the success of the final system depends on the ability of the many engineering teams to coordinate efforts. That’s where this project comes in. It allows everyone to work from one source of truth about relevant requirements and research, guidelines, methods, and design patterns. With everyone working from the same data, the likelihood of success skyrockets.
HUMAN FACTORS GUIDANCE TOOL
Project Details
Proposal Title:
H-FAST: Human Factors Analysis Support Tool
Agency:
NASA
Contract Numbers:
NNX10CE39P, NNX11CB40C
Start Dates:
2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
The goal of H-FAST is to 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 creating higher-quality products.
How We Did It
With H-FAST, we partnered with Alion Science and Technology to develop a system that provides human factors guidance and support to engineering design teams. This tool can be used throughout the design lifecycle to provide inputs to engineers and program managers to help them identify and avoid potential human factors problems early in the design process. The system was also developed to provide detailed guidance regarding human factors evaluations. It can store data and provide feedback on the results of these evaluations. To do so, the tool will be populated with human factors requirements and guidelines related to the design of systems for space exploration.
H-FAST provides a modular framework that can be customized to a variety of NASA engineering projects. By including relevant requirements, guidelines, methods, and design patterns, NASA project managers can customize H-FAST for their particular application. H-FAST is a useful tool for any organization involved in large scale system acquisition; or that has concern with verifying human performance requirements in complex systems.
