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Rapid prototyping (RP) is a research and development process used quickly builds rough, then more refined, versions of a solution following the “spiral design” process described on the Human Systems Integration page. To build a display, for example, development team members first create a simple...
Learn from operators they they are thinking about while performing tasks
Verbal Protocol Analysis can be used to understand how the operator perceives, operates, or uses a system, product, or space. Also known as the “think aloud” method, the researcher asks an individual to say all...
Learn about the lived experiences of operatos in actual work conditions
Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) is a family of tools and techniques to elicit, analyze, and represent cognitive aspects of performance, and the operational context in which work is conducted. Findings from CTA...
Learn how operators percieve the amount of work they need to perform
What is workload?Humans have limited attentional resources to process information. Given these limits, workload that is too high can result in performance challenges such as errors, lapses, slower response times....
Discover what activities operators perform on the job, and how often.
Activity Analysis (AA) can be used to document anything that a person does while performing a task. There are two purposes for AA: to determine the activities that occur in any situation, and how often the activities...
Understand how work is done, and describe it in terms of flow, time, or elements.
Functional Analysis is an umbrella term for a variety of methods that can be used early in the system development process (Nemeth, 2004). The types of questions that can be answered using function...
Find best arrangement of elements in a design
Link Analysis (LA) can be used to arrange the location of equipment and individuals in a workplace, and to arrange controls and displays on a console based on how often elements interact, or are used together.
As a form of...
Learn how work is actually done in real circumstances.
Observing people in the context of their work environment can be used to gain insight into how individuals and teams perform their work. By watching intently in actual work settings, understanding “emerges from the...
Methods are the processes research and development teams follow to create tools for operators. They typically follow three phases.
Research--Learn about rail operations, how operators do their work, what goals they need to accomplish and what gets in their way. Requirements this phase...