Human Factors Analysis Support Tool (H-FAST)

Department of Defense Applications: We anticipate that H-FAST will provide a useful, nearly directly-usable tool for other agencies involved in large scale system acquisition. A key example is the Department of Defense (DoD). They, like NASA, are concerned with identifying and verifying human performance requirements in complex systems. They too would benefit from a tool that improves the design process by giving engineers tools and guidance to perform preliminary human factors assessments. For DoD customers, it would be necessary to include more Military Standard (MIL-STD) guidelines, project-specific requirements, and verification methods, to identify relevant design patterns for military applications, and to link to military-relevant research sources (e.g., Army Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research). However, the basic framework provided by H-FAST would be readily usable by DoD customers. Entrepreneur Center Application: Another possible non-NASA commercial application of H-FAST would be as a market validation tool for an Entrepreneur/Business Incubation Center. In this application the primary user would be the new business founder, seeking to validate the market for their product or service.

H-FAST will provide a tool to support the engineering design process at NASA JSC. As such, it will be populated with human factors requirements and guidelines related to the design of systems for space exploration. The design patterns and methods will be chosen to support particular design issues related to NASA JSC missions. H-FAST will also provide 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 will be able to customize H-FAST for their particular application. We expect that H-FAST can be used to support space vehicle design projects; ground systems, such as mission control center designs; and flight deck design projects at NASA Ames and Langley. Human-inthe-loop research conducted at any NASA facility will provide relevant input to H-FAST. The technical reports and white papers will populate the library of H-FAST, and provide all NASA engineering H-FAST users with access to relevant human factors research results. H-FAST will provide a customizable tool to support a diverse range of engineering design projects with human performance implications. Examples include ergonomic design of large complex systems, human-computer interface design, control design, display layout. More »