SDTG Business Meeting
SDTG Business Meeting: Wednesday, September 22, 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm. We will have food, a cash bar and a speaker. Everyone come and bring a friend! Bring your thoughts and input. If you have an idea you could help execute please bring it to the meeting. We have been dormant this year – we need to reenergize. We need everyone’s participation. Whether you are able to attend the Business Meeting or not, please send your thoughts and ideas to our webmaster, Teresa Alley (). She will post them to our web site so all members can review them. Linda O’Donnell, Chair
Call for Speakers: 99 Seconds
Melroy D'Souza
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A unique new session, "99 Seconds," is set to premiere at the 2004 HFES Annual Meeting. The new session features an open-microphone forum that aims to provide annual meeting attendees a chance to discuss their work in a relatively quick and lighthearted format. Speakers who sign up as presenters for this session will get exactly 99 seconds to talk about their work.
The session is designed so that presenting authors can generate interest in sessions in which they are participating. Also, attendees who have not submitted a paper can also use this forum to do a high-level presentation of their current work. Additionally, students can talk about their research and stimulate interest in those areas.
The session is different from other informal gatherings such as technical group meetings or poster sessions in that it allows participants to present their work and other human factors/ergonomics-related opinions to a wide audience, which in turn benefits from hearing about to a broad range of subjects.
Prizes of software will be presented to the two best speakers (as voted by the audience). "99 Seconds" will be held on Tuesday, September 21, from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. To sign up, send an e-mail to Melroy D'Souza at with your name and the title of your presentation before September 15, 2004. Or just come to the session and present your work.
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SME HSI Management – Some Thoughts
James Pratt, Lockheed Martin
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Designing and constructing large technical systems requires a diversity of skills. Not only are engineers needed who can represent hardware, software, or people systems, but also engineers who can represent the interactions of these systems. On large projects where people systems are well established, such as in defense acquisition, subject matter experts (SME, people who once used the legacy systems but are now helping build new ones) are usually employed to represent “how things work” to the engineers. Some of the benefits of this include knowing how to speak the language of the end user, how the politics of the decision makers work, and how legacy systems have operated. There is a tendency, however, to employ SMEs as the personnel that represent Human Systems Integration (HSI, HF/E in the military) on these large military projects, particularly to manage HSI efforts. Although this seems like a good idea, SME HSI management can put transformational versions of these systems at jeopardy.
From a managerial perspective, military SMEs usually (but not always!) have vast experiences managing a diversity of personnel, particularly if they were officers. Leadership styles transfer to business and are generally autocratic in nature. A very strict sense of hierarchical management forces communications to be unidirectional. In engineering environments, conversely, the managerial hierarchy of the trade is fairly flat, and concepts like peer-review and six-sigma bring an environment of productive critique and process improvement. Engineers get and give each other feedback on work done, whereas SMEs accept decisions from superiors and expect compliance by their subordinates. Engineers worry about change management while SMEs worry about expedient task completion. These styles can clash for the uninitiated.
This effects the construction of transformational systems in a number of ways. From an engineering perspective, SMEs may not have been formally trained in modern engineering principles, e.g., requirements driven or object-oriented analysis and design. The extremely complex interaction between human, software and hardware requirements, particularly in a reduced manning environment, drive reliance on concepts like, “this is the way it was when I did it”, or, “this is how I want to see it”, and not, “this task inherits the properties of that job/duty”. SME type statements do not support design of transformational systems where appropriate task analysis has occurred. Subject matter experts that have become engineers help the understanding of context in design, but have a tendency to bring forth legacy designs vice considering new concepts that may be more appropriate.
The solution to utilizing SME as design agents on large systems requires investigation. Military personnel who leave the services to work on HSI in constructing transformational systems require both training and certification. They require general training that would include global constructs involved with HSI, e.g. user advocacy, validity, reliability, and individual differences. They also require certification generally across all seven domains within HSI (Human Factors Engineering, Personnel, Habitability, Manpower, Training, Environment Safety & Health, and Survivability), and specialization within each domain they do work. If SMEs manage HSI on transformational projects, they require training in alternative leadership styles. Military management styles are not designed to support the analysis and creativity that engineers need to perform on transformational systems.
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Grants Online: Department of Education
http://www.grants.gov/
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Beginning August 9 a new regulation win make the Internet the preferred means for receiving grant applications. Each year, the Department of Education awards $4.8 billion in discretionary grants. The web site should save citizens time and money in the application process as well as enable Education officials greater participation with applicants and the process.
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Air Force Academy:
Research Associateship Program (RAP)
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The Human Environmental Research Center at the Air Force Academy recently received sponsor status in the Research Associateship Program (RAP). Research Associateship awards are granted to postdoctoral and senior scientists and engineers for the purpose of conducting research in a U.S. government laboratory in cooperation with an approved NRC Adviser. It is a great opportunity for someone coming out of their PhD program or for faculty who want a senior research associateship position for one year at a research site. More information can be found at their home page: http://www4.nationalacademies.org/pga/rap.nsf/WebDocuments/Home+Page
Review periods are Feb, May, Aug, and Nov each year. Next opportunity would be in the Nov review period. The Department of Behavioral Sciences has 3 topics. Links are provided below:
Behavioral and Physiological Effects of Sleep Deprivation at the US Air Force Academy
Human Behavior Representation in Military Models and Simulations
Usability Evaluation Methods and Tools for Diagnosing Usability Problems
Our goal is to get a postdoctoral or senior scientist to come here and work in one or more of these areas. Interested people can contact me, information provided below.
Lt Col Terence Andre
Deputy Dept Head for Cadet Operations
Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership
Phone: (719) 333-2972 / DSN 333-2972
Fax: (719) 333-8646 / DSN 333-8646
HQ USAFA/DFBL
2354 Fairchild Drive, Suite 6L-101B
USAF Academy, CO 80840-6228
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Human Factors Portals
Teresa Alley
Federal government agencies have been working on developing HF Web Portals. These efforts were initially in response to the needs of their own research and development, but missions have expanded to the entire HSI community. The original sites were begun independently, but recently some of the agencies established lines of communications and are coordinating efforts. These sites include:
NASA Human Reliability: http://humanreliability-pbma-kms.intranets.com/login.asp?link=
This website is provided by the NASA Headquarters Office of Safety and Mission Assurance to promote and advance the exchange of knowledge and methodology in Human Error Analysis, Human Reliability Assessment, Accident Investigation and application of Human Factors Engineering.
FAA Human Factors Workbench: http://www.hf.faa.gov/Portal/Default.aspx
This site contains HF tools, processes, reports, training and more.
Air Force Knowledge Now Communities of Practice: https://afkm.wpafb.af.mil/
A Community of Practice (CoP) workspace provides a web-based collaborative environment where members of a group use shared information and administrative and communications tools to conduct business, manage a project, keep abreast of important group issues and solve group problems. (Note: This is a secure site and takes quite a bit of navigating once you are accepted into the web site. The Air Force HSI group is working with the other agencies, as noted above, to make the HSI Community of Practice more visible and accessible. This site is available to all HSI researchers once registered: ; (937) 656-2356 ).
Cool Link:
See the slides/video-clips, and hear the audio, from more than 100 technology-related presentations on this NASA website: http://advtech.jsc.nasa.gov/presentation_portal.asp
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