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Posted Monday, May 12, 2008
The International Council on Systems Engineering, the preeminent professional society for systems engineers, sponsors a quarterly publication called INSIGHT. The latest issue, published in April 2008, was entitled “Integrating the Human in Every System” and featured the theme of Human Systems Integration. The Air Force Center for Systems Engineering at AFIT played a significant role in the development of this theme issue of INSIGHT, reaching thousands of systems engineers worldwide.
Human systems integration is the area of systems engineering that focuses on the human component of every system to help resolve, and preferably avoid, system designs that, by not adequately considering the human, result in sub-optimized mission performance, unnecessarily high costs, and human-unfriendly systems. Human systems integration enables good systems engineering practice by bringing the various human-centered domains into the systems engineering process to ensure that human considerations are integrated throughout system design, development, operation, sustainment, and retirement. The goal of human systems integration in the acquisition process is to optimize total system performance and minimize life-cycle costs, while accommodating the characteristics of the user population that will operate, maintain, and support the system.
Mr. Michael Mueller, AFIT/SYA, served as Co-Editor of the issue along with Mr. Steven Deal, Deal Corporation. Mr. Mueller wrote the Introduction to the issue (“Remembering the Human”) and also contributed the lead article, entitled “Human Systems Integration – What’s It All About?” The Introduction sets the stage for the issue, while “Human Systems Integration – What’s It All About?” provides an overview of human systems integration and its role in achieving human-friendly systems.
In addition, Maj. Nicholas Hardman (Systems Engineering PhD student), Dr. John Colombi (contract SE faculty), and Dr. David Jacques (SE Curriculum Chair) contributed a cross-disciplinary article entitled, “What Systems Engineers Need to Know About Human-Computer Interaction.” Their article presents an in-depth treatment of the application of human systems integration in a ubiquitous arena, namely human-computer interaction. This particular article serves as a foreshadowing of a future theme issue entitled, “Cognition: Pursuing the Next Level in Systems Performance.” The article also introduces the challenge of terminology differences, which leads nicely into Maj. Hardman’s second contribution to the issue, “Talking the Talk: Cross-Discipline Terminology Challenges.” In this article, Maj. Hardman and his co-authors delve more deeply into the critical problem of dealing with terminology differences between various disciplines as they work and interact in the design and develop of systems.
This theme issue of INSIGHT champions the need for “Integrating the Human in Every System” and invites the reader to ponder where application of human systems integration can make a difference in their work and in their lives. Human systems integration promotes the recognition that the human is an integral element of every system, and, therefore, human considerations deserve a prominent place in the integrated design and development of systems. Through its substantial contributions to this theme issue of INSIGHT, the Air Force Center for Systems Engineering clearly demonstrates to the international systems engineering community its strong commitment to human systems integration for the design and development of human-friendly systems.