human factors engineering manifesto
TRANSCRIPT
HFE MANIFESTOHUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING
NOKIA CLOUD INNOVATION CENTER NAPERVILLE, IL APRIL19 2017
The art & science of systems, software and hardware engineering to make tech human
Pictures: Nokia
Increasingly capable technologies and their widespread global impact in people’s everyday lives have prompted a renaissance in practices addressing Human Factors, so that We The Users can best leverage them.
These are Human-Machine-Systems of all shapes and sizes. Whether the job is centered on UX, User Experience, or CX, Customer Experience; addressing physical form factors or digital interfaces; creating services or optimizing operations; working with software or hardware… Humanizing Technology is our shared belief and professional mission.
Our community makes a decisive difference when we shape solutions that truly transform the human experience. History demonstrates that myopic technical prowess alone does not suffice and can even negate sought after benefits.
This manifesto seeks to foster a culture of innovation that honors those committed to furthering the human possibilities of technology and whose signature delivery and success is characterized by how users experience quality.
So, Let’s Keep Making Technology More Human,
Jose de FranciscoDesign Director, Human Factors EngineeringNOKIA Applications & Analytics Group
= innovating by humanizing technology
crafting technologicalsolutions
people’s needs & expectations behaviors, affects & experiences
elements key toresults & outcomes
HHUMAN
FFACTORS
EENGINEERING
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We all leverage and interface with a number of technologies that are both shaping and being defined by our cultures. This is a far reaching feedback loop, which has been accelerated by widespread digitalization and is magnified in hyperconnected societies.
Ubiquitous cloud and distributed computing, intelligent systems powered by advanced analytics, robotics, connected day-to-day objects and sensor networks, mixed reality and multimedia applications, on demand services and mobile experiences… a new wave of innovations have raised our expectations on how we can better pursue personal interests, interact with our surroundings and, most importantly, engage one another and our communities.
Let’s gear up for a future of unbounded possibilities.
Ever-present technology
Pictures: Nokia
Low and high tech, legacy systems and the rapid diffusion of innovations have becomeforever-present in our lives. Technology’s nature entails pervasive changes, whichgenerate uncertainty and familiar anxieties.
Note that a number of today’s concerns have already been faced by past generations athistorical inflection points. It pays to capture lessons learned and to assess howsocieties manage to move forward with an understanding of the differences at eachcycle.
This time around, there are renewed worries about technological singularities and thedegree to which they will inflict pain and traumatic disruptions to humankind. Today’sdebate highlights topics such as: automation making inroads in new areas, earnest skillsrendered obsolete, malicious hacking, privacy management, and a full gamut ofvulnerabilities, discontinuities, changing behaviors and culture clashes.
A reality check unveils that individuals, groups and communities are frequently impactedby a wide range of unpleasant and harmful deficiencies embedded in the products andservices that we consume and the tools and systems work with. We all relate to theseissues: a piecemeal of incidents, including health and safety hazards, undermine ourstate of mind, wellbeing and quality of life.
Many happen to be caused by technologies that display blatant disregard, scant andtoken approaches to Human Factors. Suboptimal designs and blindsiding engineeringprowess are culprits. Moreover, a perverse psyche develops when blaming users forerrors and issues that could have been prevented from the onset in the design process.This also manifests itself in the form of public ridicule and self-inflicted perceptions ofpersonal inadequacy, which betray technology’s reason for being.
Have you ever felt technology challenged? It should not be hard to agree on the needfor removing ill conceived complexity by addressing Human Factors, and to do so withpassion, rigor, and in everyone’s best interest.
Reality check
Pictures: Nokia
1. We believe in fostering and augmenting the human possibilities of technology by innovating with people centered engineering.
2. This is a holistic interdisciplinary science and end-to-end systems engineering practice devoted to design, develop, implement and evolve “value based solutions” that humanize methods, processes, tasks, tools and environments throughout their lifecycles.
3. We make technology human and “Experiencing Quality” is our signature delivery.
4. HFE’s solutions are characterized by elegant simplicity and sophistication: our profession’s art and collective expression.
What is Human Factors Engineering (HFE) all about?
Pictures: Nokia
5. You are. We are all users of technology: good ideas and ingenuity surface anytime and anywhere from any of us.
6. Sustaining serial success is best achieved when: a) Human Factors Engineering (HFE) is set up as a
professional practice.
b) The HFE team is actively engaged at the front-end of a project to help define success factors, set goal directed engineering and pave the path for iterative development.
c) HFE remains engaged during products and services’ lifecycles to address continued improvements and incremental innovation.
7. This is the job of cross-functional and interdisciplinary teams involving the collaboration of domain experts and creative technologists who work across fields and at the intersection of disciplines.
8. As Bell Lab’s John Karlin, HFE pioneer, used to put it: ”we come at it from both angles” by actively involving stakeholders in participatory design and by gathering usage feedback & analytics, while leveraging professional skills, deep expertise and best practices across projects and industries.
9. Our relentless drive to deliver adaptive technologies should conform to Human Diversity and strive for ease of customization versus. just focusing on average proto-personas.Outliers and extreme users are part of an all inclusive methodology that unveils use cases making a difference in people’s lives. Many of them happen to be ahead of mainstream expectations and double as breakthrough innovations for everyone.
What is Human Factors Engineering (HFE) about?
Who is involved?
Who is involved?
Pictures: Nokia
10. By understanding information, human cognition, affects and behaviors: how they are generated, transmitted, interlaced, consumed, shared, evolved, and the cybernetics behind the overall sense making experience.
11. Human dynamics calls for:
(a) Identifying stakeholders and their roles, interests, behaviors and interactions.
(b) Analyzing stated and hidden jobs, journeys, workflows and tasks.
(c) Synthesizing, though not limited to, cognitive, biomechanical, behavioral and environmental implications.
(d) All assessed in context, on a use case basis, throughout complete lifecycles and accounting for network effects.
12. Human systems integration distills how users’ skills and interactions add and create value so that we can set requirements for: information & decision support systems, controls and assisted automation, adaptability and programmability, as well as the definition of form factors and the properties and behavior of user interfaces.
13. Autonomation, rather than just automation, is the Lean principle coupling human and machine intelligence in collaborative environments. The result is beneficial intelligence.In this day and age, Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) is comprised of both human networks and machine networks. The paradigm has, hence, shifted from conventional HCI to Communities-Networks-Interaction (CNI), which is subjected to role, policy and skill based human override.
14. Iterative methodologies such as Design Thinking and Agile, jointly with Data Science and Lean Six Sigma are worth adapting and interweaving in HFE’s toolset.
15. Continuous improvement is imperative throughout what we do and what we deliver.
How are we getting our dream job done?
“There’s huge value in getting it right. We should shift the goal of AI from creating pure undirected artificial intelligence to creating beneficial intelligence.”
Stephen HawkingDirector of Research at the Centre for Theoretical CosmologyUniversity of Cambridge
Nokia & Wired Magazine’s #MakeTechHuman The Bodleian LibrariesWikimedia Commons
Picture: Nokia
16. QUALITY: Value based user-friendly solutions where quality is experienced as:a) positive human affectsb) meaningful utilityc) consumability and ease of used) efficient simplicity without shortchanging effective sophistication.
17. TIME-TO-MARKET: Designing for frictionless adoption and pleasant experiences removes barriers and leads to faster diffusion of innovations in consumer, business and public and non-for-profit sectors.
18. GROWTH: Democratizing technology:a) broadens the user base beyond early adoptersb) generates network effects which elevate valuec) leads to self-service opportunitiesd) promotes new applications of the underlying ecosystem.
19. COST EFFICIENCIES: Humanized and adaptive technologies prompt shorter learning curves: a) training and human error costs are downb) wasteful (non-value-add) efforts are eliminatedc) time and resources are freed up for value based activities.
20. PRODUCTIVITY: Effective and efficient Human-Machine-Systems set the standard for capability, performance, capacity, reliability, assurance and serviceability levels, all key to operational excellence in the workplace.
HFE’s outcomes and impact?
Pictures: Nokia
1947
NOKIA Bell Labs
2017
NOKIA Cloud Innovation Center
Pictures: Nokia
Celebrating HFE’s 70th Anniversary and Pioneering Spirit at Nokia Bell Labs
Should you be interested in providing comments and/or contributing to the HFE Manifesto, please contact:
Jose de Francisco, Design Director- Human Factors EngineeringInnovation & Realization / Solutions & Partners UnitNOKIA Applications & Analytics Group
Cloud Innovation Center2000 W. Lucent LaneNaperville, IL 60563United States
HUMAN FACTORS ENGINEERING (HFE) MANIFESTOThe art & science of systems, software and hardware engineering to make tech human