Human Factors
No software system can truly succeed that does not take into account the critical element of the human mind using it. The software designers need understand both the user’s capabilities and the user’s limitations in order to properly present information in an understandable way to facilitate the optimal use of that information to accomplish the necessary tasks. Global Technica goes farther than any other company in incorporating human factors and cognitive science to create highly advanced systems and simulations. These systems are capable of accurately modeling complex interactions and requirements in fast-moving environments such as the battlefield and air traffic control.
Global Technica’s human factors engineering experience encompasses 20 years of diverse projects ranging from combat and communications modeling to developing advanced discrete event and agent-based software tools, models, and simulations in the areas of UAV command and control, missile defense, homeland security, battle command management, networking and communications, air traffic control, as well as software simulation. We incorporate cognitive science using artificial intelligence techniques combined with sensory, cognitive, motor, and information processing models to create advanced simulations using simulated operators.
However complex and mission-critical your project, Global Technica ensures that the “human factor” is never forgotten in modeling, predicting outcomes, and designing highly effective systems for use by real people.
Case Study
When Boeing needed to completely redesign the federal air traffic control system to allow for much greater capacity while maintaining the same or better levels of system safety. Global Technica was tasked to provide analysis, design, and implementation in the areas of human factors, user interface design, software architecture and software development, and modeling and simulation.
Initially, the project focused on redesigning air traffic controller workstations to take into account the controller’s new role, which was moving from active and operational to managerial, primarily overseeing and supervising the automation built into the system. This effort involved designing automation, spatial displays, operator controls, advanced user interfaces, as well as cognitive analysis for the advanced design of controller workstations.
Once the workstation design was complete, Global Technica was solely responsible for building all of the human agent models of air traffic controllers and pilots to be used in a very large and high-fidelity fast-time discrete event analytical simulation of TRACON and Enroute air traffic control. These human performance models allowed the system designers to see how the various human elements would perform in the system prior to building expensive prototypes. They were architected, designed, and programmed to take into account the sensory, cognitive, and motor aspects of actual air traffic controllers and pilots and were developed with the aid of air traffic controller and pilot subject matter experts.
As the work progressed, Global Technica became the lead software architect of the entire air traffic control simulation effort, which encompassed many software models representing aircraft, airspace, weather, communications, radars, sensors, pilots, controllers, policies, etc. Global Technica led a large team of simulation developers and were responsible for the technical architecture, software development, design and development methodologies, testing, verification and validation, project schedule, and project oversight.
