Human Engineering Requirements for Rapid Prototyping of Operator/Maintainer Interfaces: A Proposed Military Standard

Abstract

A proposed military standard was developed that establishes and defines the methodology to incorporate the use of rapid prototyping of operator/maintainer machine interface design into the system design process. The specification includes the work to be accomplished by the contractor or subcontractor in prototyping interfaces and evaluating those interfaces under operationally equivalent conditions. The tasks outlined provide the basis for defining, integrating and validating operator interface prototyping methodologies, as well as the software interface. Two data item descriptions were also developed; Rapid Prototyping Program Plan, and Rapid Prototyping Design Approach Document. The Rapid Prototyping Program Plan is the single document which describes the contractor's entire system prototype engineering program, identifies its elements, and explains how the elements will be managed. The Rapid Prototyping Design Approach Document provides a source of data with which to evaluate the extent to which the rapid prototyping design meets system engineering requirements and other human engineering criteria. This paper presents the main topics from the proposed standard.