ARMY AL&T
ALL ABOUT U S
Whether it’s called Soldier-centered design, user experience, human factors engineering or human systems integration, the Army is put ting this science front and center.
by Ellen Summey
ometimes you just get really, really lucky. Tat was the case for hiring officials at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1945, when they hired industrial psychol- ogist John E. Karlin. Now widely considered the father of human factors engineering, he was then a newly minted Ph.D. studying sound and commu-
nication for the U.S. military during the final months of World War II. Karlin found fertile ground for his innovative ideas about product design at Bell, where he founded and led the nation’s first human factors engineering department.
Rather than creating new products with the assumption that users would adapt to them as required, he and his team incorporated human capabilities and inclinations into the design of the products themselves. His most well-known project, the telephone touch- pad, represents one of the earliest examples of human factors engineering—the now ubiquitous keypad’s enduring use and universal adoption prove that Karlin got it right. Tat, however, was not a matter of luck. It was cold, hard science.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? Tis field of work—the science of researching user capabilities, preferences and incli- nations—is having a bit of an identity crisis today. What used to be called human factors engineering (HFE) now goes by several different names, including user expe- rience (UX) design, human systems integration (HSI), Soldier-centered design (SCD) and several other related terms. Where does HFE end and UX begin? Is SCD just a rebranded version of HSI? It’s hard to say. Tough each distinct name invokes certain skill sets and areas of focus, their goals and methods have significant overlap among them. Tink of these fields as siblings with different hobbies. Tey may function some- what differently, but you can’t deny the family resemblance.
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