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What? (Premise, Context)

There are some things you just don’t mess with, and context is at the top of the list.

This case addresses one non-NDA-protected feature — the primary flight display (PFD), which merges all critical flight data into a single screen — among the 29 human-machine interface (HMI) instruments I worked on.

Set in a semi-regulated space, this story outlines how I prevailed upon a team of designers unfamiliar with foundational human factors science. And, more precisely, how this would aid their work in the design of key instruments in a multi-modal aviation joint-cognitive system system designed for ISR missions (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance). I socialized these concepts not only because the feature in question was essential, but it was also at risk of becoming degraded "by design" to the point of risking failure.

Topics fundamentally relate to the interplay of:

• Information processing (from human factors psychology): Emphasis on human limitations.

• Meaning processing (from cognitive systems engineering): Emphasis on leveraging human capabilities in a complex adaptive control system. Defined by complementarity: “The fundamental principle of cognition that the universal can be perceived only in the particular, while the particular can be thought of only to the universal.” — Cassirer, 1953.

Now what? (Strategy, Actions)

I gave designers and managers a crash course in relevant subjects drawn from human factors and cognitive systems engineering. Topics include:

• Signal detection

• Jobs to be done

• Common ground

• Color psychology

• Emotional valence

• Occupational stress

• Situational awareness

• Task & work performance

• Aesthetic usability effects

• Human-AI function allocation

• How people do and don’t learn

• Germane cognitive load (the working memory effort allocated to managing intrinsic load)

So what? (Value Adds, Impacts)

By bringing clarity to a sophisticated socio-technical system through broadened upward communication (which represents the nucleus of research), I had successfully made my case. Relevant leadership bought into the science, and designs became more congruent as they better conformed to military standards, thus satisfying pilot, customer, and government expectations.