HPI - Goal 3 To develop, or foster the development of, a comprehensive computer-based tool or set of tools to support human-task interface analyses and predictions for use by both researchers and practitioners.

The proper conceptual frameworks (Goal 1) are essential prerequisites for obtaining proper measurements (Goal 2). Analysis tools use the conceptual frameworks to arrive at various assessments of one or more measurements.

"Analysis tools" consist of software packages that perform one or more of the following functions:

• Comparison of a performance capacity measurement to a reference value (e.g., a "norm").
• Translation of information that characterizes a high level task into performance resource demands imposed on the lower level subsystems that work together to execute the high level task.
• Application of resource economic principles to assess human-task interfaces; i.e., performance resource availability > performance resource demand (across all subsystems and dimensions of performance) for "success" of the given system in the given task.
• Computation of intermediate results or ancillary inputs to support the first three functions.
  

Our progress related to Goal 3 consists of two specific analysis tools and one general class of analysis. The analysis tools have been dubbed "Human-Machine-Task Computer Aided Design" (HMT-CAD) and "Nonlinear Causal Resource Analysis" (NCRA), while the topic of "data modeling" represents a general domain in which there is a huge need for development of special analyses that allow the use of "estimates" to obtain a fidelity comparable to that which might be obtained with more time consuming measurements (e.g., to represent a performance capacity envelope).

Return to HPI Goals page