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Zach Reblicks:
Hello, and welcome to the University of Kansas Aerospace short course
programs Webinar entitled: Human Factors in the Aerospace Environment.
Thank you for joining us today my name is Zach Reblicks assistant director of
Aerospace short courses at the University of Kansas Professional and continuing
education. KU short aerospace courses has been offering non-credit professional
development courses to the aerospace industry since 1977 and we offer over 50
different courses taught by industry and academia experts from around the world
both online and face to face. We can also bring any of our courses to your
workplace, be it international or local. For more information about the KU
aerospace short course program, please visit our website located at the slide in
front of you. Is now my pleasure to introduce you to todays webinar presenter,
Andrew Appleton.
Andrew is a consultant in human `factors engineering and human systems
integration engineering. He served 26 years in Canadian forces, including 15
years as a commissioned officer. While with the Canadian forces, Andrew
obtained his BSc. from St. Marys university and his Master of Science in
Ergonomics and Human Factors from Loughborough University in the UK.
Andrew retired from the Canadian Forces in January 2009. He then served as a
human factors consultant at CAE Professional services Canada Inc., where he
applied his skills to the Halifax Class Modernization Project for the Canadian
Navy and the Canadian Airforce-Navy maritime helicopter project. In 2012,
Andrew formed his own consultancy company, AJ Appleton Consulting Inc. He is
currently a Senior Aerospace Engineer in the Project Management Office for the
Royal Canadian Air Forces Medium Heavy-Lift Helicopter (PMO MHLH).
Before turning things over I would like to share that; if at any time that you
have any questions please feel free to use the question and answer tab on your
screen. Well have a short time at the end of the webinar to address questions.
But unfortunately, there is no guarantee for Appleton to answer all of the
questions. So, with that I will turn it over to your webinar instructor, Andrew
Appleton.
Andrew Appleton:
Thank you to Zach for that introduction and for anybody out there
wherever you may be. Its a very pleasure of mine to be able to present the inflow

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over the next little while. I thank you for taking the time out of your schedules to
join this webinar and I hope that the information that you get peaks your interest
in area of human factors and provides information that perhaps will persuade you
to attend the public course for this presentation which is to be held in April 2017
in Seattle. Zach did a great job in introducing me, and providing a bit of
background on my experience. Ive got a slide that I put up now that you should
be able to see that kind of amplifies the information on that previous slide. I spent
13 years working with the air force as a bioscience officer and during that time, I
was able to stay about 4 years as an Aerospace Physiology training officer
essentially providing aerospace medicine instruction to aircrew that fly different
aircraft in the RCAF and after doing that, Im doing my masters degree in human
factors. Ive moved on to actually apply my human factors education as a trial
officer at Welliver Research and Development center where I was able to guide
and run some field trials and experiments focused on land systems or soldier
clothing equipment; waddle me on my experience. I retired in 2009 and moved
on, when I became a consultant with CAE Professional Services, I was able to
`
then further broaden my experience working
with the navy on their frigates.
Essentially we re-design their operations rooms with lot of their ops men
personnel, equipment, workstations, the whole gallet of equipment to their actual
soldier system and the organization of teams within the ops room and Im up
there and for 6 years worked with what is known as the directorate of technical
airworthiness and engineering support essentially providing engineering support
to the air force, different air force fleets for the air force providing human factors
expertise and guidance to either design of systems or modifications of their
systems.
Just wanted to, before we get going provide an outline of what Id like to
cover. Unfortunately, the area of human factors is so broad and my passion for it
is such that you know it could fill or it will fill four full days at the public course
next year, but I have to keep things to a higher level here. There is a lot of
information to cover here as you can see in the bullets on the screen. Those
areas that we are going to touch on, each of them are very deep and application
and the information that would be contained within, but Im going to keep it at a
very high level. Ill apologize upfront because my slide does not have a lot of
pictures. It get back by design in short duration presentation, very easy to dwell
into pictures and get lost in those pictures and lose track of time. I really want to
make sure to cover everything over the course of the next 45 minutes. Again the
bottom outlined that this more amplified information will be covered next April on
the public course in Seattle.

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Next, it contains my contact information, this presentation, its been

ordered and you should be able to gain access to afterwards to go through things
and Im always willing to share this information and I want to make sure that will
use it is captured somewhere you could do that and you can contact me if by all
means you have any concern or other information.
Im going to start things off by putting human perspective of a larger
construct that the world of human factors is very quickly moving towards and that
is the human system integration is essentially collection of five various domains,
which is the human factor engineering is one of them, the others is appeared on
the screen, the training, organization and social, safety and health, and
manpower/personnel. Together with human factors engineering form the
remaining of human systems integration.
Now, the corporate is a holistic perspective of those domains which
develop a system or qualified a system if going to touch on all of those very
mysterious project, you have to considered all of the synergistically on the project
` of systems and organizations but the
by the human factors for the development
personnel that are going to part of our system have to be train, they have to be
employed. Social and organizations have to establish. Of course, in establishing
the organizations, the safety and health, the personnel will be considered.
Human factors engineering, is now very well is one of the system engineering
activities in primary industry, for military and civilian institutions. My background
for being military, it is very much applied, a very much mainstream activity and
design and modification in any aviation systems.
I put up on the screen the FAA, organization that in charge of regulating
the aviation in United State including the important of human factors and the FAA
design standard in 2003. They attempted to formulize and provide a more
structured approach for practitioners and engineers. Youll note that the design
standard listed at the bottom replaced MIL-STD. Up to 2003, the FAA was using
that MIL standard (MIL-STD) for human engineering but then developed the FAA
HF design standard and it superseded that.
Youll see on that bullet that the use of any sort of a standard whether be
that HF design standard that the FAA has or the MIL standard, its used to
provide the individual standard, all the system acquisitions, the design or
acquisition of a system or modification of that system. Its used to provide
guidance for the aimless and coordinate how human factor should be applied.
So, with that being said, the purpose of introducing human factors to the Aviation

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community through this course refuels this very low establishment in terms of it. I
hope that it is, in your own area that youre working, is completely applied and if
not, we perhaps help to make sure that it is.
The definition. Every subject, of course, tries to provide a definition of what
it is and what it means. You see on the bullet, it is a multidisciplinary effort. Its
not just the media practitioner but the entire engineer team, the integrated project
team of the US, promote coming together to make sure that the human
capabilities and limitations are taken into account in attempting to design or
modify, produce systems, facilities, jobs, all those other items. The definition
thats up on the screen now pretty well captures the essence of what human
factors is. If you extend that definition thats on the screen further to consider that
rules, human capabilities, and such lead to the integrated into the system design.
The system design is the keyword there.
You want to play more human factors processes clearly in the system
design lifecycle and you want to make sure that you are attempting to eliminate
to the extent possible any technological `determinism and what I mean by that is
that the designer is tech ware, software. The technology does not influence the
overall design and determines in which direction it is going to go. You have to
remember that the aim of human factors is to make sure that the human
capabilities and limitations are taken into account at the early age and that there
is a change to all the system at your work or to instructor design.
There is a normal textbook that I come across. The title being Fitting the
Task to the Human and since that encapsulates what you want to do is you want
to fit your task or technology or other factors to what a human can handle and
can deal, if can operate efficiently within, and to achieve whatever it is that you
are trying to do now. Maybe if your work is to fly that aircraft safely and operate
efficiently and safely, so you want to make sure can, a centric approach is taken.
Lastly, talks about the system of systems. Ill give you a little bit more but
essentially, you dont. Anyone in the Aviation environment or any other
environment does not work in isolation and they are influenced by the
environment they are working and any influence that you have on the design of a
system influences the larger part of that system. An example is if you have your
air cool in a cockpit youre interacting with that interface that they have within the
cockpit and of course, working with one bit or a piece of equipment within that
cockpit could have an influence on how the value you create to interact with the
other piece of equipment that will in turn influence how well you can perform your

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flight duties which in turn can influence the overall safe performance of the
aircraft and towards your course. So you make sure that you take the system of
systems approach when applying human factors engineering.
Ill skip a little bit more a couple of slides. I have on the screen an excerpt
from a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) standardized agreement. Its
STANAG (Standardization Agreement) 3994 which is Human Engineering to
Advanced Aircrew Systems and thats the title it states. That process if you work
left to right of that diagram and if you might have seen it or perhaps not, but its
really meant to show you that through the design life cycle stages of the left-hand
side of the slide actually viewed from top to bottom.
From your concept identification through your auctions analysis through
your definition of stages down to service of that system and then disposal, as you
move through top to bottom there are inputs to not process and that are better to
human engineering task. Now the way all of these tasks and the actual actions,
whats happening very much a mere what is lay down in a well-known systems
`
engineering standard the IEEE1220 which
is the standard for application
management of the system engineering process. Its essentially a way of
organizing how youre going to develop that system through its life cycle. On
account to this presentation, what is on the right-hand side of the screen, which
are your human factors task and youll note that throughout the entire life cycle
the take away here is that human factors activities, the inputs, are present.
Through the start, at the top-middle of the screen, throughout systems design at
the middle, throughout the actual integration of that system and, one extra ring on
how that system is functioning from the perspective of human engineering, down
to modification and upgrades or improvements to the system. In looking at this
slide we can see that the systems engineering standard and the human
engineering program standard for advance aircrew systems very much marry
each other, and human factors is interlay integrated throughout the life of the
system. In some inner process, its always present throughout and the key point
is that the earlier that human factors can be integrated into the system
engineering process, the theory is that the problems, you will have problems off
before they become real ones down on the road.
Nowa key principle for human factors engineering. A key way of
remembering it and all of the things that you that need to remember as you apply
it is the PET principle. Which is essentially, the person, the environment, and the
technology. You note on the diagram that the arrows are two way as you move

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around from those different areas of concern. Thats meant to highlight the fact
that all of those three parts of the triangle influence each other. If you noticed on
the bubble for the person, humans have certain capabilities whether be physical
capabilities, mental capabilities, memory, attention, maintenance, situational
awareness. They have certain capabilities in regards to physical strength and
what they can actually do, how they could actually move their body, there is also
the factors of organization and how that person fits in within your organization.
There are gender issues in regards to differences between males and
females of size and strength, and that plays a part in the area of anthropometrics
and well talk about all of that later on. The environment, bottom left, the shifts
that the individual has to function within, the climatic, the thermal environment,
whether it a hazardous environment, whether it be physical or chemical or other
types of hazards that will affect them. The task on the bottom right in the red
bubble, the tools that the individual has to carry over task, the equipment they
interact with, how quickly they need to perform a task, whether automation is
there to help them or not. The three points
` of that triangle all form part of the PET
principle and need to be considered and if you can keep that in mind and make
sure you understand that all three of those areas interact with each others
influence, thats the first step towards understanding how important key factors is.
Now I have introduced a couple, two slides ago, the systems of systems
approach and essentially its applying the understanding that people interact with
a technology that theyre immersed in, the procedures that are put in place for
them, and the organizations that they work within, and you have to consider that
within a system of systems approach and those systems all build upon each
other. You cant introduce a new product; you cant put something new into an
aircraft: a new instrument, a new control device, a new alarm, without there going
to be an impact on user and how that affects what theyre used to and how
theyre used to interact with it.
And then the PET principle understands that the ability of an individual to
complete their task is really independent, interdependent I should say, on their
environment. And as the result of all of these there can be a ripple effect on the
aircrews attention demands and whats required of them. It could have an impact
on their workload and whether its a detrimental workload level or a beneficial one
we will talk about that workload later in the presentation. Also has an effect on
crew communication and teamwork, introducing a new part into a cockpit or into
an aircraft is a whole work in the cabin. Its going to effect on how the aircrew will

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do business or how they will conduct their task very much a team work, a team
environment, and itll interact on everyones ability to carry out whatever their
work will be. And lastly situational awareness and Ill talk more about situational
awareness at the end of presentation. Again its a fascinating subject that has
impact on all the other areas and Ill talk about it a little bit later at the
presentation.
Again I apologize: Id love to go in depth on a lot of these things.
Unfortunately time restraints impact the depth of material that we can cover and
as I mention I just wanted to provide more review of this presentation.
Now, all of those factors that we talked about on the previous page, when
youre designing an aircraft system or youre modifying it, you want to do so and
take a what we call a socio-technical approach and that is if you remember
earlier I taught about technological determinism thats the technology part of the
equation the social part is for individually your aircrew member thats carrying out
whatever it is they have and they interact very much in a synergistic way. You
`
have to make sure that the user of the system
is consulted but you also have to
consider other crew members and how it might impact their task and how they
carry out their jobs and also a higher level of organization.
A quick example of what Im speaking of, a lot of aircraft are obviously
formed with a chief person, crew, pilot, whatever you want to, they work as a
team. If you introduce a product into an aircraft thats to be used by both of those
individuals, obviously theyre going to have to coordinate their activities and make
sure that they use it in a conducive manner. Concrete example I have is a project
I was working on in a helicopter whereby a new radio or sorry radar altimeter
system was being put in place that would allow the crew to monitor their height
above ground level, sea level, surface of ships. Weve had input devices for the
system that will be controlled by both pilots. They would switch roles from
monitoring the altitude level and actually controlling the aircraft. They would have
to hand over control about between each other. There were visual cues to that
radar altimeter system that they will have to monitor, they each have to monitor.
There will be a auditory alarm system that would let them alter getting to close to
the depth. And they have to coordinate the monitoring of that system while
controlling the aircraft and they have to do it as a team. So if youre going to
introduce a system, you have to understand it may be used by more than one
individual in different ways and you have to consider all of those individuals that
that new system can impact.

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The second bullet is talking about the change of the users interaction with
adjacent or functionally related products. If you put a new control device for
example in a cockpit and youre going to put in an area where therere similar
controlsthat can have disastrous effects. If theres a toggle switch for example
that is meant to turn on the auxiliary power unit on and off in an aircraft and you
put it to close to another critical control, say a fuel shut off switch or whatever it
may be, those two controls being of the similar shape and near each other but
having totally different functions could have disastrous consequences.
Auditory displays with similar warning tones, in an example I just pointed
out the radar altimeter, that was one of the things to consider was to make sure
that the warning tone for that radar altimeter was different in its characteristics
than the existing warning alarms within the cockpit. There are only two prevent
confusion between the tones themselves and what they mean, but also to battle
any complacency if its similar to a warning tone, that is more of a nuisance
warning tone but has to be in a cockpit. And the air crew were condition to hear it
and to respond to it without the urgency.
` And then you have a system where
youre trying to warn the air crew of being too close to the ground or to the sea or
to a ships surface and theyre similar, it can cause errors that air crew can make
and not actually reacting to the alarm.
You have to consider too that if you impact a product that device that the
air crews interacting, if you introduce a new one where you modify the existing
one, its going to have an impact on how quickly the air crew member can
conduct their task. It could have an impact on how accurately they conduct their
tasks, and it can introduce the errors as we have just discussed. Bottom line for
approach of systems of systems approach is that you want to make sure that you
understand that users, they dont want to operate in a vacuum and you need to
consider, all the other considers, all the other factors that useful from on the slide.
Now, within the flight deck, there are a number of things that are of
concern. One of the major things is a pilots reach, his vision, and his
accommodation. And whats meant by that is the reach within that cockpit and
the constraint of the seat of any restraint devices that the pilot has, how easily
can controls be reached and activated. Ill talk a little more about this in the
anthropometric section.
Vision, again, can your pilot see all the displays and also the outside
world, if it can be viewed adequately.

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Accommodation, when seating on the seats with the restraints on,

depending on the type of clothing that they are wearing, is there enough room,
can they adequately move around in within that seat to reach the controls or to
look at displays?
An RVA assessment, Reach Vision Accommodation Assessment, is a key
human factors tool when assessing a cockpit. Again, my apologies, we could go
into this in more detail and Ill have more information on the workshop next April.
An RVA assessment, along with anthropometric measurements, it can provide
answers to you when youre trying to assess that cockpit for a new or modified
product in there of how well the user can interact with it.
Again, an overview of some of the other human factors to consider within
the cockpit. Displays, visual displays, those displays where they are have a key
impact at whether the air crew can see it, the viewing anglecan the air crew
accurately read the information that is on that display? The glareis there any
glare from outside ambient lighting or internal lighting when the cockpit is flying at
`
night? The size of the font or any symbols
on those [loses audio] [regains
audio] that the pilot can read those or the air crew can read those. Maybe its in a
rotorcraft environment where vibration is a factor as well that needs to be
considered.
Auditory, its like, you know, the timing of those displays. I call them
displays but theyre sounds, auditory alarms. The timing of them, are they, are
they, do they, do they appear loud enough at the right time of the cockpit
frequency? Are they distinct from other alarms? These are all factors within the
flight deck that you need to consider.
The controls, are these controls appropriate, in size of what you need to
do. Sometimes push button controls are more than required but, you knoware
they too small for you to actually activate them with your fingertips if youre
wearing gloves? Is that another consideration?
How do those controls work: their functionality, their directionality? Often
youre going to make a rotary dial control both from right to left or, sorry, left to
right as youre increasing the intensity of what it is youre trying to control. But the
appropriateness of a control whether a slider control is better to use than a rotate
knob, where a toggle switch if you have the same thing turn something on and off
and you want to garner that toggle switch.

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You need to consider what it is that control is supposed to do and actually

put the weight type of control in all of this outlined in your in the FAA Design
Standard as well as the MIL Standard 1472 design standards for Human Factors.
When you put a control in the cockpit, you want to make sure its location is
not going to be too close to a lot of controls that you could inadvertently activate
others. And again its not just where its located but it could also be the type of
switch or control. And is it similar to a nearby control that has probably a different
functionality where a critical functionality? You need to be considerable.
Graphical User Interface is essentially talking about your multi-functions placed in
your cockpit or a computer screen if you will with display. Now, displays can
introduce glare, well readability issues. Again we touch on the size of your fonts
or your symbol what colors that are used within that display. Again youd want to
as an example you want to make sure that if there is a part of that display which
is made to light an alarm to the aircrew that it is of the proper color, that the
aircrew is used to and is also represented elsewhere in the cockpit through hard
controls and you want to make sure youre
` maintaining consistency of color.
Navigation, thats a big thing. You want to make sure that the aircrew can
interact with that, delete the DMFD, through layers if theres different layers of
commands that need to be followed. You want to make sure that youve defined
the pathway of going from different layer to layer and being able to back all of it
so that if theres an error or if you inadvertently take a long pathway, you can use
to back all of it. You want to make sure that your menu navigation is intuitive and
theres not any characteristics of the menu organization that is built intuitively and
makes sense to your aircrew.
Tactile feedback again, your MFD could be functioned through a
touchscreen or could be functioned through hard case that are adjacent to the
MFD. Either way you want to provide some sort of feedback to the user that that
key has been; that switch has been activated whether on a screen, I mean it
changes color for example.
Big thing in Graphical User Interface is that they have to be able to
promote user trust. The user has to feel that the functionality of that GUI is such
that they trust it and they believe in it and that they commend a form of mental
model on how they have to navigate through the menus for example or interact
with it that they then have to trust the next line and thereafter it and develop that
overtime.

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And the next thing earlier I want to cover: there is Anthropometrics. There
is a chapter within that design standard that provides the definition. Essentially,
anthropometrics is about the human body by segments, by slices and how those
are used within human factors to inform the design or the evaluation of the
system. It could be 1D data essentially. Just bodies segment sizes, for example,
the length of fingers, the height or the stature of an individual, the length of their
knee cap to their heel or the size of the circumference of their chest, the
circumference of their waist.
Chapter 14 of the design standard contains data of the FAA technical
operations personnel and within the chapter states that if youre one to target
other population such as aircrew, pilots, navigators and such, you use the MILSTD seven point 3-alpha which is the anthropometry of US military personnel. In
Canada, in 2012 the air force or the Canadian forces, I should say, did a survey
using over 2000 military personnel. It provided 1D measures of individual as well
as 3 dimensional measures of body segments. The dare within the survey is
used to try to represent the composition` of population or reference population.
You can get down to if youre trying to understand or doing anthropometric
assessment aircrew youre going make sure youre comparing light against light
in that perspective. You want to represent the whole reference populations. Now
the information you get on that survey is detailed and it can help provide a
valuable design tool.
Percentiles are used to when talking about anthropometry. It is actually
HFE practices that they try to use anthropometry data that represents male and
female population between the fifth and ninety fifth percentile. What I mean by
that is, if you try to put a new system into an aircraft or designing a system, you
want to take the anthropometric measurements in mind of those people within the
fifth and ninety fifth percentile to make sure that a large portion of the population
is going to be able use that. That is what you see in the last bullet : 90% of the
target populationif you can put something in aircraft it can only be used by
small portion of the population and the chances are: a large portion of the
population are going to operate it and they are not going able to operate it
unsafely so the central 90% of the target population is watching to achieve by
using anthropometric surveys data, I should say, as well the measurements you
gain from the actual assessment. Im going to explain it a little bit further in other
slide.

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When youre taking Anthropometric there are some key measurements for
you to be aware of. They are grouped in four categories that you can see. One
of valuable anthropometric measurements that impacts the aircraft flight controls
that can be moved, that you can see and read the instruments, that you can view
the outside of the flight deck the outside world, and that you can make way such
as the nausea. The last bullet is the key point and within the time constraint that
we have and the presentation, this is the key point to remember. Youre not just
going to measure your individuals that youre interested in and compare those
against the anthropometric data that you have but you also confirm whether that
person can fit within the flight deck and can operate through the reached vision
and accommodation assessment that youre going to do.
I would just advance to next slide. As far as moving the aircraft flight
controls, youre functional grip reach is an important one. You could see the
picture brought here. Essentially if youre going to take that and youre going to
measure it, you want to use the wrist wall length. You want to use the wristcenter of grip length which is essentially
` from the center of your wrist to the
middle of your grip. You can see it on the right hand photo. And youre going to
combine those together and that is going to tell you how far the individual can
reach out and grab the controlif it is a type of control like a control column or a
steering column, that sort of thing. Or a latch that needs to be moved or a switch
you have to actually reach.
Youre going to use those measurements but youre going to take your
data from your hand-to-hand survey that will tell you that the fifth to the 95th
percentile will be able to reach from this distance to this distance but you want to
confirm that when you do reach your reach-vision accommodation assessment of
the aircraft in occur, if the individual consuming that cockpit is actually doing the
physical reach in your measuring or your assessing whether they can reach it
then you want to combine that information with what is the actual length of your
functional grip reach and where does that fit within the percentile range of
anthropometric. Another example would be your functional leg length that would
be able to activate rudder pedals for example, so youre going to use altered data
in combination with the actual RVA assessment to provide the answer as to
whether or not an individual can fit and function in the cockpit. See and read
aircraft instruments. Your sitting height and eye height sitting are two measures
that are important. Obviously, youre going to be able to see the instruments
while sitting in the cockpit. Also, it is important to able to look outside of the flight
deck and see the outside.

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The Design Eye Reference Point is typically achieved when you have
adjusted cockpit seat position both up and down, front and back to set a common
eye height for all your operators and all those that will be sitting on the seat.
Some aircraft have predetermined design eye points for introduction of new
equipment but if youre going to assess that, how can you make sure that your
individuals seated on the seat are settled in the height that they can see outside
the aircraft and also see inside of their instruments and is adjusted for and have
to be able to grab the certain column reach of rudder pedals and such? Your
design eye point is a standalone measurement that doesnt provide any design
instruments that your arms and your legs will be going to affect the reach and
operate the cockpit controls. The bottom line is you have to actually assess an
RVA do the full RVA assessment to determine that. Some other measures
talking manipulating switches and knobs that are needed to be concerned with
and this is actually in a whirlwind fashion that wraps up the anthropometric. Very
detailed specialized the area of human factors are very important. Of course,
leaving the constraint of time within the presentation that will allow too much
`
detail. A cause of the presentation by talking
about the workload and as you can
see by the FAA Federal Aviation Regulation Standards.
Work orders are really important thing to consider if youre going to use
this to an aircraft or a monoplane it can introduced unfamiliar interfaces in the
aircrew that needs a lot of attention to reading display for example. Again, system
to system, it can have a ripple effect if you introduced that it can affect pilots
workload and can raise it to a level nearby that they will not be able to cure all the
functions they have. Channelize the tension is one consequence and it can have
manual effects. When you introduced something into an aircraft or youre making
a design, you have to assess the workload impact in the individual through a
workload assessment. Again, that is another specialized area of HFE. The
bottom line is you want to strive to have an adequate workload level which is not
too much or too little workload and attention to detail. Simple areas can be made
as such if you make this the workload too much the pilot of the aircraft just cannot
do everything that they need to do in the time constraint they have to do it.
Situation awareness is another thing that has an impact on aircrew that is
how well they perceive their environment and how well they can see whats
happening. Forecast whats going to happen, take corrective actions and again
all those factors on the bottomless line how to impact on the situational
awareness and you need to be aware of it when youre putting a new system into
your aircraft.

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Lastly maintenance, maintenance often gets overlooked in the

aviation industry. I hold a study that you can see that is toggled at the top. We
found in the study that we fly over a thousand aircraft mishaps that that were
viewed certain factors in maintenance like inadequate supervision, memory
errors and such. Your maintenance has tools and equipment they use in a couple
areas in manual handling limitations, how well they can operate equipment and
how well they can actually use it in maintenance of the aircraft, if they have the
wrong equipment that can cause injuries to themselves that can put them off their
work for some time, documentation as well. Honestly, every product in the aircraft
has a technical order that describes on what product must be installed and
modified, removed, and such. That information the documentation has to
accurately represent and be well laid out to provide the kind of information the
maintainers need.
The influence of the organization as well, honestly in the civil aviation
world, very fast paced aircraft taking off, landing, schedules, and such. The true
pressure for the maintainers to perform` their activities is if they have improper
equipment or inaccurate information, technical documentation training, and such
that could have a big impact on how well they can carry out their duties. That is a
very rush overview that I wanted to cover. I apologize if it was too rush, as you
can see from the content there could have been a lot more discussion, but I hope
that the information I have provided gives you a good overview on whats
important to consider; and could possibly the areas that youre a little voted again
I have provided some contact information. I urge any of you to attend the
presentation at April, where we can go over these areas in more detail. I guess at
this time we could all come up to any questions?
Zach Reblicks:
Thank you so much Andy for the presentation, we do have a few minutes
right now for question and answer so if you would like to submit a question
please do so now via the question and answer tab. Again, we only have a few
minutes, so we may not be able to get all the questions and I apologize in
advance if we cannot get to yours. Andi the first question from the audience is
asking if you can speak to the big differences or any major difference between
the MIL standard 1472 and the FAA human factors design standard.
Andrew Appleton:

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I wouldnt say there are huge differences between the two. They are
standards that cover very much the same areas. If you go to the comparison of
the two, they cover a lot of the same areas whether it be the control devices,
displays, equipment design, and environmental concerns. The big thing is the
FAA is a targeted AD issue related standard, whereas MIL Standard 1472 is a
mother standard that is to be generally applied to multiple or different areas. I use
that standard when looking at design or implementation of products on the
frigates and the naval environment, because for example it talked about
workstation design on board the ship. The ops rooms are using workstation with
multi-display workstation and theres a lot of design factors from an HFP
perspective that goes into the structure of the physical size of the workstation.
Working down to the control devices and how they should be placed in that
workstation. I also use the MIL Standard when designing equipment that is used
in the land forces. When I was working with the RDC, I was working with soldier
systems equipment, designing equipment and clothing; then again a lot of
information in the MIL 1472 can be applied to the land environment. But the FAA
design standard hits a lot of areas of the` 1472 its more targeted to the aviation
environment. So, if youre going to use a human factor design standard for
modifying or designing aeronautical products the FAA design standard is
definitely the one that you should refer to over the 1472.
Zach Reblicks:
Okay, thank you, the next question is: I work in the area of training of air
crew. In your experience, what is the most important aspect of training air crew to
develop good crew resource management?
Andrew Appleton:
Thats a really good question. I had some involvement in that, in
anthropometric, for the air force. It was for dealing with the training of crews that
came from very diverse backgrounds. There were parts of the crew that were
actually aviators, who worked in the air force environment. Other parts of the
crew were more land based. Sensors, operators, that werent familiar with
working in the air force environment, that didnt understand or did not have crew
resource management training. You have to bring them together and make sure
theyre working together. There were some cultural differences there, as I have
explained, and you have to encourage the team members to overcome the
different communication issues whereby some members of the crew were not
used to interacting with higher rank individuals. So therefore, there is a barrier to

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expressing or asking questions and interacting and communicating in a way that

you need to do. So I say: a very important part of air crew training is making sure
that you are encouraging them to work as a team and not as individuals; and to
make sure that you are putting forth ideas that help to develop very high level of
communication between them.
You also want to make sure that your training is realistic. In a military
environment, it was always put forth that you want to train as you fight. You want
to train as you actually conduct your activity. You want to make sure that the
training at the level required is as realistic as possible through various levels of
simulation in real-time training. You want to make sure that your training is
progressive. Youre training for individual tasks, and those tasks are also feeding
into larger operations. Youre training correctively as a team. I think many hit the
high points of training but for me, those areas are the most important when youre
training air crew.
Zach Reblicks:

`
Excellent. Thank you. We have just a couple of minutes left for a final
question which is: In conducting field evaluations of aeronautical products, what
is the key to gathering valid user feedback?
Andrew Appleton:
Another good question. When trying to evaluate a product, and Ill use the
example of validation assessment of cockpit that I touched on the presentation
the reason youre doing that is that youre trying to assess something within that
cockpit that the user has to interact with. Theres a lot of ways that the humans
will try to create shortcuts or easy ways of doing things and, if you dont put
limitations on what they should be doing, often, the problem solving theyre using
dont represent what they would actually use in the real world. So you have to
make sure that the evaluation that youre doing accurately represents what it is
that the individual is expected to accomplish in real world. Make sure that theyre
replicating that as much as possible. Youre exposing them to flying conditions
that they have to deal with. Try to put some tiny pressure on that evaluation so
that it actually represents the workload, if you will. What the individual will have to
face in real life you have to make sure thats representable. The second part of
that, if you want the situation representative of what they have to do, then you
want to make sure that youre choosing good measurements tools to actually get
you the information that you need to get from that evaluation. Anthropometric

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assessment is another thing you need to properly measure in individuals.

Understand their body sizes. That allows you to get accurate feedback on
whether they reach the control or unit display. Workload is another thing. Make
sure you choose the proper workload measurement tool. We didnt get into that
at all at the presentation. For air crews, you need to be able to measure that
workload and get some feedback on how the air crew is dealing with that. If you
do those things then the results you get from your evaluations are going to
provide you with quality information. If you have to redesign something or you
have to change something then do it through the proper valid reasons and by
informing yourself honestly and accurately.
Zach Reblicks:
Great. Well, thank you so much Andy. That is all the time we have today.
Thank you all so much for attending this webinar. It has been recorded and it will
be shared both by email and our website within a few days. For more information
about upcoming webinars, please visit our website located on the slide in front of
you. Once again, thank you very much for` attending and have a wonderful day.