Human Factors Criteria for the Design and Acquisition of ... - FAA

Draft for review and commentEach “should” statement is identified by an open, white square (□). These represent bestpractices guidance that is applicable in most cases but may involve trade-offs or be influenced bydomain or system-specific factors.2. METHODResearchers organized the revision process in phases, which included the review and verificationof information of the current HFDS chapter on input devices; identification of new sourcematerial; systematic evaluation of literature; reorganization, addition and revision of certain topicareas; and the addition of information to justify the design criteria and define tradeoffs associatedwith the design criteria.2.1 Review of HFDS ChapterIn the first phase of this effort, the research team sought out guidelines and standards thatpertained to keyboard acquisition and design. They compared these guidelines and standardsagainst the current information from the HFDS and then updated the information as needed. Theresearchers then used the references from the guidelines and standards to identify the primarysources cited by the reference documents. They obtained the primary sources and verified theinformation within the guidelines and standards where possible. During the review of the currentguidelines and standards, it became evident that the research team needed to obtain more currentadditional source materials.The researchers then expanded their search to identify current research related to keyboardspublished in the literature. This literature search identified over 200 potentially relevant sources.The researchers obtained the relevant sources and reviewed them for information relevant to thedesign or acquisition of keyboards. Upon review of each source, researchers weighed therelevancy, adequacy, and validity of the material before including it in the document. Wheninformation in the new source document warranted new or updated standards, they created orupdated a guideline. When new source material proved statements in the current document wereoutdated or invalid, they revised or deleted these statements as necessary. They then rewroterelevant information from the literature into should or shall statements that designers could use inrequirements documents.Although the HFDS contained design criteria on keyboards and input devices in a single chapter,the volume of information was not conducive to combining these two topics. Reports producedby program offices indicated that the program offices addressed these two topics separately. Theorganization of the information within the HFDS should reflect the needs of the users; thus, theresearchers decided to publish the keyboards information separate from the information on nonkeyboardsinteraction devices. Discussions with human factors practitioners currently workingwith FAA programs validated this decision.2.2 ReorganizationWith the addition, deletion, and revision of many of the design criteria and creation of specificstandards, researchers had to reorganize the entire chapter. They performed card sorts with thedesign criteria and arranged the design criteria based on the results of the card sorts to facilitateeasy access by users. They divided the chapter into 13 sections: General, Workplacecharacteristics for keyboard use, Workstation characteristics for keyboard use, Wrist/Palm rest,Keyboard physical characteristics, Keyboard functions, Numeric keypad, Key dimensions, Keylabeling, Key activation, Key feedback, Ergonomic keyboards, Reduced alphanumeric keyboards2