My first guest blogger is a long time friend, Eugene St.Clair is CEO at Humanproof, a Human Factors Engineering consulting firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. He has 14 years of experience supporting the FAA, Navy, Homeland Security, and other government and commercial clients and strives to bring Human Factors Engineering and Usability testing to air traffic control, information management systems, and other large-scale systems such as ships, healthcare, and energy production. Using the disciplines of Human Systems Integration (HSI), Gene and Humanproof help to reduce total system lifecycle cost, human error, and improve total system performance and safety by addressing the needs of each user in the context of the task, system, and operational environment.

How to save a billion dollars tomorrow…

I will start by saying that I recognize there is no ONE right way to do anything. With that said, I also won’t hesitate to say that my way is better than yours. In all seriousness though, each method has its pros and cons and I offer up only a suggestion that may augment our capabilities, speed product development, increase user satisfaction and user adoption, and ultimately advance the progress of the human race.

I have heard much about development processes such as waterfall, scrum, spiral development, sprints, etc etc etc. I have heard much from software developers about how modules and tasks can be split up and built and basically after very few meetings and little understanding of the real requirements of the end product, everyone runs off and starts coding, building, and trying to figure it all out. This method is then mitigated by more frequent meetings and increased communication among the team.