Book Review: APA Handbook of Human Systems Integration

The APA Handbook of Human Systems Integration is an excellent resource for researchers and practitioners, reflecting the state of the art in this enterprise. It presents a collection of contributions from many authors, all of whom have relevant contributions to the volume.

The book describes the field of human systems integration, providing coverage in sufficient depth to be useful in systems design. The target audience includes established human factors researchers and practitioners, although it may be of value to professionals in complementary fields such as industrial and systems engineering, system design, and systems management. The handbook contains 36 chapters in three broad topic areas: definition and history, considerations affecting human systems performance, and application to design of considerations affecting performance.

In a short book review, it is difficult to offer a concise definition of human systems integration because the first three chapters are essentially about that. Nevertheless, the views of the editors help bound the topic. Human systems integration is about people working with technology, the goal being to optimize the interactions between people and engineered systems. Human systems integration takes a systems view by examining the influence of the many interacting system components in which human performance is embedded and the interactions between people and technology in a variety of environments. It goes beyond human factors psychology by considering trade-offs that explore whether a particular design option will reduce cost and enhance effectiveness in comparison to other options. The editors propose that human systems integration should be developed as a discipline, rather than as a framework or technical process, to emphasize the synergy between knowledge from research and knowledge gained from practice.

Chapter authors were invited to present one of five case studies (submarine design, commercial trucking, cyber security, health care, or uninhabited aerial systems) to demonstrate how their area of expertise could be applied to a practical problem of human systems integration. These case studies offer worthwhile reading in themselves. Authors of about half the chapters reflected on at least one of the case studies. This forced the authors to go beyond theoretical abstractions to discussion of how their ideas can contribute to systems design. I found it useful to skim through this rather large book to find and review the references to case studies as a means of prioritizing my reading.

This voluminous book is unlikely to be read cover to cover. Rather, it is a book to be sampled, with selected chapters skimmed and some examined in depth. Subsequently, it is likely to remain on your bookshelf to be consulted as the need arises. The handbook competes for this privilege with a similar title edited by Booher (2003), also a substantial offering, with 24 chapters spread over 900 pages and also containing contributions from multiple authors. In terms of purchase price, both books come out at the higher end, in the vicinity of $200 each. In contrast, a National Research Council offering on the same topic area (Pew & Mavor, 2007) is available as a free download. At 10 chapters and 365 pages, it is less overwhelming, although it takes a different approach to this topic, coming in two parts, with the first part outlining a process model for systems engineering and the second part offering behavioral theory and principles relevant to human systems integration.

I find it difficult to recommend one book over the others, but the APA Handbook offers a broader range of the contemporary behavioral science issues related to human systems integration.