Abstract
In the fall of 2018, I was named a Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Science Policy Fellow. As part of my responsibilities in this role, I was tasked to undertake a project that would help improve the inclusion of high-quality human factors and ergonomics science in government and industry systems. After several conversations with Mica Endsley, I decided to revisit her earlier work on socializing the concept of human readiness levels (HRLs) that she had started several years earlier as the chief scientist of the Air Force. The HRLs were proposed as a measure to communicate on the readiness of a system for use by human operators and maintainers and had been the focus of a Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) Department of Defense (DoD) Working Group. The HRLs are envisioned as a companion to Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), which are widely accepted across the DoD and other federal agencies as a method to assess the maturity of a technology before and after it is integrated into systems. While initial interest in the HRL concept was high, development had stalled over the past few years, and the concept became fragmented with the development of similar but distinct concepts and scales.
As part of my initial investigation into the current state of HRLs, I discovered that a group at Sandia National Laboratories was actively developing and testing a revised HRL scale under the leadership of Judi See. Together, Judi and I decided that the concept was important enough to form a new working group of vested practitioners across DoD, industry, and academia with a clear focus on producing a usable HRL scale. We started with a small group of interested colleagues, which quickly expanded to more than 30 active participants. Over the first year of its charter, the working group held multiple telecons, as well as both in-person and virtual workshops. Through these efforts, the HRL scale has been matured and is currently under review for a HFES/American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard.
The working group’s efforts to improve and stabilize the HRLs, as well as to increase their visibility and community acceptance, have led to this special issue of Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications. The history, development, and examples of HRL applications are captured in the articles that compose this special issue. The authors represent both Systems Engineers and Human System Integration practitioners who recognize the need for a way to evaluate, track, and communicate the readiness of a system for human use. I hope you will find these articles informative and inspire your use of the HRLs.
