ABSTRACT
Soldier-centered design places the soldiers, who will ultimately use a system, squarely in the center of the design process and ensures that their needs are the foremost consideration when making design trade-offs and decisions. This chapter provides evidence to debunk myths held by those in program management and development who are resistant to incorporating soldier-centered design techniques. It also provides concrete examples and artifacts from soldier-centered design and evaluation techniques that have had a positive impact on soldier performance. Manpower and Personnel Integration (MANPRINT) is the Army's Human Systems Integration (HSI) program. The seven key design areas, or domains, are the focus areas for MANPRINT risk analyses: manpower, personnel, training, human factors engineering, system safety, health hazards, and soldier survivability. The chapter discusses two soldier-centered design and evaluation techniques that have had a positive impact on soldier performance: usability testing and participatory design.
