Bonus episode - HFES Ombuds and Aerospace Systems TG from ASPIRE 2024

Welcome to Human Factors Cast your weekly podcast for human factors, psychology and design.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Human Factors Cast. We are continuing. With our little hiatus here, Barry and I both have a couple of conflicts in our schedule over the next few weeks. So we just wanted to make sure that we're getting stuff out to you to reshow our commitment to the podcast.

We are back. We are back for good. So continuing on with our coverage of. This year's HFES Aspire. This episode is going to be all about HFES ongoings. So you'll hear my conversation with Savane Bruni about the Ombuds program at HFES Aspire this year. And I also sit down with good friend of the show, Philippe Doyon to talk about the Aerospace Systems Technical Group.

Now you can check out the full video on our YouTube, which has a little bit more, including a full video. Full walkthrough of the guerrilla usability test that they were doing on site. We had Vianney and Frank sit down with the folks running the booth to walk through what that process was like. It's not great for an audio only experience, but it's still cool to see what kind of things go on at the HFES Aspire conference.

So you can go check that out on the full live stream over there. So over to you, Nick, for my first conversation with Sylvain Bruni. All right. And welcome back. I'm sitting here with. Hello, welcome back to the show. Hi, thank you very much for having me. Last time we talked on the show, I think was back in what, 2018.

Was that Philadelphia? Something like that. It's been a long time, like a long time ago, very long time ago. Welcome back. So for those of you unfamiliar with Sylvain, could you just give folks a little bit of an overview of who you are? All right. I'm Sylvain. I'm a Principal Human Systems Engineer at App2Map.

I've been with the company for 16 years, so it's been a long time. I've been a member of HFES for even longer, since 2005, when my advisor took took me and our lab to the San Francisco conference, which was amazing. And I've been a member since then. I've been involved in a number of initiatives and groups.

Within the organization. So the CDMTG was one of them. I was the founding chair of the LGBTQ affinity group, and then I became the chair of the COAG, which is a council of affinity groups. And as of yesterday, I am the incoming program. Committee chair, so technical program committee chair, which basically is the conference chair, and it's a three year term starting for the conference next year.

So aspire 25 in Chicago. So I said this ironically to you off screen before we had talked, but if anybody has any problems. That is correct. I am very open and willing to hear feedback positive, negative, constructive everything that people have to say about how we can make the society better, the conference better any gaps that need to be filled, all of that.

I am a willing partner and I really want to have, discussions with people and good one on ones to understand, what's happening and how we can be doing better for our members. Yeah. So what's new? What? Ombuds, is that? So the Ombuds program has actually existed for a while.

And I am currently the Ombuds person. And this is a program meant to provide support assistance to members. If they encounter any issue with the conference that is at the personal level and for which there needs to be a private outlet to discuss whatever issue arose. It is also a mechanism to hold the organization.

Accountable to dealing with whatever may happen to our members on site. And the information is available in the app. It's available on the HFES website as well. And people are welcome to contact me to share any any. Issue or anything that they really want to communicate organizationally for something that may have happened to them or so examples of that or, bad whether that's interrelationship relationship with other people, or, I was looking for X, Y, or Z resource to be available, and it's not available.

Therefore, I feel a bit excluded of this, or my experience at HFES or at Aspire is not optimal. Those are the kinds of things that we want to have conversations about and figure out. The mechanism, then, is those obviously are anonymous conversations, anonymous conversation, the gist of things is reported back to the organization, and as the ombudsperson, it is my job to make sure that the organization follows through in addressing whatever came up, and the goal of that is one more mechanism.

Within the society to deliver the best experience possible to every member and every visitor to our aspire conference. A follow on question to that. You can't do anything if you don't get any feedback. So this is a two parter. One. What are you doing to make sure that folks are aware of the ombuds program?

And two, what is the scope of sort of the problems that people can report? Because I feel like there might be some hesitancy of absolutely minor inconvenience. Great question. How we are advertising that I know this is part of the email announcements that are done to every registrant. But also on a regular basis through the bulletin and the emails from the conference that are sent to to the membership.

I know it is on the website. It is on the app and we make announcement at different committee meetings, particularly with the affinity groups, because that's where the idea of having a numbers person actually came from. So all of the members in those groups in particular. Know that this is a pro, an active program of the organization on the scope of grievances or feedback.

It literally anything, right? It really can be anything from what someone may consider to be very trivial. Oh, there was no non-dairy milk alternative at this, at that coffee break. Perfectly fine. We need to hear that because it is part of the organization's goal to be inclusive. Of everyone.

So we need to have options. Two things that may be really horrible that may happen. And I don't know, I hope nothing, nothing bad happens, but you never know when you have, over 1000 people in the same location for Nixon period of time. So really, anything is worth the time spent actually hearing about it and figuring it out.

Just a personal question. Like how did, how does that information or those conversations get processed? Great question. So people can contact me on my cell phone directly. The number is 617 417 0359. And this is my real cell phone. So you feel free to use it and contact me. You can text me as well.

Often there is also an email address. With hfes or ombuds at hfes. org people can send an email there. And that will be rerouted to me typically what happens is that we set up a conversation a face to face conversation if folks don't feel comfortable being face to face then it happens on the phone and from my end, so I maintain a Confidential file so that I have notes that are with respect to the situation or whatever issue happened.

And then I have a reporting mechanism to the executive committee of HFES. I'm glad you're on the case because that all sounds great. So where is this going? So what does the future look like? Is the ombuds program going to expand, evolve? What is the future for it? So it really depends on how the members use it.

All right. So right now I have been trained, so I've took training, I've taken training in, in that field to be able to address engagements with members who are reporting something, and then the process by which this gets then tracked with the organization and the accountability mechanisms that go with that.

I have not been very much used. I will be frank, there hasn't been that much communication which is both a good thing. Maybe that is because there is no problem or, and, or it is because people don't know about it or don't want to report or things like that. So to me, it is an essential to have, regardless of the volume, Right of interventions or discussions that need to happen longer term I think the future will be for that to be a line item in the budget to actually hire somebody There is an actual international professional society of ombuds people and we've interacted with them to understand how they work and how people can be part of of our events and That's where I see the future of that program being is that we actually do have a paid You Person for the duration of the various events that we have.

So not just aspire, but also the healthcare symposium and all the events we may have happening throughout the year where they would be present and an available resource for for that purpose. Yeah, and would they be independent of. Exactly. So as an a numbers person, you are accountable to the membership meaning that the role really answers to the membership and hold that's the reason why it all holds the organization accountable to seeing through whatever comes comes their way.

Obviously, I'm going to take more responsibilities within the organization. And so it is important to have a level of independence as well with respect to the organization. But as conference chair, I am not a member of the executive council. I do attend those meetings because I think it is important.

You know what's going on, but I'm not a member of that executive body of the of the organization. I'm not an officer either. Great. Where can folks find out more if they want to, if they want to report something or, you already gave your phone number. Yeah. That's pretty.

Text me, call me 617 417 0359. Or you can email the Ombuds address all of that is in the app and on the website. Excellent. Thank you so much for stopping by. Of course. My pleasure. Always a pleasure to have you here. We'll be right back with more. All right. And we're back. I'm sitting here with Philippe Doyon.

Welcome back to the show, man. It's been. A few years, at least you talked to Woodrow at what is HCI? Yeah. 2018. Is it 2018? I thought it was like 2016. It's been a minute, but you're you're here representing the aerospace system TG, aerospace systems TG. What is going on over at the aerospace systems TG?

Seems like you got your stuff together. So it's in the last few months with the executive committee. So we have Amanda and Arjun. We try to plan to be able to be to have more visibility to our members that they know what's going on in the executive committee and try to give back to our group so that, they see that we're active and that they can benefit from our group.

In the last few months, we put together a website. To at least have, a visible place as to what's going on in our group and on that website. I think the most useful page is the resource page where we'll list together a list of website books. Articles and mind you, podcasts that people can, read, listen to, or consult to be able to learn, what is aviation human factors.

And so I think that's our curated list of resources that people can go to. So that's where we started. And then after that, we try to organize visibility for the conference. So we did a pre interview with the chairs of the 2 panels that we're having this week. So that was very helpful. And from there, we're also trying now to give more visibility to our members.

So we have a member spotlight to try to show what's going on in our community. And and so what we'll do next is a research spotlight to let them know, what's. Cool. And, trending in our in our discipline to be done. So that's what we did so far. And I think we the feedback we had from members is that, they love it and they really, when they added an opportunity, they said, thank you to, to bring back the activity and yeah, the energy in the tg.

So that, that sounds very cool. And yeah, I guess you're starting back, so September and October we'll try to have a to become a news outlet for the, our discipline. So that's what we'll be looking into the next in the next few weeks. That's near and dear to my heart. Like the news piece specifically, but as someone from another TG, I'm looking on enviously going, what's going on over here?

Where do we get that? Where do you think this goes? Do you think this proliferates to other TGs? Do you think this is a model for others going forward? What's next? I guess we all learn from each other. And I've learned a lot, going around the tables on Monday evening, and I've tried to learn, what the other guys are doing so that we can bring it back to RTG.

Yeah, I think what I've seen is that everyone is active. And I think the call from, Camille and our previous president is really to be able to have more visibility and to be active, to give value back to our members. And I think this is the call and the call has been heard by everyone.

Yeah. So I'm very excited about, I'm very excited about the future months that will be going for, for our group and for the other groups. And I think HFES. Is in the better position than it has ever been before, so that's very exciting for our group. Yeah. Where can folks find out more about you or the aerospace systems?

tg? We are on aerospace.org, so we have a cool URL we can look about. And, other than that it's LinkedIn, for social media. So we're on LinkedIn, page also for people to subscribe and just start finding news off that. Great. Excellent. Phil, thanks for coming back to the show. So glad to see you again.

We meet every HFES. Yes. And that's it for today, everyone. If you liked this episode and enjoy some of the discussion about HFES Aspire, please check out any number of our other conference coverage episodes. Comment wherever you're listening on what you think of the episode this week. For more in depth discussion, you can always join us in our Discord community.

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You can find me on our Discord and across social media at Nick underscore Rome. Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors, cast. Until next time, it depends.