Travel report from HFES 2015 in Los Angeles. Human Factors and Ergonomics Society annual meeting

The present travel report contains summaries of a selection of presentations from the international Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) in Los Angeles 2015, which is one of the largest scientific conferences in the human factors area. Participation in HFES was performed by commission of a research and development project with the aim of investigating information needs and information presentation techniques for dismounted soldiers and groups of soldiers. Therefore, at first hand the selection of presentation has focused on studies of information presentation on displays for dismounted soldiers, or studies of other types of displays or other applications where the results may generalize to use by dismounted soldiers, and secondly on studies with relevance for the department Man Technology Organisation (MTO) at FOI. Overall, the summaries are on studies of displays, decision support systems and automation, other applications, and theoretical studies. Studies of displays were for example about a comparison between visual and tactile threat indication for dismounted soldiers and head-mounted tactile navigation information for vehicle drivers. Studies of decision support systems and automation were for example about how the task demands of a crew in a military vehicle is affected by use of advanced in-vehicle systems and how use of decision support systems affect the ability to identify critical information. Studies of other applications were for example about human factors issues for cyber security and lacking operator situation awareness as a cause of UAV accidents and incidents. Theoretical studies were about interpretation of subjective ratings of mental workload with NASA-TLX, the ability to assess spatial uncertainty presented on a visual display, and calibration of the intensity levels of each mode in a multimodal display.