Career Paper
Spencer Foulk
Old Dominion University
CYSE 201S: Cybersecurity and the Social Science
Professor Matthew Umphlet
July 29, 2024
Abstract
This Paper is focused on finding a career path whose focus is mutually related to social science, cybersecurity, and technology respectively. That career path is the human centered design specialist or HCD for short. I demonstrate my understanding about the complexities between all three while also showing its relation to in class material that we had studied over the time. I also relate the careers profession back to society while also informing about the integration and compliance with marginalized groups. At the end of this paper, you should grasp a full understanding of the human centered design specialist profession and what it hopes to give in the long run.
Keywords: cybersecurity, focus, paper
Main Body
Cybersecurity is ever evolving and developing in such a way that requires a larger workforce for projects than was previously necessary. Due to this rapid growth and necessity for more people, a need for human integration, sociality, and connection within the cyber related field is required. Human Centered Design Specialist are useful professionals when it comes to integration and connecting marginalized groups for a mutual effort. As a brief definition,
” Human-Centered Design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics, usability knowledge, and techniques.” (Goossens, R 2021)
HCD focuses on bringing together two people and the technology in a unique way which I view similarly to the connection between cybersecurity and social science. Each of these concepts are unique yet similar in their own independent way. Cybersecurity is focused on the protection, research, and safeguarding of systems while social science is the study of individual reaction and perception throughout day-to-day activities. Cybersecurity is vastly structured on its own with its multiple levels of coding, developing, troubleshooting and intricacies while social science is deeply wired and studied based on the interactions of others and what lead to their decisions. The beauty between these two is their mutualistic relationship with each other that allows us to further our understanding of cybersecurity by gauging into the minds of employees and business workers through their actions under the study of social science. HCD heavily relies on these actions to create a work environment that is beneficial to marginalized groups for a safe and secure work environment, while also being integral and reliable for others of different conjoining backgrounds. It is especially useful and required in the present due to the rising need for workers and systems.
“Health systems are experiencing a progressive imbalance between available resources and increasing needs. The world population is growing, and the incidence of chronic diseases is rising; however, the funds allocated to health care are limited [1,2]. The need to provide optimized, individualized, and person-centered care is growing” (Prigione, S. 2021)
Ongoing evolution in technology and continuous disease has created a necessity for health providers and technological solutions in this situation. This societal conflict is leading to an imbalance between the amount of people that are available to treat the incidents and the amount of people with said incidents. This is where the HCD Specialist joins. The specialist in this specific case would be able to recognize the rapid imbalance between the two and come to a solution that would effectively fix it. This could be done using one of two methods which include clustering and categorization, process and error, and a conjoint operation between peers. Clustering and categorization along with process and error would be useful in this case. Clustering and categorization allow them to combine multiple techniques along with scenarios to gauge the best specific use case while process and error allows them to find the best solution for the area based on experiences. For example, when testing such methods for research purposes,
“An updated usability report is produced (Requirement 9). A now-advanced prototype with almost full functionality with accompanying user manuals should now be ready for testing with end users. This phase fulfils Requirements 1 and 3-9.” (Harte R, 2017)
that satisfied their requirements and proved its use case. The HCD specialist is a useful profession with multiple ideologies and methodologies that are targeted at fixing human related circumstances that arise due to conflicting situations.
The human centered design specialist profession is useful for the previous and ongoing circumstances that are recognized today. The methodology and tools that are used when devising solutions are beneficial and would not be possible without the help of social science practices and ideologies. The first example has to do with the economical and sociological types of social sciences. The specialist uses these two concepts to fully understand the situation based on the economy and interactions between human and machine to find a proper use case that will benefit the end user. Another example is the ethical neutrality principle of science concept that is mainly used to help marginalized groups for a more diverse work group that allows input from people of multiple backgrounds. Thirdly multi method research as discussed around module three is also used. Previously when discussing the execution to fix the imbalance we mentioned the use of process and error and clustering categorization. This is directly related to multi-method research as the specialist is more than likely to use two or more research methods to formulate an environment that will help the person in need. By doing so they allow more than one solution that may both be better than the other while also shedding light on something that hadn’t been recognized previously. Finally, we have human factors which are,
” The field of psychology that uses psychological knowledge, including the principles of sensation and perception, to improve the development of technology.” (Module 4)
The social science concept of human factors is crucial to the operation of the HCD specialist. Without this factor it would be difficult for the specialist to analyze the social norms and actions of the user at hand to devise a better working environment. I find human factors to be the most relevant, beneficial, and crucial concept based on their factors and necessity which is especially coherent when looking at the results of project Rise which represents,
“a cutting-edge fusion of human-centered design with mixed-methods research to examine and influence factors affecting ASHA motivation and efficacy in health service delivery.” (Cristine H. 2024)
Conclusion
The Human Centered Design Specialist position is a unique career that aims to build a coexisting lifestyle among people of different marginalized groups and the technologies that they concern themselves with based on the career choice. Its relation to social science principles is evident and its support of cybersecurity is more than noticeable. It has shown a plethora of involvement with multiple concepts from class including ethical neutrality, economical and sociological types, multi method research, and human factors that are all uniquely beneficial. I find HCD specialist to be highly regarded under social science and cybersecurity disciplines as a necessary use case in coming years with the integration of man and machine.
References
Melles, M., Albayrak, A., & Goossens, R. (2021). Innovating health care: key characteristics of human-
centered design. International journal for quality in health care: journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care, 33(Supplement_1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzaa127
Göttgens, I., & Oertelt-Prigione, S. (2021). The Application of Human-Centered Design Approaches in
Health Research and Innovation: A Narrative Review of Current Practices. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 9(12), e28102. https://doi.org/10.2196/28102
Harte R, Glynn L, Rodríguez-Molinero A, Baker PM, Scharf T, Quinlan LR, ÓLaighin G
A Human-Centered Design Methodology to Enhance the Usability, Human Factors, and User Experience of Connected Health Systems: A Three-Phase Methodology
JMIR Hum Factors 2017;4(1): e8 Doi: 10.2196/humanfactors.5443
Faiz A. Hashmi, Oskar Burger, Micah B. Goldwater, Tracy Johnson, Sudipta Mondal, Palash Singh,
Cristine H. Legare, Integrating Human-Centered Design and Social Science Research to Improve Service-Delivery and Empower Community Health Workers: Lessons from Project RISE, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, Volume 9, Issue 4,2023, Pages 489-517, ISSN 2405-8726, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2024.02.001.