Publications
Designing for the Engineers Behind the Mission:
A Human-Centered Approach to Requirements Traceability at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This poster was accepted at SPACECHI 2026, an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to advancing human-computer interaction (HCI) in space exploration, at NASA AMES Research Center.
† NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Califronia Institute of Technology
* Current Affiliation: Planetary Utilities
- Authors:
- Joyce Croft*
- Paul Lumsdaine†
Abstract
Space missions depend on thousands of interconnected requirements that must be tracked, verified, and communicated throughout a flight project's lifecycle. Yet systems engineers often work across fragmented tools, processes, and teams, making it difficult to maintain visibility, identify risks, and report project status.
This poster presents a human-centered design case study from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) focused on improving requirements traceability and reporting for NASA flight projects. Through interviews and collaborative workshops with systems engineers, software developers, and key stakeholders, we identified fragmented information sources, inconsistent reporting practices, and limited visibility across engineering organizations.
The resulting platform, the Requirements Development Qualification Suite (RDQS), established a shared framework for requirements traceability and project reporting. By visualizing relationships between requirements, functional areas, verification activities, and project status, RDQS gave teams faster access to project information and reduced the effort needed to identify and report risks to NASA stakeholders. It also shifted teams from isolated information silos to a shared engineering ecosystem, easing coordination overhead and strengthening cross-functional collaboration.
RDQS has since achieved full adoption across JPL flight projects, becoming the standard approach for requirements status reporting and coordination. Users report faster access to project information, quicker identification of risks, less manual data interpretation, and more efficient cross-functional collaboration.
This work demonstrates how human-centered design and systems thinking can improve collaboration, decision-making, and information management in mission-critical engineering environments. While much space HCI research focuses on astronauts and mission operations, this case study highlights the importance of designing for the engineers whose work enables successful missions long before launch — and offers lessons for future tools that support traceability and decision-making across increasingly complex, distributed space exploration programs.
