Human Factors Minute

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! For almost a century, manufacturers have had the burden to provide products that are safe for the intended uses AND foreseeable misuses of their products. When product users are injured through the foreseeable use (or misuse) of a product, we analyze three phases of the product's development: the design, guards and warnings. Manufacturers have the respo...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! The Kansei method is a method that transforms consumer's responses to new products into design specifications. Also known as Kansei engineering this discipline aims at the development or improvement of products and services by translating the customer's psychological feelings and needs into the domain of product design and parameters. As a result, produ...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Augmented Cognition research and development efforts seek to extend a user’s abilities via computational technologies that are explicitly designed to address and accommodate bottlenecks, limitations, and biases in cognition, such as limitations in attention, memory, learning, comprehension, visualization abilities, and decision making. At its core, the...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Did you know that the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has 24 technical groups that are concerned with the human factors aspects of specific application areas? One of those is the environmental design technical group. The Environmental Design Technical Group is concerned with the relationship between human behavior and the designed environment. Comm...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! The Department of Defense Human Factors Engineering Technical Advisory Group (DoD HFE TAG) is composed of technical representatives from the Department of Defense (DoD), National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with rese...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Cognitive walkthrough: This method is a usability inspection method in which the evaluators can apply user perspective to task scenarios to identify design problems. As applied to macroergonomics, evaluators are able to analyze the usability of work system designs to identify how well a work system is organized and how well the workflow is integrated. T...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Did you know that the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has 24 technical groups that are concerned with the human factors aspects of specific application areas? One of those is The Human Performance Modeling Technical Group . This technical group focuses on the development and application of predictive, reliable, and executable quantitative models of...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! The Association for Computing Machinery (or ACM) hosts an annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (frequently refered to as CHI). This series of academic conferences is generally considered one of the most prestigious in the field of human-computer interaction. It is hosted by ACM SIGCHI, the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Inte...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Predetermined time standards (PTS) are advanced techniques which aim at defining the time needed for the performance of various operations by derivation from preset standards of time for various motions and not by direct observation and measurement. A predetermined time standard is a work measurement technique whereby times established for basic human m...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! There are a few lessons learned that we can take from the Chernobyl disaster. Engaging our colleagues and leaders on the topics of human error, design failures and safety culture can help improve our workplaces. Here are a few questions you can ask about your workplace: What human factors influenced the behaviours of the operators in the control room? W...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Did you know that the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has 24 technical groups that are concerned with the human factors aspects of specific application areas? One of those is the Healthcare Technica Group The Healthcare Technical Group is interested in maximizing the contributions of human factors and ergonomics to medical systems’ effectiveness, p...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! A U.S. worker dies as a result of a workplace injury every 2 hours. In 2011 alone, almost 4 million U.S. workers were injured on the job. While the Workers' Compensation system was designed to provide financial support to those injured at work, many injuries are not the result of the employer's work practices, but rather other entities. Workplaces, espe...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Work sampling is a method in which the job is sampled at random intervals to determine the proportion of total time spent on a particular task.[46] It provides insight into how often workers are performing tasks which might cause strain on their bodies. In a work sampling study, a large number of observations are made of the workers over an extended per...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Highly-trained and experienced operators can often compensate for a poor design; however, in the case of the Chernobyl disaster, the designers gave the operators too difficult a task. The design was not at all forgiving of operator mistakes. It may have been difficult for the operators to have compensated for design failures that they did not know about...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Members of the Forensics Professional Group are interested in all aspects of human factors as applied to litigation matters, both civil and criminal. FPGs goal is to bring ergonomic data and approaches to the investigation of losses influenced by design or by human limitations. Arguments may be presented on the degree to which a design meets current sta...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! A time study is a structured process of directly observing and measuring human work using a timing device to establish the time required for completion of the work by a qualified worker when working at a defined level of performance. Typically, time studies determine the time required for a worker to complete each task. by breaking the work into small,...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an association dedicated to advancing innovation and technological excellence for the benefit of humanity and is the worlds largest technical professional society. It is designed to serve professionals involved in all aspects of electrical, electronic and computing fields and related areas...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! In our previous Human Factors Minute on the Chernobyl disaster, we mentioned that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had released a report detailing their conclusions of the disaster. The IAEA updated their conclusions in a 1993 report. New information since the 1986 report led them to "shift the emphasis of its conclusions from the actions o...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Safety culture is about what people do (safety-related behaviours); how people feel (individual and group values, attitudes and perceptions) as well as what the organisation has (policies, procedures, structures and systems). These three aspects are interrelated and therefore not mutually exclusive. A company’s safety culture is shaped by corporate prac...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! The Wizard of Oz method is a process that allows a user to interact with an interface without knowing that the responses are being generated by a human rather than a computer by having someone behind-the-scenes who is pulling the levers and flipping the switches. This process allows researchers to test a concept by having one practitioner – the ‘Moderat...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Task analysis is a fundamental methodology in the assessment and reduction of human error. A wide variety of different task analysis methods exist, and it would be impracticable to describe all these techniques here. Instead, the intention is to describe representative methodologies applicable to different types of task. The term Task Analysis (TA) can...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Let's take a look at the Human Error that contributed to the Chernobyl disaster. Many believe the disaster was caused by ‘human error’, based on early reports that placed substantial blame on the operators at Chernobyl. A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), placed considerable emphasis on the role of plant operators. This report was...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Did you know that the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has 24 technical groups that are concerned with the human factors aspects of specific application areas? One of those is the The EDUCATION TECHNICAL GROUP The EDUCATION TECHNICAL GROUP is concerned with the education and training of human factors and ergonomics specialists. This includes undergr...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. The outcome of these efforts, is an engineered system, and can be defined as a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function. I...

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) International is a User Experience Design Organizatoin that supports people who research, design, and evaluate the user experience (UX) of products and services. Founded in 1991, they serve a community worldwide by promoting UX concepts and techniques through annual international conferences, publishing n...