Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
about the design of similar systems. Many good design ideas can be found in textbooks
and scientific articles. The HFE specialist will generate a few design alternatives, which
will then be evaluated. The HFE specialist will then have to select an evaluation tool.
There are many options, including rapid prototyping, usability studies, or performing an
experiment with users as test subjects.
This scenario leads to our second maxim:
In HFE, a systematic, interdisciplinary approach is necessary for design
and analysis.
1.2
DEFINITION OF HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS
(HFE)
There are many definitions in the HFE literature. The following is from Helander (1997):
• Considering environmental and organizational constraints,
• Use knowledge of human abilities and limitations
• To design the system, organization, job, machine, tool, or consumer product
• So that it is safe, efficient, and comfortable to use.
Note again that the main purpose is design (Chapanis, 1995). Ergonomics is thereby
different from most of the bodies of knowledge that are used to support HFE.
Ergonomics is different from anthropology, cognitive science, psychology, sociology,
and medical sciences, since their primary purpose is to understand and model human
behavior—but not to design.
The International Ergonomics Association (2000) provides the following definition:
“Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with
the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a
system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and
methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall
system performance.”
“Ergonomists contribute to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs,
products, environments and systems in order to make them compatible
with the needs, abilities and limitations of people.”
Throughout the topic, I will use the terms ergonomics, human factors, and HFE
interchangeably. I will assume that there are no differences between these words,
although, as we shall see below, the histories of human factors and ergonomics are quite
different.
