It is a profession that focuses on how people interact with products, tools, procedures, and any processes likely to be encountered in the modern world. Human factors practitioners can come from a variety of backgrounds; though predominantly they are Psychologists Cognitive, Perceptual, and Experimental and Engineers. Whereas ergonomics tends to focus on the anthropometrics for optimal human-machine interaction, human factors is more focused on the cognitive and perceptual factors.
Areas of interest for human factors practitioners may include the following: workload, fatigue, situational awareness, usability, user interface, learnability, attention, vigilance, human performance, control and display design, stress, visualization of data, individual differences, aging, accessibility, shift work, work in extreme environments, and human error.
Simply put, human factors involves working to make the environment function in a way that seems natural to people. Although the terms "human factors" and "ergonomics" have only been widely known in recent times, the field's origin is in the design and use of aircraft during World War II to improve aviation safety.
The following definition of ergonomics is found on their website :. 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 definition adopted by the International Ergonomics Association in 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 IEA, About HFES.
What is Human Factors and Ergonomics? Planned Giving. Planned Giving Opportunities. Join HFES. Dues Waiver Program. International Annual Meeting. Proceedings from 64th Annual Meeting. NEM Contests. Questionnaire Design. Article Submission Policies.
Human Factors: Information for Authors. Career Resources. David R. Member Directory. Advocacy Initiatives. Definitions from Professional Societies Definitions from Scientific Literature Definitions from Government Agencies Definitions from Industry Definitions from Open Sources Definitions from Professional Societies The following definition was developed by the International Ergonomics Association and has been adopted by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society: 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.
The following definitions were developed by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society found in older HFES literature : Human Factors is concerned with the application of what we know about people, their abilities, characteristics, and limitations to the design of equipment they use, environments in which they function, and jobs they perform.
Definitions from Scientific Literature The following report compiles and analyzes definitions of human factors and other related terms from a wide range of resources: Licht, D. Definitions from Government Agencies National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences defintion of human factors found here is as follows: [A person] who is concerned primarily with the performance of one or more persons in a task-oriented environment interacting with equipment, other people, or both.
General Accounting Office GAO This definition is found on their website : The study of human factors examines how humans interact with machines and other people pilots, air traffic controllers, or design and acquisition personnel and determines whether procedures and regulations take into account human abilities and limitations. National Research Council Karl Kroemer prepared this definition previously posted but no longer available at www.
HCI is an inter-disciplinary discipline comprising experts from many fields, like engineering, computer science, psychology, graphic design, ergonomics and others. HCI is concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive technology. It aims to ensure that technology matches people's needs, capabilities and limitations, regardless of whether people work in groups or alone.
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