These lecture notes were not written as a course handout, but as a resource for lectures. Therefore, references and comments will not always be complete.
(part 2 of 5)
The structure of this lecture is to raise a few important issues. The bullet points do not contain mutually exclusive information, and this way of partitioning the information is not the only way.
The purpose of human factors (HF) research and practice is to maximise the safety and "healthiness" of work environments and work practices, and to ensure the usability of tools, devices and artifacts in general.
More specifically, human factors is concerned with providing a good 'fit' between people and their work or leisure environments. `Fit' might be the literal word as with the design of ejector seats for RAF aircraft (e.g. ejector seats designed for average size) or might be more metaphorical in the sense (e.g. designing to complement task activities, e.g. the chapati kitchen). (OHP: showing anthropometrics and kitchens).
Notably, the 'fit' can be made in either direction. We can 'fit'
the environment to the person (e.g. by providing adjustable ejector
seats to accommodate a range of heights, weights, etc.) or we can fit
the person to the environment. (e.g. extensive training or using
people of a certain build, e.g. Suckling airlines in Cambridge). The
two together traditionally make up industrial psychology and used to
define occupational psychology (although now the remit of
occupational psychology is very large indeed).
Although historically concerned with work setting, HF is now concerned with the usability of all tools, objects, environments, etc., including objects and environments used for leisure activities, e.g. video interfaces, movie theatres, chain restaurants, etc.
A priority is consideration of users' physical, behavioural and information processing characteristics and requirements. Experience has shown that failure to deal with such characteristics can lead to wasted functionality, user frustration, inefficient practices, discomfort and error-prone activity. However, much of HF work is a trade-off between considering the user and economic and political constraints.
Whilst HF studies are aimed at evaluating particular equipment and work space layouts (e.g. kitchen layout, display design, work surface heights, chair design, computer interfaces, aircraft cockpit layouts and so on), a more general aim is to develop principles (list from Norman, 1988) and models (e.g. the Model Human Processor, Card, Moran and Newell, 1983) about how people interact with their environment and how that interaction affects their behaviour. These principles can be used to derive performance predictions for the development of design guidelines (an example from Newman and Lamming, 1994) and legally enforceable standards (an example from Pheasant, or more information about different organisations which deal with standards) The evaluation, analysis and synthesis techniques are all methods that are also a product of human factors.
Some methods will be considered in the third part of the course.
These include performance analysis, both analytic and empirical;
iterative design; formative and summative evaluation using many
different methods and from many different theoretical start points.
Of course, any analysis that is carried out makes assumptions about
what is valid as data and what level of analysis is appropriate. For
example, someone with a strongly cognitive outlook will centralise
the individual operator's viewpoint (e.g. Young, Card Moran and
Newell), whilst someone with a strongly social outlook will
centralise the setting in which the operator find themselves (e.g.
Clegg). Some models (e.g. ICS: Barnard) attempt to model both of
these.
Evaluation involves assessing both the static structure and the dynamic behaviour of the eventual product (especially in the case of software).