Copyright 1998. David Gilmore, Elizabeth Churchill, & Frank Ritter

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.

Aim: define, describe and locate human factors practice

(part 5 of 5)

Common Problems in contemporary HF


Size of systems: often large

Cognitive constraints: black box problems: users don't' get adequate feedback of what is going on, lack of visibility. See Norman for examples and also note the crashes that will be discussed in lectures.

Social and organisation factors: communication problems

Problems with the design and construction of systems

Problems of automation

All these problems give rise to the need for a better understanding of how operators actually function.

HF needs to go beyond recommendations about the design of technology - it has to offer a conceptual basis for these recommendations.

Cognitive ergonomics (i.e. ergonomics of human factors practice which centralises cognitive issues in device use. e.g. attention, learning, memory, communication through written and spoken language, etc.) addresses some of these

Useful terms in HF

anthropometrics, behavioural, cognitive, psycho-social, socio-technical, stakeholders, users, operators, human operators, designers, subjects, participants.

Lecture 2