Applications of human-factors engineering
- Also called:
- ergonomics
- Or:
- human engineering
- Key People:
- Henry Dreyfuss
- Kaare Klint
- Related Topics:
- bioengineering
The basis of human-factors engineering—the consideration of information about human users in the design of tools, machines, jobs, and work environments—has always been present. One of the oldest and most efficient of human implements, the scythe, shows a remarkable degree of human-factors engineering, undoubtedly reflecting modifications made over many centuries: the adroitly curved handle and blade and the peg grasp for the left hand. All of this is in sharp contrast with the conventional snow shovel, a modern implement of generally poor design that has been blamed for many a wintertime back strain.
The need for a more formal approach to these human problems was created when machines became vastly more complex than they had ever been. High-speed jet aircraft, computers, radar, nuclear submarines, communications satellites, space vehicles—all these are products of the modern era. The fantastic growth in the number and complexity of machines has created entirely new problems about the use of human operators and the way they can be integrated into systems. Moreover, the solution to these new problems cannot be found in the collective wisdom of society. For example, not long ago no one had any way of predicting with any certainty how astronauts could or would function in a weightless environment. Human-factors engineering is, therefore, a child of the times, born of a mechanized civilization.
Applications of human-factors engineering have been made to such simple devices as highway signs, telephone sets, hand tools, stoves, and to a host of modern, sophisticated complexes such as data processing systems, automated factories and warehouses, robots, and space vehicles.
The experience gained in devising these systems has contributed to the realization that even relatively simple devices raise unexpectedly important questions on human use—questions that conventional engineering practice frequently cannot answer.
Push-button telephone
The modern push-button telephone handset provides a good example of a relatively simple device that has required a great deal of human-factors engineering. The layout of the keys in the four rows of three buttons, for example, was selected only after extensive tests on a variety of arrangements: circular, two vertical rows of five buttons, two horizontal rows of five, and a diagonal pattern; the arrangement of the numerals and letters on the keys, in the order of left to right and from top to bottom, was chosen as superior to other arrangements such as that used on many desk calculators, in which the numbers increase from bottom to top. The top-to-bottom design decision was not simply a matter of logic; tests showed that people actually made fewer errors and took less time with that arrangement than they did with the calculator arrangement. Other human-factor considerations in the design of the push-button keyset were the size and style of numerals and letters for maximum legibility, the optimum sizes and spacing of the keys, and the proper force-displacement characteristics of the keys to provide tactile feedback or “feel” when the buttons are depressed.
Similar factors were considered in designing the shape of the handset itself. The locations, separations, and angles between the earpiece and mouthpiece were determined so that the assembly would fit comfortably around the greatest number of different human faces; and the weight of the handset was designed to be neither too light nor too heavy. In recent years the careful, “user-friendly” design of conventional telephone sets has become more apparent in contrast to some of the new arrivals in the telephone marketplace, which are generally inferior in design and quality.
Space suit
The designing of a much more complicated device, such as a space suit, presents more intricate problems. A space suit is a complete miniature world, a self-contained environment that must supply everything needed for an astronaut’s life, as well as comfort. The suit must provide a pressurized interior, without which an astronaut’s blood would boil in the vacuum of space. The consequent pressure differential between the inside and the outside of the suit is so great that when inflated the suit becomes a distended, rigid, and unyielding capsule. Special joints were designed to give the astronaut as much free movement as possible. The best engineering has not been able to provide as much flexibility of movement as is desirable; to compensate for that lack, attention has been directed toward the human-factors design of the tools and devices that an astronaut must use.
In addition to overcoming pressurization and movement problems, a space suit must provide oxygen; a system for removing excess products of respiration, carbon dioxide and water vapour; protection against extreme heat, cold, and radiation; protection for the eyes in an environment in which there is no atmosphere to absorb the Sun’s rays; facilities for speech communication; and facilities for the temporary storage of body wastes. This is such an imposing list of human requirements that an entire technology has been developed to deal with them and, indeed, with the provision of simulated environments and procedures for testing and evaluating space suits.
Typewriter keyboard
Not all human-factors engineering and design is commercially successful. An example is the typewriter keyboard. Several alternative layouts, which are demonstrably superior from a human-factors point of view, have been proposed, beginning as far back as the 1920s. Despite test results which show that alternative layouts are easier to learn, create less operator fatigue, and permit faster typing, the traditional layout persists and now has been carried over into the design of millions of personal computers. In this case, inertia and resistance to change have been more formidable obstacles to efficient ergonomic design than the design itself.
Social problems
The telephone, the space suit, and the typewriter keyboard are but three out of thousands of examples that might have been selected to show how human-factors engineering has been consciously applied to solve technological problems. The same human-factors principles and methods have also been applied to a variety of social problems, such as individualized computer-assisted instruction, nonlethal antiriot equipment for law enforcement agencies, antiterrorist architecture for public buildings, and people movers for airport and urban transportation departments. The modern concern with humankind’s relationship to the total environment implies a much-broadened definition of human-factors engineering and an increasing supply of problems for ergonomic engineers in the future.
Alphonse Chapanis William K. Holstein