The practice of human factors in the context of everyday product design

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 244
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Bethany Juhnke ◽  
Colleen Pokorny ◽  
Linsey Griffin ◽  
Susan Sokolowski

Despite the complexity of the human hand, most large-scale anthropometric data for the human hand includes minimal measurements. Anthropometric studies are expensive and time-consuming to conduct, and more efficient methods are needed to capture hand data and build large-scale civilian databases to impact product design and human factors analyses. A first of its kind large-scale 3D hand anthropometric database was the result of this study with 398 unique datasets. This database was created at minimal cost and time to researchers to improve accessibility to data and impact the design of products for hands.


1978 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 669-669
Author(s):  
Harry M. Philo ◽  
Linda Miller Atkinson

The social purpose of product liability litigation is product safety and accident Prevention. The role of the Human Factors Expert in that context is to educate juries, trial judges and appellate judges, attorneys, and experts in product design. The role of the Human Factors Expert in this context also includes being educated by the attorney's hindsight and experience, the technical materials, and by due care standards rather than compromise standards.


1988 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 420-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamran Abedini

In order to know the pattern of actual application of human factors criteria by industrial designers an experiment was conducted by asking 87 students of industrial design to evaluate a CAD workstation after completing a course in “human factors in design”. The guidelines chosen for the evaluation were those related to design of visual displays, controls and workstation layout on the CAD system. Since the main objective was to see how many of the principles had become part of their “common sense” they were asked to evaluate the equipment without any reference to any books/notes. The subject's responses were compared with the human factors guidelines using a Chi-square test (0.05 significance). The results pointed out that industrial designers readily accepted general criteria such as visibility, operability, and accessibility but interpretability of the display was frequently unrecognized. Such information could be used by industrial designers and human factors experts to improve their cooperation in the design process and thus increase the acceptance and marketability of the product.


Author(s):  
Boris Povlotsky

This paper illustrates some of author's views of the ergonomics implementation challenges within diverse industries, manufacturing, office environments, and machinery/product design. We intend to analyze and review the roots of problems from different perspectives and recommend which ergonomics approaches are likely to succeed or fail. Most importantly it is imperative to find the actual cause(s) of obstacle(s) - problem(s) before looking for appropriate ergonomics solution(s) and acceptance of ergonomics innovations by end users. The presented material is based on the substantial authors' experiences in human factors engineering and ergonomics, in industry and academia and in various countries. Our objective is to present an integrated view of ergonomics within corporate bureaucracy in the contexts of favorable and unfavorable environments - factors that lead to success or failure.


1983 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 811-815 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Ryan

The increasing number of suits filed each year in courts arising from personal injuries while using consumer products indicates safety in design needs immediate evaluation. Human Factors engineers can make a great contribution in this area, especially by working more closely with traditional approaches to product design. Many engineers who are responsible for design, testing, and quality control have not had the benefit of training in ergonomics and psychology. As a result, many products sold in the marketplace today reflect too-high a risk acceptance for the ordinary consumer. This paper describes criteria for safe design of consumer products based on foreseeable and reasonable use of products. Sources of product standards relating to performance and safety are presented. Safe product design criteria based on risk, reliability, foreseeability, psychological considerations, and hazard warning are presented.


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