III. A. 10. Human Factors

Human Factors and Risk

Guest Post by Paul Kostek (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

There is an aviation old joke that in the future the airplane will have a crew of two, a pilot and a dog. The pilot to feed the dog and the dog to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.

I started this article after reading about United Airlines plan to bring in all 12,000 of its pilots for additional training outside of their normal training schedule. This was being done as a result of several incidents that raised concerns about pilot response to failures. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

General Human Factors Design Principles

People build, transport, use, maintain and dispose of equipment or products.

Thus the creation of these items should include consideration of the humans involved. In order to fully benefit from the functional capability of an item or system, we, as humans, have to interact with an item’s interface, displays, sounds, etc.

Whether a smartphone or bottling machine, the ability to provide commands or direction, the ability to recognize and understand responses, and the ability to correctly identify faults or outputs all combine to permit humans to place calls or fill juice bottles.

It is in the design stage that the elements of a piece of equipment (hardware or software) thwart or enable efficient human interaction. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Comparing Human and Machine Capability

In 1968 NASA explored where machines and humans would best achieve tasks primarily during space missions. Many of the findings are true today, and in some areas, the differences are blurring.

Machines created by humans continue to improve and take on complex tasks, that once only humans could do. For example, parking a car, now a feature of newer car models. Autonomous driving is happening and continuing to improve. The ability to reason, to foresee and evaluate risks, once thought to be strictly in the domain of human capability is now being done by machines. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Human Factor Considerations

If a human is going to build, install, monitor, use, operate, repair, or dismantle, then the design team must consider human factors.

According to Wikipedia

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.

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