[IxDA Discuss] "Human Factors" angle on our field

[Keith_Karn]

Billie -
My background is in human factors. I consider all of my work in the 
past 27 years to be design of human-machine interaction. Of course when 
I was an undergraduate there were very few degrees (none at the 
undergrad level that I know of) in human factors or ergonomics. So I 
went on to get both psychology and industrial engineering degrees. I 
also took courses in physiology, biomechanics, and architecture (for 
non-majors of course). Since (and in between) my stints in school, I 
have helped design military aircraft cockpits, office imaging 
equipment, commercial printing systems, desktop software applications, 
websites, web applications, medical equipment, embedded system software 
with touch-screen GUIs, etc. I say "helped" because I've always worked 
closely in teams with other disciplines including industrial designers, 
graphic designers, marketing professionals, technical writers, 
translators, information architects, software engineers, electrical  
engineers,  mechanical engineers,  and system engineers.
	At the masters level in the human factors curriculum at North Carolina 
State, we definitely had design courses. We learned about 
brainstorming, conceptual and logical design, iteration, usability 
testing, etc. I took some drawing courses on my own - outside of the 
academic world as I realized that being able to communicate visually 
was as important as being able to communicate verbally and in writing. 
I actually learned technical writing in my first job working for the 
department of Defense. Having 8 military and civilian bosses edit my 
letters and reports before they were sent out from the top of the chain 
of command taught me a lot. Luckily for me, one of those Navy test 
pilots was an english major before going to flight school.
	You might appreciate a bit of history of the field. I believe human 
factors to be much older than any of the other disciplines you mention 
except maybe for industrial design and graphic design. It surely 
predates human-computer interaction (mid 1980s), information 
architecture (late 1990s), and user experience design (at least with 
this label). The Human Factors Society (now called "The Human Factors 
and Ergonomics Society) was started in 1958, I believe. The filed was 
already booming then - blossoming during World War II when industrial 
engineers had to redesign production workplaces to accommodate the 
influx of women in the workforce (think Rosie the Riveter) and 
experimental psychologist had to figure out ways to design airplane 
cockpits to prevent the human pilots from being the weak link in these 
increasingly capable and complex weapon systems. In the early 1980s the 
Human Factors Society actually cosponsored the first one or two CHI 
conferences along with ACM. I still fault the leadership of the Society 
for dropping the ball on that and allowing ACM reap all the benefits of 
the HCI boom.
	Human factors tends to be a pretty board field. I would argue that you 
are all doing part of it. Human factors practitioners should know 
something about the human user (e.g., human perception and cognition, 
anthropometry, biomechanics, work physiology,...) about the tasks the 
user will perform (e.g., task analysis, contextual inquiry, 
observation, interviewing techniques,...) and about the environment in 
which the user will work (e.g., assessment of noise, vibration, 
lighting, stress,  ...). In addition, human factors practitioners 
should have skills to design user experiences, conduct usability tests, 
and develop some sort of prototypes / simulations of new design 
concepts. These skills should easily transfer across product domains 
(e.g., military systems, medical systems, office equipment, consumer 
electronics, software applications, websites, etc.). I teach all this 
stuff (broad brush) at the undergraduate level in one human-machine 
interaction course (yes my students hate me during the semester but 
love the experience in retrospect). Personally I think that it is crazy 
that we keep inventing new professional societies, academic 
departments, and journals (and list services) with ever-increasing 
narrowness of focus.
	I hope that helps. Feel free to contact me with any specific questions 
off list.

Keith Karn
Keith S. Karn, Ph.D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences,
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
keith at cvs.rochester.edu

P.S., The pints are good at the HFES conference too. Try one some time.

On May 11, 2007, Billie Mandel wrote:

> ------------------------------
> From: "Billie Mandel" <Billie.Mandel at openwave.com>
> Subject: [IxDA Discuss] "Human Factors" angle on our field
>
> Assumption: Design people - even good ones - can come from an
> interaction design background/angle, a front end developer angle, an
> information architecture angle or an HCI angle, among others.  It's
> pretty easy for me to relate to/evaluate/learn from/grok those design
> folks who show up here at IxDA, and/or whom I might see at the IA 
> Summit
> or at CHI.  Those three professional groups might get scrappy over
> territory sometimes, but there's enough in common in our Venn diagram
> that we can have interesting and useful conversation over a pint - or
> that I can understand and evaluate their resume or background.
>
> So what about those Human Factors folk?  The ones who have a Human
> Factors degree or professional membership, and who AREN'T also
> participating in the IxD or IA-centered organizations.  My observation
> del giorno: they seem to speak a different language, even when they're
> talking about the same core set of tasks (i.e. creating/evaluating
> software/web sites to make sure they are efficient, easy, or fun for
> people to use).
>
> Has anyone else noticed this?  How have you handled the "translation,"
> when you need to communicate with or assess someone who lives in that
> universe?  Have you hired any folks like this to do design, or worked 
> on
> a team with them - and has it been a success?  Any "bilingual" HF/IxD
> people able to help me out here?
>
> Cheers,
> - Billie
>
> *   *    *    *    *   *   *
> Billie Mandel
> Manager, User Experience Design & Research
> OPENWAVE
>  billie.mandel at openwave.com <mailto:billie.mandel at openwave.com>