Do we need sustainability as a new approach in human factors and ergonomics?

The International Ergonomics Association Technical Committee ‘Human Factors and Sustainable Development’ was established to contribute to a broad discourse about opportunities and risks resulting from current societal ‘mega-trends’ and their impacts on the interactions among humans and other elements of a system, e.g. in work systems. This paper focuses on the underlying key issues: how do the sustainability paradigm and human factors/ergonomics interplay and interact, and is sustainability necessary as a new approach for our discipline? Based on a discussion of the sustainability concept, some general principles for designing new and enhancing existent approaches of human factors and ergonomics regarding their orientation towards sustainability are proposed.

Practitioner summary: The increasing profile of sustainability on the international stage presents new opportunities for human factors/ergonomics. Positioning of the sustainability paradigm within human factors/ergonomics is discussed. Approaches to incorporating sustainability in the design of work systems are considered.     

A Review of: “The Elite Athlete”. By NANCY BUTTS,T. T. GUSHIKEN and B. ZARINS (Champaign,IL.: Life Enhancement Publications, 1985.) [Pp. 283.] $28·00. ISBN 0873229053

The past decade has seen an increase in the application of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) techniques to healthcare delivery in a broad range of contexts (domains, locations and environments). This paper provides a state of science commentary using four examples of HFE in healthcare to review and discuss analytical and implementation challenges and to identify future issues for HFE. The examples include two domain areas (occupational ergonomics and surgical safety) to illustrate a traditional application of HFE and the area that has probably received the most research attention. The other two examples show how systems and design have been addressed in healthcare with theoretical approaches for organisational and socio-technical systems and design for patient safety. Future opportunities are identified to develop and embed HFE systems thinking in healthcare including new theoretical models and long-term collaborative partnerships. HFE can contribute to systems and design initiatives for both patients and clinicians to improve everyday performance and safety, and help to reduce and control spiralling healthcare costs.     

Engineering aesthetics and aesthetic ergonomics: Theoretical foundations and a dual-process research methodology

Although industrial and product designers are keenly aware of the importance of design aesthetics, they make aesthetic design decisions largely on the basis of their intuitive judgments and ‘educated guesses’. Whilst ergonomics and human factors researchers have made great contributions to the safety, productivity, ease-of-use, and comfort of human-machine-environment systems, aesthetics is largely ignored as a topic of systematic scientific research in human factors and ergonomics. This article discusses the need for incorporating the aesthetics dimension in ergonomics and proposes the establishment of a new scientific and engineering discipline that we can call ‘engineering aesthetics’. This discipline addresses two major questions: How do we use engineering and scientific methods to study aesthetics concepts in general and design aesthetics in particular? How do we incorporate engineering and scientific methods in the aesthetic design and evaluation process? This article identifies two special features that distinguish aesthetic appraisal of products and system designs from aesthetic appreciation of art, and lays out a theoretical foundation as well as a dual-process research methodology for ‘engineering aesthetics’. Sample applications of this methodology are also described.     

Green ergonomics: challenges and opportunities

Addressing the causes and consequences of environmental degradation presents significant challenges for humankind. This paper considers what ergonomics/human factors (E/HF) professionals can contribute to understanding and tackling some of the issues that arise through the movement towards a more environmentally sustainable economy. These issues are considered in relation to work in green industries (specifically, sustainable energy production, recycling and organic food production), and there is a need to ensure that these jobs are safe and healthy; the design of products and systems that are ‘environmentally friendly’ to facilitate their acceptability and use and how E/HF professionals can contribute to understanding and promoting behavioural change relating to environmental choices. The activities of some international organisations in this area are identified and the potential for E/HF involvement is considered. The implications for the E/HF profession are discussed.

Practitioner summary: This paper considers how ergonomics/human factors professionals can contribute to the movement towards more sustainable and ‘environmentally friendly’ design and work. Potential challenges and opportunities are discussed in relation to jobs in green industries, products and systems and behaviour change.     

Assessment of patient safety research from an organizational ergonomics and structural perspective

The aim of this study is to review patient safety improvement initiatives within a conceptual framework that builds upon principles of organizational ergonomics and emphasizes structural factors that influence patient safety. The literature review included 131 English language published studies of patient safety improvement strategies extracted using Medline, Ovid Healthstar, PubMed and CINAHL searches. Keywords for the search included: ‘patient safety’; ‘medical errors’; ‘adverse event’; ‘iatrogenic’; and truncated options for ‘improve’. The multilevel, hierarchical framework offered in this paper integrates quality management principles and organizational ergonomics theory and organizes patient safety initiatives according to sociotechnical system elements within three structural levels: health policies and associated health care organizations; health care delivery organizations; and health care microsystems. Utilizing the conceptual framework, this review of patient safety improvement initiatives highlights the need for consideration of the impact of all improvement proposals on each structural component within health care systems. The review also supports the need for patient safety research to evolve from exploratory, 1-D reporting to multi-level, integrated research.     

Workshop-based methodology to understand the risks in grain export inspection and certification

Much of the human factors contribution in risk assessment and risk management has been focused on systems or product safety; the profession has a much smaller research base regarding risks to do with regulation, certification and public policy, for example. This paper discusses an explicitly human factors contribution to understanding and managing risk for the inspection and export certification of grain and plant products in Australia. Training and awareness workshops, incorporating elements of focus groups, were run for 12 groups of staff and managers from the government department concerned. As well as training in risk management the workshops were used to come to an understanding of the work of the inspectors and other staff, to identify the sources of risk to the successful completion of their work and to develop the basis for a risk assessment framework and tool. The paper is methodological in focus and describes the development and running of the workshops and explains how a human factors oriented risk register was developed on the basis of identification of potential threats and errors in the system. Whilst the contribution of ergonomics is increasingly important as regards safety risk assessment, professionals have been less active as regards business, public policy and even engineering risk. This paper describes an approach within which a new domain was studied and the risks of all kinds identified, preparatory to development of a risk assessment tool.     

This month Remember,Remember…

This paper concerns one possible response of human factors to the need for better user interactions of computer-based systems. The paper is in two parts. Part I examines the potential for human factors to formulate engineering principles. A basic prerequisite for realizing that potential is a conception of the general design problem addressed by human factors. The problem is expressed informally as: ‘to design human interactions with computers for effective working’. A conception would provide the set of related concepts which both expressed the general design problem more formally, and which might be embodied in engineering principles. Part II of the paper proposes such a conception and illustrates its concepts. It is offered as an initial and speculative step towards a conception for an engineering discipline of Human Factors.     

Fundamentals of systems ergonomics/human factors

Ergonomics/human factors is, above anything else, a systems discipline and profession, applying a systems philosophy and systems approaches. Many things are labelled as system in today's world, and this paper specifies just what attributes and notions define ergonomics/human factors in systems terms. These are obviously a systems focus, but also concern for context, acknowledgement of interactions and complexity, a holistic approach, recognition of emergence and embedding of the professional effort involved within organization system. These six notions are illustrated with examples from a large body of work on rail human factors.     

A question of our marketing or our preconceptions: Commentary on the paper ‘A strategy for human factors/ergonomics: developing the discipline and profession’

The present paper is a commentary on the recently published IEA strategy for human factors/ergonomics (Dul, J., et al. (2012), A strategy for human factors/ergonomics: developing the discipline and profession. Ergonomics, 55(4), 377–395). Two main issues that demand attention are: (i) the way others understand our profession and discipline, and (ii) the way we understand our profession and added value to industry. First, it is advocated that the discussion on the future of human factors/ergonomics (HFE) should be focused more on the quality of the delivered value of HFE and less on its visibility and marketing. Second, the three fundamental characteristics of HFE, as proposed in the report, are discussed and the consequences of this proposal are further developed. Arguments are put forward on the endemic epistemological vagueness within the discipline and on the optimistic definition of its aim. Finally, a proposal is made at the epistemological level, which challenges some established convictions of the discipline. It is advocated that such an epistemological evolution may be necessary if HFE is to make progress towards contributing to system performance.

Practitioner Summary: The paper is a commentary on the IEA strategy for human factors/ergonomics. Issues discussed are, the way others understand our profession and the way we understand our profession and added value to industry. Some of the established convictions of the discipline are challenged and proposals are made to overcome these.     

Green ergonomics: definition and scope

This paper demonstrates that the goals of ergonomics (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency, health, safety and usability) are closely aligned with the goals of design for environmental sustainability. In this paper, the term ‘green ergonomics’ is conceptualised to specifically describe ergonomics interventions with a pro-nature emphasis. Green ergonomics is focused on the bi-directional connections between human systems and nature. This involves looking at (1) how ergonomics design and evaluation might be used to conserve, preserve, and restore nature and (2) how ecosystem services might be harnessed to facilitate the improved wellbeing and effectiveness of human systems. The paper proposes the scope of green ergonomics based on these bi-directional relationships in the areas of the design of low resource systems and products, the design of green jobs, and the design for behaviour change. Suggestions for further work in the green ergonomics domain are also made.

Practitioner Summary: Given the enormous environmental challenges facing modern industrial society, this paper encourages ergonomics science to embrace a pro-nature understanding of work design and research. This paper sets out the role for green ergonomics based on an appreciation of the human–nature connections that have been integrated with our understanding of ergonomics science and practice.     

Design for human factors (DfHF): a grounded theory for integrating human factors into production design processes

The ‘design for human factors’ grounded theory explains ‘how’ human factors (HF) went from a reactive, after-injury programme in safety, to being proactively integrated into each step of the production design process. In this longitudinal case study collaboration with engineers and HF Specialists in a large electronics manufacturer, qualitative data (e.g. meetings, interviews, observations and reflections) were analysed using a grounded theory methodology. The central tenet in the theory is that when HF Specialists acclimated to the engineering process, language and tools, and strategically aligned HF to the design and business goals of the organisation, HF became a means to improve business performance. This led to engineers ‘pulling’ HF Specialists onto their team. HF targets were adopted into engineering tools to communicate HF concerns quantitatively, drive continuous improvement, visibly demonstrate change and lead to benchmarking. Senior management held engineers accountable for HF as a key performance indicator, thus integrating HF into the production design process.

Practitioner Summary: Research and practice lack explanations about how HF can be integrated early in design of production systems. This three-year case study and the theory derived demonstrate how ergonomists changed their focus to align with design and business goals to integrate HF into the design process.     

SEIPS 2.0: a human factors framework for studying and improving the work of healthcare professionals and patients

Healthcare practitioners, patient safety leaders, educators and researchers increasingly recognise the value of human factors/ergonomics and make use of the discipline's person-centred models of sociotechnical systems. This paper first reviews one of the most widely used healthcare human factors systems models, the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model, and then introduces an extended model, ‘SEIPS 2.0’. SEIPS 2.0 incorporates three novel concepts into the original model: configuration, engagement and adaptation. The concept of configuration highlights the dynamic, hierarchical and interactive properties of sociotechnical systems, making it possible to depict how health-related performance is shaped at ‘a moment in time’. Engagement conveys that various individuals and teams can perform health-related activities separately and collaboratively. Engaged individuals often include patients, family caregivers and other non-professionals. Adaptation is introduced as a feedback mechanism that explains how dynamic systems evolve in planned and unplanned ways. Key implications and future directions for human factors research in healthcare are discussed.     

Human factors in support of a successful railway: a review

One of the critical infrastructure components in most economies across the world is the rail network. In different nations rail is responsible for ensuring that there is not complete gridlock on the roads in commuter hours, and for moving both people and freight for long distances in an as efficient manner as possible. This critical role, a number of high profile accidents and proposals for new network control philosophies and systems have led to a great upsurge in human factors rail research and applications in the past few years. This paper provides a retrospective on rail human factors research covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, incident reporting systems, passengers and the public, planning and technical systems change. This research foundation, and also current major rail human factors programmes, are placed in the context of technology, investment, competition, cultural and safety requirements and constraints. The paper concludes with an examination of where rail human factors should and will be going into the future. Rail human factors research has grown rapidly in both quantity and quality of output over the past few years. There was an early base of work at a few institutions carried out over the 1960 s and 1970 s, followed by a lull in the 1980 s and early 1990 s. The continual influences of safety concerns, new technical system opportunities, reorganisation of the business, needs to increase effective, reliable and safe use of capacity, and increased society, media and government interest have now accelerated rail human factors research programmes in several countries. In this paper we review the literature on rail human factors research, covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, reporting systems, passenger interests, planning and technical systems change. Current major rail human factors programmes are summarised and future research needs proposed. It is asserted that general human factors models and methods are being re-assessed, and new ones developed, to meet the requirements of the railways. This paper has, with the agreement of all editors concerned, been published in substantially similar form as: Wilson J. R. and Norris B. J., 2005, Rail human factors: past, present and future. Applied Ergonomics, 36, 6, 649–660.     

Designing for operations: Towards a sociotechnical systems and cognitive engineering approach to concurrent engineering

In the practice of concurrent engineering, the factors that are considered early in the product design process include manufacturability, assembly, and cost. A set of issues that are not typically considered revolve around the operational requirements for human workers in the manufacturing system. What tasks will human workers accomplish? How will these tasks be organized and coordinated? What information and resources need to be shared? Will the workers have a coherent set of job responsibilities? How should the manufacturing environment be designed to support effective work practices? How can a manufacturing process be designed that also informs organizational structure and takes into account the quality of working life?

The field of sociotechnical systems theory (STS) focuses on exactly these kinds of issues. Rather than subscribing to the usual view of technological determinism — that a complex human-machine system is designed solely with respect to optimization of technical criteria — the goal of STS is to jointly optimize both human and technological considerations in system design and operation. The spirit of STS has much in common with recent work in cognitive systems engineering that advocates the design of joint cognitive systems in which machines serve as flexible, context-sensitive resources for human problem solving. Furthermore, a focus on design teams necessitates the study of the relationship between group work and technology as studied in the field of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). This paper briefly reviews current research in sociotechnical systems theory, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering and proposes a framework for integrating operational concerns into the concurrent engineering process. Relevance to industry

To be competitive, organizations need to effectively manage human and technological resources. A key issue is the nature of the information and technological infrastructure that both enables and supports ‘best practice’ across the enterprise. This paper describes such an approach in the context of the ‘operational enterprise’ and provides both a philosophical stance as well as specific examples of software support.     

Improving efficiencies and patient safety in healthcare through human factors and ergonomics

Efficiencies and patient safety can be improved through modeling of healthcare systems with consideration of human factors and ergonomics. With focus on predicting individual and system performance, safety and satisfaction can be considered from various perspectives including the clinician, patient, pharmacist and healthcare organization. The basis for predictions are models and hypotheses developed from scientific principles, methods and technology implementation strategies demonstrated, observed and reported through research. This paper provides a brief review and reappraisal of recent articles and book chapters to give some insights into how efficiencies and patient safety can be improved through human factors and ergonomics. Current needs and potential future research are also outlined. Web-resources from the World Health Care Congress, Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration, Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE) and the Institutional Review Board at Purdue, and recent special broadcasts from C-SPAN and PBS support and motivate further research. In considering the new research, it is proposed that a great deal more focus is needed on the process, methods and structuring of research studies, than on the implementations of a particular healthcare practice, technology or model. Students at cross-disciplinary research centers like RCHE at Purdue University are focusing on developing their ability to evaluate research based on the selected course readings and a “List of 10 ways” to look at a research paper systematically for critical analysis. With foundations in human factors and ergonomics it is expected that new potential healthcare systems engineering related research projects can be considered and developed through the semester projects and built upon as extensions that may lead to theses and dissertations. Recent project examples will be discussed. Research issues will be outlined along various health systems issues as follows: Modeling Systems and Economic Aspects, Healthcare Information Technologies, Electronic Prescribing and Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems, Cognitive Aspects and Human–Computer Interaction, Healthcare Work Analysis & Design, International and Cultural Issues, Human Factors, Ergonomics and Patient Safety, Technology Adoption, Data Collection and Analysis.     

The next 50 years: future challenges and opportunities for empathy in our science

To stay relevant and applicable in a rapidly changing world, ergonomics must meet several challenges. The paper explores these challenges and how the profession might respond. It is proposed that there are opportunities, and a need, to embrace empathy as a legitimate and useful tool. Empathy has value in three main areas. In research we can broaden our understanding of people and situations, learning ‘why’ as well as ‘how and what’ people do. Second, by identifying with the emotional as well as intellectual concerns of sponsors and colleagues from other professions, we inspire trust and confidence, adding value to our collective efforts in collaborative work. Third, through methods such as role-playing and story telling, empathy is a powerful tool for getting ergonomics issues across to implementers and influencing outcomes. Care is needed to balance empathy with systematic observation in the tradition of the scientific method; the power of empathy is in combining it with objective methods to make full use of our abilities as human scientists.     

Contributions from cognitive engineering to requirements specifications for complex sociotechnical systems: A case study in the context of healthcare in Brazil

This paper aims at presenting a case study on the use of human factors and ergonomics to enhance requirement specifications for complex sociotechnical system support tools through enhancing the understanding of human performance within the business domain and the indication of high‐value requirements candidates to information technology support. This work uses methods based on cognitive engineering to build representations of the business domain, highlighting workers’ needs, and contributing to the improvement of software requirements specifications, used in the healthcare domain. As the human factors discipline fits between human sciences and technology design, we believe that its concepts can be combined with software engineering to improve understanding of how people work, enabling the design of better information technology.     

Rail human factors: Past, present and future

Rail human factors research has grown rapidly in both quantity and quality of output over the past few years. There was an early base of work at a few institutions carried out over the 1960s and 1970s, followed by a lull in the 1980s and early 1990s. The continual influences of safety concerns, new technical system opportunities, reorganisation of the business, needs to increase effective, reliable and safe use of capacity, and increased society, media and government interest have now accelerated rail human factors research programmes in several countries. In this paper we review the literature on rail human factors research, covering driving, signalling and control, maintenance, reporting systems, passenger interests, planning and technical systems change. Current major rail human factors programmes are summarised and future research needs proposed. It is asserted that general human factors models and methods are being re-assessed, and new ones developed, to meet the requirements of the railways.     

Engineering aesthetics and aesthetic ergonomics: theoretical foundations and a dual-process research methodology

Although industrial and product designers are keenly aware of the importance of design aesthetics, they make aesthetic design decisions largely on the basis of their intuitive judgments and "educated guesses". Whilst ergonomics and human factors researchers have made great contributions to the safety, productivity, ease-of-use, and comfort of human-machine-environment systems, aesthetics is largely ignored as a topic of systematic scientific research in human factors and ergonomics. This article discusses the need for incorporating the aesthetics dimension in ergonomics and proposes the establishment of a new scientific and engineering discipline that we can call "engineering aesthetics". This discipline addresses two major questions: How do we use engineering and scientific methods to study aesthetics concepts in general and design aesthetics in particular? How do we incorporate engineering and scientific methods in the aesthetic design and evaluation process? This article identifies two special features that distinguish aesthetic appraisal of products and system designs from aesthetic appreciation of art, and lays out a theoretical foundation as well as a dual-process research methodology for "engineering aesthetics". Sample applications of this methodology are also described.     

Forty years of IEA: some reflections on the evolution of ergonomics

This paper is the IEA Presidential Address to the 1997 IEA Triennial Congress in Tampere, Finland. The evolution of ergonomics prior to and after the foundation of the International Ergonomics Association in 1957 is reviewed. Ergonomics has broadened from considering work activities to include all types of human activities. The recent introduction of computers has changed many of the premises for work and leisure activities, and cognitive ergonomics is now as important as the ‘biological’ emphasis that was mentioned in the founding documents of IEA. Ergonomics is a science of design. There are three important targets for ergonomics design activity: to improve safety, productivity and operator satisfaction. A systems approach is presented to define how these parameters interact and how they can be measured.