Human factors

Human factors (also known by its acronym, HF; hereinafter, HF) is the scientific study of influence of human characteristics called factors on interactions between people and other entities that form one system, as well as those interactions themselves.

Trivia

Definitions

According to the International Ergonomics Association,

Ergonomics (human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of the 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.

Ergonomics vs HF

Two terms, HF and ergonomics, are often used interchangeably. Some view them as essentially synonymous.

However, ergonomics is more commonly applied to interactions between a human and non-human components of a system, while HF more frequently, though not always, refers to both human-to-human and human-to-non-human interactions.

Ergonomics emerged as a science of labor in the middle of the 1800s. More than a hundred years later, in the late 1900s, HF emerged as a science to reduce human errors.

History

Following a series of airplane crashes, the aviation industry developed the crew resource management (CRM) training in the 1980s. This training was designed for airplane crew only. The HF term was initially used to indicate the science behind this training.

Because of the CRM success, both training and science behind this training were spread to aircraft maintenance. In the 1990s, Maintenance resource management (MRM) further defined standards for:

• Equipment design and manufacture;
• Manufacturers' documentation and procedure writing;
• Airline procedures and work areas;
• Airplane mechanic training and performance.

Later, some other industries such as nuclear energy and cyber-security, as well as occupations such as information architects started contributing to this scientific study.

Human-machine interactions

Main wikipage: Human-machine interaction

HF in systems engineering

Main wikipage: Human factors engineering

Traditional systems engineering rarely considers people such as a user, operator, mechanic, writer, designer, teacher, and/or everyone else who interfaces with a system as a part of this system. A special term, human factors engineering, is coined in order to address this gap.

In human factors engineering, HF involves not only the understanding of human factors, but mainly how those factors relate to the overall operation of the system.

System vs user

Trade-off.

User interface

Main wikipage: User interface