Archive for May 17th, 2009
“What other Interfaces do you design?: What is “Human Factors engineering”?
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 17, 2009
Article #9, April 6, 2005
”Besides displays and controls, what other Interfaces do you design?”
Human Factors professionals are hopefully directing their efforts into designing interfaces between systems and end users and focusing their research into collecting useful data that can be directly applied by engineers and designers.
As mentioned in the previous articles, the two main interfaces that common people might guess are the displays that inform a user of the status of the system and the control devices which allow the end-user to modify the status of the system to a normal functioning behavior.
Since end users are the target and they do determine the success of any systems, consequently, for any system to be accepted, purchased and retained the end-user has to be able to operate the product easily, efficiently, without undue training, be relatively affordable and safe for use by the intended users.
Let us consider the various stages that the designs of a system go through in order to effectively deliver on its purposes and objectives:
First: To define the objectives and specifications we have to determine the user’s needs and characteristics, organizational structure, work flow, and human performance measurement procedures and parameters. An expert ergonomics is trained to study and analyze all these requirements.
Second: Next, we have to define the functional and operational requirements. An expert ergonomics can and should participate in this stage.
Third: The basic design stage of function allocations to operators or machines, work procedures and performance feedbacks are intrinsic knowledge to ergonomics.
Fourth: Designing interfaces and work areas are the primary training of ergonomics engineers.
Fifth: Designing facilitator material such as developing staffing, instructions, performance aids and training are the expertise of ergonomics.
Sixth: Evaluating and testing specifications and performance are within the training of human factors/ergonomics professionals.
All interfaces that help a user operate a product or subsystem according to the above criteria are part and parcel of the responsibilities of Human Factors professionals.
Consequently, the interfaces within the Human Factors professionals’ capabilities and training are mainly, workstation design, instruction manual, job aids design, training programs and evaluation of systems.
Many other job descriptions during the first stages of system design and operation are within the knowledge and training of Human Factors as well: mainly, task analysis, operation-sequence diagrams and allocation of functions and task to either human operators or machine, or automated sections in systems.
Obviously designing an interface for a mandated trained user like an airplane pilot or a nuclear power plant engineer is easier, complexity of the system being comparable, than designing for common people of all gender differences, stature, age, race and cultural variety.
Designing operation and maintenance manuals attached to any product is an important job description that could promote the acceptance and usage of a specific product.
Usually, the instruction manuals contains safety signs, messages and pictorial for the main steps in the operation and thus enhancing safety and avoiding unnecessary litigations down the road.
Designing training programs for the operation, maintenance and repair of products for targeted personnel are within the job description of Human factors graduates.
Evaluating systems’ performance for essential criteria, including training time, safety built-in design, understandability of the manuals and acceptability are within the training proficiency of Human Factors graduates.
One of the widely promoted job descriptions is designing workstations.
Workstations design is not about just chairs, tables, keyboards, computer screens and the dozen other gizmos related to a fully functional workstation from communication to printing to audio-visual facilities.
A functional workstation has to account for the tasks involved, the positions of the operators, the arrangement, the lighting environment, and the entrance and egress facilities that could harm the operator.
A Human Factors should evaluate a workstation on the health and safety criteria of a designed workstation as well as its operability.
For example, we have already talked about repetitive trauma disorders, pains in various parts of the body and permanent health problems.
Note: A student version found that designers of menu interface had difficulty with 91% of the guidelines. Analyses of the cause of the users’ errors were studied for recommendations.
Hundreds of Prophets later
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 17, 2009
Hundreds of Prophets later: Hate Crimes and Humiliation March on (May 19, 2009)
There are hundreds of so-called prophets that countless religions and sects adopt as their guiding rod for “sane and peaceful models of living” as they proselytize. If man cared about messages, if man followed the Word then hate crimes, humiliation, and indignity suffered by fellow man would not be marching on as strongly as ever. If those prophets behaved in their lives as they preached man would have behaved accordingly.
Man is trained as pet houses; man is domesticated as beast of burden; man has always the spiritual power to reconsider his training; man has always the power to act on his individual reflections and rarely do. That is what history has demonstrated again and again. Do you think that I am exaggerating? Hell no, not this time.
If one hundredth of the prophets’ messages was hate inspired instructions then the followers would hang to those hate verses and march on. Most people would easier march on bestial instincts than on rational peaceful inclinations that require hard personal reflections and heavy time invested on reasonable knowledge.
I am no theologians but I invite those who make it their profession to read in One Book most of their lives to resurrect the messages of their prophets and saints and then sort out the hate messages and peace messages and then report to us what messages stuck most in their heart and feelings.
Not only the messages of those appointed prophets were mostly hate instructions but worst, the behavior of these prophets must have been shameful because people do best in emulating the behavior and style of their leaders. “Listen to their teaching but do not emulate their actions” was the wisdom that Jesus admonished his disciples when criticizing the Pharisee Jewish religious caste.
No one is born a prophet. Conquering bestial tendencies is hard work supported by hard personal reflections. You don’t need to dig up in old books to fetch mythical role models that are pure fabrications. Read and follow current models that you know and some are still alive. Read and emulate Gandhi. Read and emulate Mandela. Gandhi and Mandela never claimed to be prophets simply because they would feel shame behaving as the stories of most prophets go.
Do you think that I am exaggerating? Hell no, not this time.
“What do you design again?”
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 17, 2009
Article #8, April 5, 2005
“What do you design again?”
Human Factors are primarily oriented to designing interfaces between systems and end users/operators. Of the many interfaces two interfaces are common to people and can be grouped into two main categories: displays and controls.
Designing the arrangements of displays and controls on consoles for utility companies, aircraft, trains, and automobiles according to applicable guidelines are examples.
Operators and end users need to receive information on the status of a complex system and be able to respond to this information through a control device. Thus, once a designer knows what needs to be controlled in a system and how, then the required types of displays follow.
Displays and controls can become complex devices if not designed to targeted users.
The design of the cockpit interface in airplanes is different from cars, trains or ships.
The design or the interface in cellular phones is different from computer games or computer screens, keyboards and mouse.
A good knowledge of the physical and mental abilities and requirements of the target end users are paramount in the design of any interface if efficiency, affordability, acceptability, maintainability, safety and health are the prerequisite to wide spread demands and marketability.
How the functions and tasks of any subsystems should be allocated, to human or to an automated machine?
What are the consequences in emergency situations for any allocation strategy?
What are the consequences of an allocation when a system is exported to Third World countries?
What are the consequences of function allocation to employment, safety risks, health risks and long term viability of any system?
Who usually are in charge of designing interfaces that require multidisciplinary knowledge?
Given that any of these designs require inputs from marketing experts, psychologists, sociologists, economists, engineers, statisticians and legal experts on the liabilities of these designed objects for safe and healthy usage then who should be responsible for designing interfaces?
Teams of professionals should necessarily be involved in interface designs but because time being of the essence in business competition and cost to a lesser extent many of these interfaces are relegated to engineers applying published standards or relying on personal experience and previous models from competitors.
Human Factors data on the physical and mental limitations and capabilities of target users should be part of any standard book for designing interfaces.
Human Factors methodologies need to be disseminated so that viable interfaces could fit the characteristics of the end users.
The Human Factors professionals failed in their first three decades of existence to recognize that their main purpose was to design interfaces, to design practical system and to orient their research toward engineers who could readily use their data in designing systems.
If this trend of targeting engineers in our research papers continues then this profession could make a serious dent in sending the proper message and open up a market for the thousands of Human Factors graduates who should be needed in the design of systems interfaces.
Posted on May 16, 2009
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 17, 2009
337. Deep Well of Wrath (May 14, 2009)
338. Bureaucratic Ethnicities (May 14, 2009)
339. The Most Glorious Year: A Modern Hermit (May 14, 2009)
340. Are you Normal? (May 15, 2009
341. The Near East Dilemma: The Background (Part 1, May 16, 2009)
342. The Near East Dilemma: Discussions (Part 2, May 17, 2009)
The Near East Dilemma: Discussion
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 17, 2009
The Near East Dilemma: Discussion (Part 2, May 17, 2009)
Note: Jean Dayeh is a Lebanese author and a veteran journalist investigative reporter; he published recently “Jubran Tueny Sr. and the Century of Renaissance” in the Near East. This article is the second part that will explain in details the positions of the various Syrian political parties and intelligentsia of the period during and after the First World War. At the time, Syrian was the name of the populations comprising the current Syrian State, Lebanon, Palestine and current Jordan.
The discussions reported on the preferred status for Syria during the year 1919 and a couple of years afterward. The year 1919 was critical for the Near East and the entire Arab World. After almost a century we are still reaping the consequences of the resolutions of the lengthy convention of the League of Nations that met in Paris for many months to divide the spoils of the First World War. Never such profusion of intellectual activities was so prolific and so divergent for uniting the spirits under a unified desire for autonomy.
The Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in the USA, France, and Egypt were very active. In Egypt there were first, the “Syrian Union Party” headed by Michel Lotfallah and the vice president was Mohammad Rasheed Rida. This party supported the efforts of the Maronite Patriarch Howeiyek to have Lebanon under French mandate as preliminary to his independence and attaching four adjacent territories belonging to Syria so that Greater Lebanon could be self-sufficient agriculturally.
The second political party in Cairo, Egypt, was the “Moderate Syrian Party” with the founders constituted by Nicholas Choukry, Phares Nemr (owner of the daily “Al Mokkatam“), Nasseem Saybaa, Sami Juraidiny, Yacoob Saraaf (owner of the daily “Al Moktataf“, and Khalil Khayat. Nasseem Saybaa expressed the position of this party for willingness to accepting a temporary USA mandate over all Syria unde the legitimate authority of King Faissal. This political party, the “Syrian Union” was worried that England and France will not withdraw their armies in the region and there were indications that these two powers intended to establish a Jewish State in Palestine; it hoped to the last minutes that the US Congress would turn down the League of Nations proposed resolutions but in vain.
In the small town of Mansoura, Egypt, a journalist Jubran Tueny Sr. (later the founder of the daily Al Nahar (The Day) in Lebanon) was for a French mandate over an independent Greater Lebanon on the ground that France saved the Lebanese immigrants from slaughter in Haiti while the US did not deign to intervene. Tueny was convinced that it was the US that implicitly encouraged a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine, simply because the US lumped the Near East as Asia. Tueny refused the presence of the Hijjaz army (under the Hussein of Mecca) in Damascus and wanted it to withdraw as the Turkish forces did because urban Syria is distinct from the Arab culture and civilization.
Chebli Chmayel was a sociologist and prolific thinker that spread the Masonic ideology that those who tend the land should own it (referring to the new Jewish immigrants who first focused on agriculture in colonies). Chmayel was typical of Masonic members who believed that democracy means that the majority of an ethnic group in a nation should govern and rule.
Both Syrian political parties founded in Egypt demanded an independent and secular Syrian nation, comprising Lebanon, but headed by King Faisal.
In Latin America there were Nehmeh Yafeth (an industrialist and wholesame merchant in Sao Paolo, Brazil) and Khalil Saadeh (father of Antoun Sadeh, the founder of the Syrian National Social Party in 1936). Khalil Saadeh headed the “Democratic National Party” in Brazil and demanded the total independence of the Syrian Nation with no mandate and for Mount Lebanon to enjoy an autonomous State status within Syria. Khalil Saadeh wrote the Arabic/English dictionary, and translated the new testament of Bernabas; he never could digest the idea that a tribal leader in Mecca should be appointed King to urban Syria; he claimed that the Syrian people were not Arab, even if they spoke Arabic, and their culture has nothing to do with nomadic culture and literature.
In the USA, especially in the City of New York, there were the “Committee for Liberating Syria and Mount Lebanon” headed by Ayoub Thabet (later would be appointed first President to Lebanon by the French mandate) and Jubran Khalil Jubran as secretary. The main members were Amine Rihany, Michael Nouaymeh, Abel Massih Hadad (owner of the daily “Al Saseh”, The Tourist), and Nasseeb Arida. This council attempted to send volunteers under the “Orient Regiment” to fight alongside the French during the war but the efforts fizzled. This party was for the total independence of Syria after a brief mandate by France or the USA; Mount Lebanon was to enjoy strict decentralized status within the Syrian Nation.
The other political party in NY was the “Lebanese Renaissance” party was headed by Naoum Moukarzel (owner of the daily “Al Houda”). This party was a staunch supporter of French mandate and giving Lebanon a Maronite authority and character.
In Paris there were the “Central Syrian Association” headed by Choukry Ghanem, and Dr. George Samneh.
In Mount Lebanon, the members of the “Administrative Council of Mount Lebanon” were for a confederal status of Lebanon with Syria under King Faisal. Even Saadallah Howeiyek, brother of the Maronite Patriarch, and a member of this governing body was not with the Patriarch position for a separate Lebanese State under French mandate.
The Lebanese leaders were the most confused and disunited as to their status after the war. Woodrow Wilson, the President of the USA, was confused by the diversity of opinions emanating the Lebanese leaders assembled in Paris during the convention; he thus dispatched an investigative commission King-Crane to report the people wishes for their status. France and England refused to join the King-Crane commission because they had set on a project to divide and get mandate over the Near East.
The Syrian population did not have an army to fight with against the Turks alongside the “allies”; they were suffering famine and calamities due to locust invasion and the perpetual requisitions of the Turkish army in foodstuff and coerced soldiers. The concept and principles of waging war, then and now, that only those parties or nations that effectively participated in the war were eligible to divide the spoil. Syria had no “legitimate rights” to share independence at the League of Nations who won the war.
Adonis Diaries 