“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.
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