Posts Tagged ‘experimental design’
Can you be more detailed about your Job?
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 13, 2021
Guess what my job is: Human Factors in Engineering?
Posted on June 25, 2009 (Written in November 13, 2005)
“Guess what my job is”
It would be interesting to have a talk with the freshly enrolled engineering students from all fields as to the objectives and meaning of designing products, projects and services.
This talk should be intended to orient engineers for a procedure that might provide their design projects the necessary substance for becoming marketable and effective in reducing the pitfalls in having to redesign for failing to consider the health and safety of what they produced and conceived.
This design behavior should start right at the freshman level while taking formal courses so that prospective engineers will naturally apply this acquired behavior in their engineering career.
In the talk, the students will have to guess what the Human Factors discipline is from the case studies, exercises and problems that will be discussed.
The engineers will try to answer a few of the questions that might be implicit, but never formally explicitly explained or learned in engineering curriculums, because the necessary courses are generally offered outside their traditional discipline field.
A sample of the questions might be as follows:
1. What is the primary job of an engineer?
2. What does design means? How do you perceive designing to look like?
3. To whom are you designing? What category of people?
4. Who are your target users? Engineer, consumers, support personnel, operators?
5. What are your primary criteria in designing? Error free application product?
6. Who commit errors? Can a machine do errors?
7. How can we categorize errors? Any exposure to an error taxonomy?
8. Can you foresee errors, near accidents, accidents? Take a range oven for example, expose the foreseeable errors and accidents in the design and specifically the display and control idiosyncrasy.
9. Who is at fault when an error is committed or an accident occurs?
10. Can we practically account for errors without specific task taxonomy?
11. Do you view yourself as responsible for designing interfaces to your design projects depending on the target users?
12. Would you relinquish your responsibilities for being in the team assigned to design an interface for your design project?
13. What kinds of interfaces are needed for your design to be used efficiently?
14. How engineers solve problems? Searching for the applicable formulas? Can you figure out the magnitude of the answer? Have you memorized the allowable range for your answers from the given data and restriction imposed in the problem after solving so many exercises?
15. What are the factors or independent variables that may affect your design project?
16. How can we account for the interactions among the factors?
17. Have you memorize the dimensions of your design problem?
18. Have you been exposed to reading research papers? Can you understand, analyze and interpret the research paper data? Can you have an opinion as to the validity of an experiment?
19. Would you accept the results of any peer-reviewed article as facts that may be readily applied to your design projects? Can you figure out if the paper is Not biased or extending confounding results?
20. Do you expect to be in charge of designing any new product or program or procedures in your career?
21. Do you view most of your job career as a series of supporting responsibilities; like just applying already designed programs and procedures?
22. Are you ready to take elective courses in psychology, sociology, marketing, and business targeted to learn how to design experiments and know more about the capabilities, limitations and behavioral trends of target users?
23. Are you planning to go for graduate studies? Do you know what elective courses might suit you better in your career?
Restructuring engineering curriculums to respond to end users demands, safety and health
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 25, 2020
Restructuring engineering curriculums to respond to end users demands, safety and health
In 1987, Alphonse Chapanis, a renowned Human Factors professional, urged that published Human Factors research papers target the practical design need of the various engineering disciplines so that the research data be readily used by engineers.
Dr. Chapanis was trying to send a clear message that Human Factors main discipline was to design interfaces between systems and end users and thus, research papers have to include sections directing the engineers as to the applicability of the results of the paper to design purposes.
In return, it is appropriate to send the message that all engineering disciplines should include sections in their research papers orienting the engineering practitioners to the applicability of the results of the papers to the end users and how Human Factors professionals can judiciously use the data in their interface designs.
As it was difficult for the Human Factors professional to send the right message to the engineering practitioners, and still has enormous difficulty disseminating the proper purpose and goals, it would be a steep road for the engineers to send the right message that what they design is actually targeting the needs and new trends of the end users.
As long as the engineering curriculums fail to include the Human Factors field as an integral part in their structures it would not be realistic to contemplate any shift in their designs toward the end users.
Systems would become even more complex and testing and evaluation more expensive in order to make end users accept any system and patronize it.
So why not design anything right from the first time by being initiated and exposed to human capabilities and limitations, their safety and health?
Instead of recognizing from the early phases in the design process that reducing human errors and risks to the safety and health of end users are the best marketing criteria for encouraging end users to adopt and apply a system, we see systems are still being designed by different engineers who cannot relate to the end users because their training is not explicitly directed toward them.
What is so incongruous with the engineering curriculums to include courses that target end users?
Why would not these curriculums include courses in occupational safety and health, consumer product liability, engineers as expert witnesses, the capabilities and limitations of human, marketing, psychophysics and experimental design?
Are the needs and desires of end users beneath the objectives of designing systems?
If that was true, why systems are constantly being redesigned, evaluated and tested in order to match the market demands?
Why do companies have to incur heavy expenses in order to rediscover the wheel that the basis of any successful design ultimately relies on the usefulness, acceptability and agreement with the end users desires and dreams?
Why not start from the foundation that any engineering design is meant for human and that designed objects or systems are meant to fit the human behavior and not vice versa?
What seem to be the main problems for implementing changes in the philosophy of engineering curriculums?
Is it the lack to find enough Human Factors, ergonomics and industrial psychologist professionals to teach these courses?
Is it the need to allow the thousands of psychologists, marketing and business graduates to find outlet “debouches” in the marketplace for estimating users’ needs, desires, demands and retesting and re-evaluating systems after the damages were done?
May be because the Human factors professionals failed so far to make any significant impact to pressure government to be part and parcel of the engineering practices?
Note: I am Not sure if this discipline Human Factors/Ergonomics is still a separate field in Engineering or has been integrated in all engineering disciplines.
From my experience in teaching a few courses at universities, I propose that courses in Experimental Design be an integral course in all engineering disciplines: students graduate without having a serious idea how to run “sophisticated” experiments or know how to discriminate among the independent variables, the dependent variables, the control variable…and how to interpret complex graphs.
How to read an academic paper?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 29, 2016
How to read an academic paper?
It is beyond me why juries on thesis, Masters or Ph.D, insist on producing voluminous books.
Probably, to initiate the candidate to learn Job’s patience for writing?
Or to give the illusion that what is produced is worth years of wasting time and energy on a book that barely anybody will ever read to refers to it?
Any one who went through this headache knows that half the time spent on a PhD program was reserved for writing the thesis. No wonder, most of these graduates gave up on writing anything afterward and refused to teach or pursue an academic life.
I suggest that professional writers who pressured their publishers to edit short books be included in such juries in order to lighten the book from redundant paragraphs.
What kills me is when you are forbidden to use the first personal in order to give an objective tone to the research. As if personal experiences are Not valid or our world views are not mainly generated from the few personal experiences we faced and tackled.
You may look older than normal: Blame it on enzyme telomerase?
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 6, 2010
- In: Essays | health/medicine | sciences
- Leave a Comment
You may look older than normal; (Mar. 7, 2010)
Seven percent (7%) of us will look older than others of the same age. Researchers at the University of Leicester and King’s College diagnosed 3,000 participants in the experiment. There are “telomeres” of certain length attached at the end of chromosomes: the faster the telomere shortens the older you look compared to same age people.
A person with genetic variation near the gene TERC that has the function of regenerating the length of telomere with the help of the enzyme telomerase may be deficient. This deficiency is worsened if the person is a smoker, obese, and lacks physical exercises.
I have at least two questions:
1. Does that mean that if we are not deficient in enzyme telomerase, smokers, obese persons, and those lacks physical exercises can go on without looking older than expected, at any age?
2. Or it means that enzyme telomerase is affected by smoking, fat, and physical laziness, and might drop the towel if we insist on resuming bad behaviors?
It is these kinds of questions that researchers should factor-in in their experimental design so that practical conclusions can be drawn.
Twenty years later, and I am still hurting
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 24, 2010
Twenty years later, and I am still hurting; (Jan. 28, 2010)
I returned to the USA in 1986 for a PhD program in industrial/Human Factors in engineering. It hurts to recollect this non efficacious decision that was hasty, as all my previous decisions were, a split-second decision with no turning back. Anyway, most of my jobs and positions after graduation were not related to my specialty, a specialty that I am still trying to define and explain to myself.
Luckily, 15 years later in 2001, I had the opportunity to teach at a university in Lebanon, on part-time basis, two courses related to Human Factors in engineering. That was a golden opportunity to write over 50 professional articles, 25 of which were my way to re-discover what this field of industrial engineering/Human Factors is all about, in this fast evolving technological breakthrough, and transmits its concept. I thus published on wordpress.com the category “What is that concept of Human Factors in Engineering?”
I applied for a Canadian emigration visa in 1990, a year before graduation, but it was denied me: the Canadian consulate in Houston did not interview me at all. After inviting me for an interview the consulate told me by letter that since I have a USA visa then I had to go back home for application or something to that effect.
I left with $5,000 of my own saved money, much devalued by inflation. Again, I had no one to receive me at the airport and had no acquaintances to shelter me. It was the same lonely and frustrating process as my first travel. It was as if I never learn anything from past mishaps, but I knew my destination this time around, and what to expect to see. There were no internet facilities at the time and no versatile communications.
I stayed two days at the temporary university boarding building. A bright Lebanese undergraduate student in electrical engineering named Ghassan visited me at the dorm and connected me with a Lebanese graduate student in Environmental Engineering who rented a house far from campus. This graduate student agreed to take me in for a week and I used to accompany him in his car, mornings and evenings.
Ghassan was an undergraduate electrical engineer and ended up obtaining his PhD in the same year of my graduation; he got a job with Cisco in Oklahoma City while I was totally exposed to an uncertain future.
I forgot the name of the Environmental engineer: my memory is the weakest element of my brain, especially in recall. I remember that I aided this student during his PhD project; I connected him with the specialized person in data design and acquisition and then I helped him imputing data for statistical analysis. He insisted on paying me and when I finally asked for $100 for an entire month of work (I was totally broke at the time) he got furious for accepting the money since he took me in for free, 5 years ago for a week. This is a typical Lebanese testing gimmick for loyalty or whatever you label it; they insist and your role is to continue refusing, but I was not proficient in that custom and abhorred it.
In the meantime, I had contacted the university student foreign office and a lovely structural engineering undergraduate, a Tunisian student named Suhail, agreed to share his university apartment with me. Suhail loved everything that is Lebanese, food, music and all, but I was not up to his expectations. Suhail was a bright and caring person; he finished his PhD in no time and wrote an “artificial intelligent” computer program for structural engineers; the program would prompt you with inquiries and at the end it would suggest the proper equation to use for your problem or project.
The notion of artificial intelligence was the rage at the time and I had audited a course on that topic because I could not afford tuition; I read many books on the topic. I was working four part-time jobs at minimum wages, within university campus, because I am a law-abiding kind of guy.
Suhail got married at the same period with a Palestinian/US girl in Norman and got a son; he did all these things while I was plugging in to get past my General Exam. I think Suhail’s wife name was Wafaa and she helped her parents in a restaurant that specialized in Near Eastern food. I recall that we occasionally had the specialty of the day around lunch time; probably Suhail’s visits were much more frequent.
Suhail aided me greatly in writing the computer program for my computer generated experiment. I started writing the program in Pascal but I was not that proficient in programming and Suhail translated my ideas into C++. I had audited a course in C++ because I could not afford any tuition, but had to stop coming to class: I thought that I was taking an introductory course in C++ but discovered quickly that the computer engineers were already proficient in that programming language. The funny part was that the team I was added to were gracious enough to deliver me the programming instructions of its final project.
The Dean, who was from India, refused me a grant and Dr. Foote, my former MS advisor, would not support me as I expected of him. I had no choice but to enroll in order to straighten my visa status from business visa to graduate student. I paid the full exorbitant tuition for the minimum 12 credit-hours and was completely broke by the end of the semester. I had to take three undergraduate courses, two of them I had taken but the third one (Experimental Design) turned out to be the most interesting and very important for my field and for scientific mind.
I settle for the Human Factor specialty within the industrial engineering department because Dr. Purswell agreed to be my advisor next semester, and offered me a quarter scholarships which allowed me reduced tuition fees. Dr. Purswell was more interested in the health and safety aspects in this field: he had a private company in forensic engineering for work related accidents.
There were not enough graduate Human Factors courses in the industrial engineering department for a PhD program: the human factors field was not well-developed as the other industrial engineering specialties and the university lacked qualified professors in that field. I was lucky to complement my graduate course requirements in many other departments such as psychology, “quantitative psychology”, marketing, accounting, economics, and education which offered me new perspectives and approaches to the human element in all these artificial human made systems.
I enrolled in a couple of graduate courses in the Psychology department and I felt at home; my heart got set on the cognitive aspect of human capabilities and limitations instead of the physical aspects that is known as Ergonomics, and the modeling of the human body versus the functions of the brain.
I had taken many courses in cognitive psychology and various statistical modeling and software analysis programs, frequently used in marketing, business, psychology, and econometrics. One professor by the name Getty gave me credits for the Pascal programming language, the next semester, when I paid for the course that I had audited and did all the homework and exams.
I was hooked to the cognitive field in Human Factors but my advisor would have none to do with cognition for my dissertation because he was not interested in such a field and it was not in his line of business.
To be fair, Dr. Purswell was more than patient with me and let me write two proposals related to cognition that both were turned down within a year. I attempted several times to get on teams working on interesting projects but I was turned down on account that I should have security clearances; what? GM requires security clearance for designing a new ergonomically functional board for its cars! Or the other project for selecting a dozen indicators, sort of operation measurement of the mental and sensory responses of individuals for flying military jets. The project was done and I attended the presentation. I guess this project is operational in selecting applicants.
Finally, Dr. Purswell had to deliver an ultimatum or he would have no choice but to suspend my scholarships. I was ordered to stop all part-time jobs. I obeyed and within a semester I wrote the proposal. I then designed the experiment, finished setting up the fictitious chemical lab, and carried out several intelligence testing protocols just to divert the true objective from the over 120 “subjects” whom I enrolled mostly from first year Psychology students: they are required to submit to experiments for credit-hours.
That semester was hectic but a lot of fun. The next semester was the worst of all semesters because I had input thousands of data and read hundreds of pages of computer statistical results and then the gruesome task of writing up my dissertation.
I had Dr. Schlegel in my advisory team and he forced me to use a specialized word processing program, simply because the print was professional and versatile; the problem was that no one could interpret it when I got stuck, except Dr. Schlegel; I had occasionally to wait a couple of weeks to meet with him in order to untangle stupid word processing glitches.
What still hurt, after 20 years, is that I was not satisfied with my thesis. Not that practical applications are expected from an engineer, but because no one controlled the process of my experiment. What was initially an excellent design of the experiment that turned out to get out of the designed program.
The analysis would no longer correspond to cause and effect designed experiment and I had to contend with descriptive analyses that ruined all the pride that I had as an excellent scientific mind.
I am still hurting; I am glad that the publishing company for dissertations refused to publish it, because the manuscript had a numbered blank page and I could do nothing about it: I had no money at all. to recopy the entire manuscript. And didn’t care for the thesis to be published anyway.
All scarce money going down the drain and no professional future in the horizon.
I am hurting because I hated academia after graduation, and tried my best to keeping academic life at bay, working on lousy jobs hoping that my “unconscious” depression would subside.
This mental block never let go and I had no support system to get on the right track. Yes, I wasted my life as a professional, but deep in my mind and my heart I know that I have a better and sounder scientific mind than many professionals that I know, and I am still interested in many fields of study and have the capabilities to untangle the good valid scientific projects from the faked ones.
Part -time jobs: Introspection
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 2, 2009
Part-time jobs within campus; (Ch. #38)
I was denied any kinds of scholarship in my first semester (1985) and my saved money ($5,000) had evaporated by the second semester.
In the second semester I received a quarter time scholarship that enabled me to pay tuitions at the same rate as US students. My scholarship was raised to half-time the next year.
Throughout my PhD program, I had to work on at least three part-time jobs, at minimum wages inside campus by regulation, to make ends meet: I could not earn a residence status to work outside the perimeter of the campus. Not many foreign students cared about these mean limiting laws, but I was raised to obey the law!
I used to wake up at 4 a.m. to start my first job cleaning libraries and class rooms, buffeting the floor, vacuum cleaning the sofas and on. I then rushed to attend a few classes, and off to serve lunch in banquets of hundreds of persons… I tried to study some more and then back to the main library in the evening to dumping the waste baskets, cleaning the restrooms before it closes at midnight. I had to keep clean from trash four ultra vast floors of the university. A clean space for the students to have a proper place to study and chat: The Students job was to dirty the floors again and again.
Other “sanitation engineer” employees would make the round once before closing; I did more than two rounds. I had a kernel in the library to study in isolation, but I mostly used that tiny quarter for moments of solitude. In addition to all these menial chores, I had to correct and grade countless homework and exams to satisfy the requisite hours for my scholarship.
The worst part was that I was excluded from the exciting projects that I applied for, of grants received by my department from companies. Most of the time, I was denied access to projects under the pretense of military or security credentials. For example, operation and quantifying the capabilities of jet pilots, or the control and displays in the redesigned new Ford motor series.
I had attempted twice to present proposals not in the line of my advisor’s wishes, until he finally gave me an ultimatum to do according to his directives because he would no longer extend any grants. I thus worked hard for a semester on his project that was related to safety and risk perception within a make-shift experimental chemistry lab environment.
I have to mention that the company contracted by the university to publish dissertations sent me a letter stating that there is a page lacking and it needed corroboration or correction and I was no longer in the mood of handling anything related to my dissertation.
I had paid over $100 for my dissertation to be published and for a copy left in the main library. All that I know is that I borrowed money to officially graduate, and I paraded in my gown, taken pictures and my diploma handed to me by my advisor. Enough was enough.
The light at the end of the tunnel was barely visible and my Golgotha road was just starting.
I experienced all kinds of part-time jobs after graduating PhD in Industrial engineering: Working at all kinds of fast food chains, all kinds of small and large restaurants, facilities for the elderly persons…
My dad had sent me a letter telling me that Maitre Emile Bejjani managed to reserve a position for me at the AUB in Beirut, but this harrowing and grueling period for graduating forced me to shun academic positions for years.
I recall that I filled the application to the AUB but didn’t send it: I had to experience life in the USA a little more, and get my fill of humiliations and indignities.
The Tunnel: Introspection
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 31, 2009
The Tunnel (Ch. 37 of autobiography)
The Dean, who was from India, refused me a grant as a former graduate in Industrial engineering. Dr. Foote, my former MS advisor, failed to actively support me as I expected of him.
I had no choice but to enroll in order to straighten my visa status from business to graduate student. I paid the full exorbitant tuition for 12 credit-hours and was completely broke by the end of the semester.
I had to take three undergraduate courses, two of them I had taken but the third one (Experimental Design) turned out to be the most interesting and very important for my field. I settle for the Human Factor specialty within the industrial engineering department because Dr. Purswell agreed to be my advisor the next semester.
Dr. Purswell managed to offer me a quarter-time scholarships that allowed me to reduce the tuition rate. Dr. Purswell was more interested in the health and safety aspects in this field: he had a private company in forensic engineering for work related accidents.
There were not enough graduate Human Factors courses in the industrial engineering department for a PhD program: the human factors field was not well developed as the other industrial engineering specialties and the university lacked qualified professors in that field. I was lucky to complement my course requirements in many other departments which offered me new perspective and approach to the human element in all these artificial human made systems.
I enrolled in a couple of graduate courses in the Psychology department and I felt at home; my heart got set on the cognitive aspect of human capabilities and limitations, instead of the physical aspects that is known as Ergonomics and the modeling of the human body versus the functions of the brain.
Thus, I ended up taking courses in various departments such as marketing, business, economics, education and others to fulfill the required number of graduate credit-hours.
I had taken many courses in cognitive psychology and various statistical modeling and software analysis programs that are frequently used in marketing, business, psychology and econometric
One professor by the name Getty gave me credits for the Pascal programming language that I had audited and did all the homework and exams as I paid for the course the next semester.
I was hooked to the cognitive field in Human Factors but my advisor would have none to do with cognition for my dissertation: he was not interested in such a field and it was not in his line of business. To be fair, Dr. Purswell was more than patient with me and let me write two proposals related to cognition that both were turned down within a year.
Finally, Dr. Purswell had to deliver an ultimatum or he would have no choice but to suspend my scholarships.
I was ordered to stop all part-time jobs. I obeyed and within a semester I wrote the proposal, designed the experiment, finished setting up the fictitious chemical lab and carried out several intelligence testing protocols just to divert the true objective from the over 120 “subjects”.
The subjects were mostly first year Psychology students because they are required to submit to experiments for credit-hours. That semester was hectic but a lot of fun.
The next semester was the worst of all semesters because I had to input thousands of data and read hundreds of pages of computer statistical results and the gruesome task of writing up my dissertation.
I had Dr. Schelegel in my advisory team and he forced me to use a specialized word processing program, simply because the print was professional and versatile. The problem was that no one could interpret the error in the program and fix it when I got stuck except him. I occasionally had to wait a couple of weeks to meet with him in order to untangle stupid word processing glitches.
Adonis Diaries 