Designer Magazine (http://www.thedesignermagazine.com) has just published an extensive feature on the Ergonomics – Real Design Exhibition featuring an interview with the project lead Dr Mark Young.
Posts Tagged ‘What is Ergonomics?’
Article on Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition in Designer Magazine
Thursday, December 17th, 2009Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture
Friday, May 22nd, 2009On Tuesday evening this week I had the pleasure of attending the Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture, given by Professor Rob Stammers of the University of Leicester, on ‘Kenneth Craik: a progenitor for ergonomics’. It was at the Royal Society of Arts, just off the Strand in London – a prestigious venue with very nice hospitality beforehand!
Craik was a psychologist who did his most profound work during the Second World War, and as Rob explained, was really ahead of his time in coming up with ergonomics issues and theories that we’re still working with today. And remember that this is a good 5-10 years before the formation of the Ergonomics Research Society (now The Ergonomics Society) in 1949.
There were many gems in Craik’s work that stood out for me, not least of all his exposition of the systems approach as necessary to understand the interplay between human and machine. For me, as someone still (relatively!) early in his career, this was a bit of a revelation as I always thought that systems thinking was a relatively recent approach – it’s certainly only just getting into the minds of road safety experts (see the Department for Transport’s recent consultation - I’ll come back to this another time).
The other one that really hit me was how – as Rob explained it – Craik saw ergonomics as a means of genetic modification in design evolution. In other words, we can’t wait for design to evolve out the bad genes, as there’s too much at stake – we have to accelerate the process. This is a lovely turnaround from what I often teach my students, in that technology and design are nowadays evolving so quickly that they’re outpacing the human ability to keep up.
Creating a Monster
Sunday, May 17th, 2009It’s been a busy week in the workshops at Brunel University this week, putting together the basic structure of the exhibition stand that we are planning to take to the Cheltenham Science Festival in the first week of June. More details to follow in due course about the content and interactive elements of the stand which will be being manned by volunteers from The Ergonomics Society.
The Stand Ready for Action (photo Fergus Bisset)
Errornomics?!
Friday, March 20th, 2009I was intrigued and amused this week to see a book review in The Independent newspaper for “Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph Hallinan, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, no less. Sounds great, I thought, and right up my street – a book on human error aimed at the pop science market.
At first glance it seems to tick all the boxes, too – talking about lapses of memory, optical illusions, and even medical errors that were down to equipment design. All very relevant to ergonomics. But hold on – did that word actually appear anywhere in the book?
It certainly didn’t appear in the review, and the more I read, the more it irked me. This really is a book about ergonomics, but there is no reference to the underlying scientific discipline anywhere. The book (or the review, at least) actually has it wrong in places too – referring to the phenomenon of ‘change blindness’ (not by name, of course) as an ophthalmological problem – but it’s actually about information processing and expectations, nothing to do with our visual acuity. And there are even some areas where it’s treading on thin ice – for instance, the author’s own claim that it’s a “field guide to human error” … well, I’m afraid Sidney Dekker wrote the Field Guide to Human Error, and he’s a proper ergonomist.
The icing on the cake was when I read the plans for the UK release (later this year) to be titled ‘Errornomics’ (cashing in on the success of ‘Freakonomics’). But for a consonant or two, he so nearly stumbled across the right word!
I’ll probably end up giving it a read when it comes out in the UK, though I’m quite prepared to get wound up reading it (not least for the fact it’ll be a case of “why didn’t I do that”). I’m all for bringing this subject into the public consciousness, but I’d rather the source material were acknowledged. Could’ve been a chance to make ‘ergonomics’ a household word – alas, I fear the chance has been missed.
Ergonomically Designed!
Thursday, February 19th, 2009The title says it all for the point of this post – the use of the phrase ‘ergonomically designed’ in adverts. It’s one of my big bugbears, and I’m sure it’ll crop up time and again in this blog. Typically associated with consumer products, what we usually find is that it’s got a rubberised grip or somesuch, but more often than not you could put safe money on there never having been an ergonomist within a hundred yards of it.
But if I’m taking issue over whether there’s been any ‘proper’ ergonomics on the product, I should say what it means to be ‘properly’ ergonomically designed. Really, it can be anything from a relatively small focus group or user testing trials, right the way through to structured scientific studies and full-on analyses. It all depends on the context (you might not want to spend a huge amount of money and time on a tape measure, but if it’s a complex safety-critical system you’ll probably be more inclined to invest in it), the key point being that it has been designed with users, or with users in mind.
The latest one I’ve seen is the JML ‘Ped-egg’, essentially a cheese grater but for getting dead skin off your feet (charming, of course). Halfway through the TV ad (which streams on their website) they show off how it’s ‘ergonomically designed’, with someone showcasing how it fits in their hand (ironically, their hand actually looks rather big for it).
Now, before the JML legal eagles come down on me, or I unknowingly upset the chief ergonomist at JML, I’m not necessarily saying this is a false claim – they may well have done some ‘proper’ ergonomics on it (make your own mind up). But, to step away from the Ped-egg and return to the general case, there are two things going on with this kind of advert. First, there’s the potential abuse of the term – it’s like ‘knock-off ergonomics’. That’s not just us being precious as ergonomists – it’s the kind of thing that can give the whole field a bad name, if such an ‘ergonomically designed’ product ends up giving someone RSI or something. All our hard work to convince people of the cost-benefit equation in ergonomics down the drain.
But on the other hand, there’s something of a silver lining here. For manufacturers to be making these claims in such a high-profile way suggests that they see it as adding value to their product. Ergonomics as a marketing tool – fancy that! Naturally I’m biased, but I think that should be the case for anything. Ergonomics should add value, and it should be a selling point – but only if it’s done properly.