Engineering psychologists use psychology to inform the design of products, making them easier to use. They work in various fields, including software, medicine, and aviation, and may be involved in product testing and making recommendations for improvement. They can work in almost any field of engineering and may also go into research jobs.
An engineering psychologist is someone who uses knowledge of psychology to help inform the engineering designs of various products and devices. The overall goal is to make the things people use on a daily basis easier and more intuitive. People entering this field usually have a certain amount of training in engineering and psychology, as well as specific courses designed to help integrate the two. They work in many different fields, but are especially common in the computer software industry, the medical industry, and aviation.
Developing easy-to-use tools has generally always been an important goal for engineers, but some engineers have had more success than others. The engineering psychologist has the job of working with engineers to help understand how people will interact with a device. In some cases, they may be directly involved in setting up product testing procedures and interviewing people after testing products. They often use the information gained from these test procedures to make recommendations on various ways in which the products can be improved.
The computer software field is a particularly common area for an engineering psychologist to find a job. This is because there is often a lot of concern about creating user interfaces that are easy to understand and use. An engineering psychologist can help software designers predict how people will try to interact with their products to create a better user experience.
In the fields of medicine and aviation, the engineering psychologist is particularly useful because technology often changes so frequently and mistakes can be very costly. If a doctor has difficulty using a new piece of machinery, a person’s life could be in danger, and this can be even more true in the case of a pilot. Engineering psychologists can be helpful in the testing process to make devices less prone to user error in these fields and therefore potentially safer for everyone.
In theory, an engineering psychologist could work in almost any field of engineering where products are being made for people to directly interact with. Many of them also go into research jobs where they can experiment and advance their general knowledge of engineering psychology. These jobs are often offered by certain universities and, according to experts, they don’t pay as much as industrial jobs.
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