Human factors engineering studies how users interact with products, including design, psychology, and education. Experts from various fields analyze how people use products to design them more naturally. The concept originated in WWII and expanded into consumer products in the 1980s, playing a key role in defining computer interfaces and workplace furniture. The goal is to reduce tension when interacting with machines and create a natural feeling. The future includes speech interaction, human-like robotics, and adaptive systems.
Human factors engineering is an umbrella term used to describe a number of disciplines that study how users enjoy and interact with products. This may include product design and branding, product psychology, user interface design, and education factoring. Human factors engineering is referred to in much of the world as ergonomics and can occasionally be shortened to simply human factors or human engineering.
Human Factors employs experts from many different disciplines to paint a clearer picture of how a human will interact with a product. Of particular use in human factors are engineers, designers, psychologists and computer programmers. In some situations, additional experts may be needed, depending on the specific product: educational products might require the insights of an education professional, while a speech program might use a linguist to determine how people are more likely to interact with the software.
The essential goal is to analyze how people are likely to use a product and design the product in such a way that it feels more natural to them. This concept has its origins in World War II when it was used to address the design of airplanes so that new airplanes could be built to allow the pilot to easily assimilate the multitude of information he received. By the 1950s, the concept had grown into a full-fledged discipline, giving birth to a number of niche fields such as biomechanics and engineering psychology. The Human Factors Journal was founded at this time in the United States, ushering in a new era of human-machine interaction. Early research dealt mostly with industrial and defense machines and the ways they interacted with humans, although some early consumer research was also conducted.
Beginning in the early 1980s, the concept made the full leap into the consumer realm, particularly with the advent of personal computers. Software development required the creation of robust user interfaces that were natural for people to use, and human factors engineering played a key role in defining the look and feel of the computers we use today. Workplace furniture engineering has also begun to rely heavily on the human element, particularly the form referred to in the United States as ergonomics or biomechanics. The chairs were designed with physical health in mind, and the desks were created to provide easy access and mobility in a variety of situations.
Basically, this type of engineering simply seeks to reduce the feeling of tension that arises in many people when they need to interact with a machine. His ultimate goal is a completely natural feeling when using any product, tangible or virtual. The future of this type of engineering is very exciting, with revolutions in speech interaction, human-like robotics, and systems that learn and adapt to frequent tasks on the horizon.
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