Human Factors Engineering

Reading Notes: Complications

2011-09-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Complications is Atul Gawande's first book of insider stories and observations on the "imperfect science" of surgery (and medicine in general). As the title implies, the focus is on areas of medicine where things are not straightforward, where human doctors make human mistakes, where subjects such as pain, nausea, and obesity leave us with mysteries to be solved, and [third section]. Indeed, the book is divided into three parts: Fallibility, Mysteries, and Uncertainty. While the whole book I found very interesting and enlightening, the first section in particular I highly recommend for anyone interested in HFE in healthcare settings.

The biggest take-away point from Fallibility is that there is a sentiment in America that doctors are superhuman, trained and vetted so thoroughly that they can do no wrong, and if they do wrong, they must be bad doctors. Gawande argues that all doctors make mistakes, as he recounts some he has made himself. The problem with the pervasive attitude of the infallible superdoctor is that it gets in the way of developing the best practices to deal with the reality of the all-too-human doctor. Latent error—that is, error that is "waiting to happen," merely due to an imperfect system component (be it human or machine, but more often human)—can be ameliorated. Mistakes can be analyzed and accounted for going forward, if they are given the chance to be recognized and addressed, not simply written off as inevitable.

The aviation industry has reduced the frequency of operational errors to one in a hundred thousand flights, and most of those errors have no harmful consequences. . . . Of course, patients are far more complicated and idiosyncratic than airplanes . . . Yet everything we've learned in the past two decades—from cognitive psychology, from "human factors" engineering, from studies of disasters like Three Mile Island and Bhopal—has yielded the same insights: not only do human beings err, but they err frequently and in predictable, patterned ways. And systems that do not adjust for these realities can end up exacerbating rather than eliminating error.

Gawande also notes, recounting the observation of James Reason in Human Error, that:

Disasters do not simply occur; they evolve. In complex systems, a single failure rarely leads to harm. Human beings are impressively good at adjusting when an error becomes apparent, and systems often have built-in defenses. . . . When things go wrong, it is usually because a series of failures conspires to produce disaster.

A Career for the 21st Century - Part 2

2011-09-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

In Part 1 of this post I discussed techno-cultural trends that should be considered in long term career planning. Here I will continue the discussion with a review of psychological research on what makes us happy with our jobs, and of course how Human Factors Engineering fits into the picture.

How to be happy would be perhaps the most valuable problem psychology could solve, yet a satisfactory answer has proven elusive. It seems there is no simple formula for happiness. What I will cover here is selected research on the topic of motivation as it applies to job satisfaction, since our working lives are such a large part of our lives as a whole and almost certainly a large component of what determines our happiness. I will skip the "obvious" answers, such as being passionate about your work and the universal skills such as conscientiousness, though I will say that expecting to find payed work you are truly passionate about is a tall order--don't forget you can find passion elsewhere in your life (and you should, anyway).

What contributes to job satisfaction?
Research pioneered by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan has produced a theory of motivation called Self Determination Theory. In a nutshell, it states that the three requirements for satisfaction in work are fulfilling human desires for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
not just job security, but happiness in work - self determination theory
why hfe fits the bill

Is money the motive?
how much money should we try to make? research on 60,000 - kahneman quote
everybody wants 10% more
hfe salary is comfortably in happy zone, no need to shoot for more money like wall street or entrepreneurship

A Career for the 21st Century - Part 1

2011-08-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

In the twenty-first century, the future of employment looks very different than it has for most of modern civilization. Among the reasons for this new outlook are the increasing speed at which employable skills (i.e., human capital) are evolving, and the technological innovations that are creating, changing, or making obsolete entire work sectors. In this post I briefly discuss two things to consider in long term career planning--finding a "future-proof" job and a job that you can be happy with--and how Human Factors Engineering is an example of a career that is suited to both of these ends.

Future Proofing

To say a career is future proof would be an exaggeration, even in the case of "never-going-away" professions such as medicine and education. Who knows, we could see college lecture halls replaced by podcasts and some aspects of medicine handled or replaced by sophisticated bioinformatics applications. No career is truly future proof. But I will avoid the semantic discussion for the pragmatic one: what current trends can we identify that give a picture of what the future job market may look like and what types of occupations fit within these trends?

Globalization is a trend that looms large in discussions of the future of employment, particularly as it relates to the economy of the United States and the looming threat of shipping jobs overseas.

What jobs will be outsourced:
easily done remotely/does not require direct interaction
hfe

Automation is another trend making waves, having already done away with most of the U.S. domestic manufacturing jobs, and with the increasing sophistication of computers and artificial intelligence, continues to encroach on certain occupations.

What jobs will be automated:
straight-forward, repetitive, formulaic tasks. It's not just blue collar vs. white collar, there are manual labor jobs, such as janitorial work, that are not well-suited for a robot, and skilled-labor jobs, such as accounting, that may be reduced to a mostly software-automated process.
krugman article
hfe

Information will be the name of the game in the coming century. In fact, there will be so much information that consuming, navigating, and distributing it (i.e., use of Information Technology) will be a skill as crucial as oral communication, time management, and creative problem-solving are today. Knowing what you don't know and how to figure it out will become as important as knowing things in the first place. In order to stay current, employers may increasingly seek fresh young minds with the latest training over experienced but outdated workers. If you want to stay relevant in a high-skill occupation, you will need to be a lifelong learner.

In Part 2 of this post I will discuss what features of a career predict job satisfaction and happiness in life.

Brief Thoughts - The User's Perspective

2011-08-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

Can you see where the USB ports are?

A common flaw of non-user-centered design is hardware that has features arranged to make the device easy to build or pleasing to look at, but not always easy to use. In the case of the PlayStation 3, there are USB inputs along the bottom front edge. Above the inputs, however, is a protrusion where the power and eject controls are. This makes the USB ports hidden unless the PS3 is at eye level of the user (or resting on its side, which it is designed to do, but few people seem to position it this way). In most cases, a gaming console is going to be sitting on a TV stand or even on the floor. Inserting a USB plug then requires either blind feeling for the port or stooping down to the level of the console. It's not the end of the world, but this is a common annoyance that could be eliminated by taking the user perspective (the angle from which users will most often be viewing the unit) into account when determining the location of the USB ports.

On another note, how often have you taken two or even three attempts to correctly orient a USB plug when connecting it to a device? The ambiguity of which side should be facing up could be addressed by making the plug itself asymmetrical, or the female port able to accept the plug at either orientation. To optimize the user experience, cords that are frequently connected and disconnected, as many USB devices are, should be effortless to orient. Fortunately, electronics are becoming more and more wireless with technologies such as wi-fi and bluetooth, which eliminates the problem altogether (though does create other challenges on the software side).

Brief Thoughts - Labelling

2011-08-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

To minimize errors, place necessary/relevant information in the most accessible location. When information is available, yet inconvenient to access--as in the case of tracing your way back up a power cord to find which appliance it is connected to--you are wasting time and increasing the chance of making a mistake. Accessible information--a label placed right at the plug--removes this possibility. It may seem trivial in the case of this image, but in settings where interrupted power to a device can cause critical problems, such as health care, no error reduction technique is too minor to be worth implementing.

Welcome

2011-08-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

. . . to my blog about the study of people and the way they interact with the constructed world around them -- looking at human tendencies, capabilities, limitations, and how the objects and systems in our lives can be designed to account for these so called human factors.

What I post about may range from minor observations and half-baked ideas to reviews of books and extensive discussion of topics related to behavioral science and industrial design/engineering. I am currently an undergraduate psychology major, and plan to continue on to graduate school in human factors engineering, so this blog will serve as a personal academic journal of sorts, as well as means of practice in communicating technical concepts as clearly as possible and promoting the benefits of user-centered design. Posts may be sporadic, aimed at the RSS and search engine crowd rather than the check-in-weekly reader.