Through this blog, I will comment on human factors engineering and ergonomics (HF/E), so a fair starting point is what does HF/E mean to me?
I believe that HF/E inherently incorporates consideration of both physical and cognitive components of the interaction of people and a system put together to perform some activity for achieving a valued goal. People adopt physical postures beyond a comfortably sustainable range to obtain sensory information to make decisions. Physical fatigue can cause attentional distraction. People make errors attempting to achieve goals using tools and facilities that do not anticipate the actual functions or characteristics of the users. If we examine postural discomfort alone, or attentional lapses alone, or decision errors alone, we will fail to form a comprehensive understanding of the person’s situation. Solving part of the problem or the wrong problem can, at best produce a sub-optimal solution, and at worst, compound the problem.
My history with ergonomics began in 1975, in Introduction to Ergonomics at the University of Waterloo with Prof. Kish Hahn, and was followed by courses with Dr. Morris Fraser and Dr. Gerry Rabideau, as well as electives in a range of related areas, and a 4-month co-op work term in 1978 at DCIEM Human Factors Group at the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine, supervised by Ian Noy and David Beevis, under the Direction of Ron Lewis.
I think the seeds for my march toward HF/E were sown years earlier, when as a 13 year old I read Cheaper by the Dozen and was transfixed with the idea that there was a correct, best way to do an activity, and this new “human factors” thing seemed to be the secret sauce.
In 1978, I was able to join the Human Factors Association of Canada (now known as Association of Canadian Ergonomists) as a student member for the grand total of $4 per year. I attended my first HFAC Annual Meeting, keynoted by the legendary Alphonse Chapanis, with a few dozen attendees at a remote lodge in the woods that Fall. Student membership is a little pricier but still an outstanding deal, and the annual conference is a little more mainstream and popular.
I practised human factors/ergonomics stealthily but persistently through a brief experience in manufacturing then as a hospital management engineer, and for eight years as Vice President of Hospital Services responsible for a staff of 600 and a $20 million operating budget, while undertaking a thesis-based Master’s and also some ergonomic consulting in my “spare time”.
In the ’70s and early ’80s, human factors and ergonomics specialists were primarily researchers and academics. Until the use of “ergonomics” as a consumer product marketing slogan and demands for ergonomics to mitigate occupational health and safety concerns vastly expanded the market for HF/E services, most people applying HF/E were doing so as part of another position. Mine was an odd position to do it in, yet perversely effective simply because of the positional power that went with the territory.
In my executive position, I demonstrated “top management commitment” to health and safety by being actively involved in the committee as co-chair of the Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) and I implemented a policy to mandate JHSC participation in all capital purchases. Beyond that, though, I busted out the ergonomics tricks and took a hands-on role in many decisions with HF implications. One such example was the choice between two patient meal delivery systems. Both systems were very costly, but very little difference in cost between them. When I obtained push-force data using equipment samples in actual use conditions and evaluated with Snook tables, I immediately eliminated one of the systems. This choice likely avoided considerable potential musculoskeletal claims with no additional purchase costs. Whenever anyone makes a cost-benefit argument for health and safety, I always remember this situation: safety often costs nothing, if the right expertise is involved at the right time.
With my wonderful “hot shot” staff of department heads, we made many changes to hospital systems, supplies and equipment over my eight year tenure, reengineering many fundamental and architecturally embedded features of the hospital’s functional model, incorporating human factors principles and techniques along the way: mock-ups, fitting trials, function allocation decisions, and reinforcing improved mental models for people performing critical jobs that were previously considered “menial”. With my HR colleagues, we negotiated modified work regimes with four separate unions to bring employees back to work sooner from workplace and other injury, taking into account thorough task analysis and functional capacity assessment by medical staff. I extended some accident reporting research to an application suited to our environment and used it to collect extensive task-based information beyond that conventionally recorded about accidents. It is critical to recognize that accident investigations lead you to fix the problem you think you have, which may not necessarily be the problem you actually have. Investigation is a work task. Like any other task, it is not immune to error and sub-optimal performance if there are design flaws in the system or tools.
Working on transferring research based knowledge about investigation, particularly, led to the irresistible pull of the academic world and PhD studies. I enrolled in the PhD program in Human Factors in Industrial (now Mechanical and Industrial) Engineering at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Alison Smiley and Dr. Paul Milgram, joining the academic “family tree” of Dr. John Senders. I did studies ranging from risk assessment of patient handling to behaviour-based safety, with a dissertation focused on causal reasoning in accident investigation.
Time passes, and human factors continues to infuse my course content about safety evaluation and accident theory as well as my research. Today, my primary interest is in all facets of human factors in amusement rides and attractions, which incorporates the wonderful and rich interplay of physical sensation, conscious cognition, surprise and illusion, along with expertise, learning, modelling and creativity. In the lab, a diverse collection of clever student researchers are working on projects related to ride control interfaces, inspection, ride and show, while the close collaboration with industry end-users is not only philosophically essential but just about the best way a person can spend a day at work.
