Human Factors Practice Research Articles

Future of Team Research: On Teamness and Dimensions of Variability in Teams

Teams are essential for most modern work. But who or what is a team? With today’s rapidly diverse team contexts and the diversity of research frameworks for studying them, there is no longer a definitive answer to this question. Thus, Cooke et al. introduced “teamness,” a construct through which future research can describe teamwork as a function of the many dimensions of variability between and within teams. In this multidisciplinary panel moderated by the two lead authors, we discuss the current state and future directions of team cognitive science in light of teamness as a guiding construct, along with its implications for human factors practice.

WORKING TOGETHER TO DELIVER SAFE CARE

Throughout this four-part Advancing Practice series, we have explored the science and practice of human factors and ergonomics in healthcare, and how a systems approach can support maternity, midwifery care and patient safety. In this final article, we explore the Maternity Support Worker (MSW) role and how registered midwives and MSWs can work together to support the delivery of safe and efficient maternity care. The reflection points in this article are adapted from NHS Education for Scotland’s Safety Culture Discussion Cards.1 In this series, we hope to support an improved understanding of the current maternity safety landscape.

Adopting Stimulus Detection Tasks for Cognitive Workload Assessment: Some Considerations.

This article tackles the issue of correct data interpretation when using stimulus detection tasks for determining the operator's workload. Stimulus detection tasks are a relative simple and inexpensive means of measuring the operator's state. While stimulus detection tasks may be better geared to measure conditions of high workload, adopting this approach for the assessment of low workload may be more problematic. This mini-review details the use of common stimulus detection tasks and their contributions to the Human Factors practice. It also borrows from the conceptual framework of the inverted-U shape model to discuss the issue of data interpretation. The evidence being discussed here highlights a clear limitation of stimulus detection task paradigms. There is an inherent risk in using a unidimensional tool like stimulus detection tasks as the primary source of information for determining the operator's psychophysiological state. Two recommendations are put forward to Human Factors researchers and practitioners dealing with the interpretation conundrum of dealing with stimulus detection tasks.

Human factors issues at selected workplaces in Nigeria: practice, status and future research needs

Human factor or ergonomics animates a productive system with the capability of a community of production factors that are not productive. The current paper aims to identify research and practice issues of human factors (HF) in the existing literature on Nigerian scenarios. The specific objectives include conducting a review on ergonomics awareness, collating thought-provoking lived experiences gained from human factors practice across sectors of the economy, highlighting their status, and offering valuable tips on the emerging future of HF for workplaces in Nigeria. Understanding HF issues helps to plan and improve productivity at workplaces. The issues treated herein were topical subjects in recent debates about the COVID-19 era, work evolution, human factors, or ergonomics (E) practice in Nigeria. This review article applied a cross-sectional approach involving the descriptive survey and qualitative analytical methods. Analysis carried out incorporated computation of frequency of publication on each issue, which aided the discussion on status. Findings have shown that knowledge or awareness of HF/E is low, and applying the practice at work positions is equally low in Nigeria. Furthermore, the results suggested an insignificant rise in the status of HF/E by research studies. Surreptitiously, the high prospects for growth of HF/E and the ancillary factors like AI and robotics are foreshadowed in low levels of both practice and awareness. The analysis mentioned that the rising frequency of HF/E issues at the workplace has all-inclusive and mutually exclusive implications for the employee. The study’s outcome can contribute to positive change in organizational productivity, product design and process design since scientific research on the gaps can facilitate advancement in knowledge.

From Must to Mindset: Implications of Human Factors Practices in Aviation and Railway

From Must to Mindset: Implications of Human Factors Practices in Aviation and Railway

160 Applying Human Factors Practices and Simulation to Develop Systems and Processes for a Pandemic Vaccine Service

The COVID-19 vaccine hubs required rapid implantation. While organizations had plans as part of the emergency resilience response to the community, there were particular challenges for setting up and running vaccine hubs for COVID-19 that Human Factors and Ergonomic practices could help to identify and address prior to opening as a vaccine hub.The aim of the study was to assist with understanding the abilities of vaccinators and design of processes for the vaccine service at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust.Simulation, observation, semi-structured interviews and Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) were used to understand the complexity of the vaccinator role and potential challenges for the implementation of the vaccine service. This was then used in identifying an area that could meet the capacity requirements identified and to help design the process and flow through the vaccine hub.The work undertaken was used to identify and design the processes required to deliver the vaccine service. This in turn helped to identify the space required and, due to changes in practice following potential reactions to the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine Using simulation and HFE processes as part of a collaborative process with staff trained with these skills can help to design safer, more effective processes in healthcare.

Student Perspectives on Changing Requirements for Human Factors Engineering Education

In today’s digital economy, the Internet of Things (IoT) has connected devices, humans, and everyday objects to each other in ways that were unimaginable before. Vast amounts of data are collected everywhere and disrupting how we design systems and products. Data science and emerging technologies offer challenges and opportunities for early-career human factors professionals who are looking to grow their careers and their human factors practice. In this paper, we report on a survey to assess the perspectives of students currently studying human factors. The survey items examined shortfalls in current human factors education with re-spect to relevance to industry trends. The survey results show that students see a need to include more relevant subjects in data science, as well as opportunities to learn trending industry problems, hands-on experience with real-life projects, prior to graduation.

Are “Human Factors Engineers” Prepared for the Medical Device Industry? – Preliminary Findings from an Interactive Poster Survey

As the medical device industry establishes more rigorous human factors practices in their design and development process, this is accompanied by an increase in demand in human factors professionals. The human factors activities have been performed by both professionals with formal human factors education and training and those who come from other backgrounds, such as engineering, natural science, medical fields, design and more. Both across those disciplines and the within human factors field, there is no standard curriculum or requirements for educating and preparing human factors engineers/professionals for the medical device/health care domain. To better understand how (well) human factors professionals are prepared for the medical device industry, a survey was administered in the form of an interactive poster at the 2019 International Symposium in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care. Data were collected regarding where symposium attendees, most of whom are human factors professionals in health care/medical device, learned the important knowledge/skills required for human factors practice in the medical device industry. In this paper, the method is described in details, and results from the poster survey are presented and discussed.

Me and My VE, Part 5: Applications in Human Factors Research and Practice

Recent advances in technology have made virtual environments, virtual reality, augmented reality, and simulations more affordable and accessible to researchers, companies, and the general public, which has led to many novel use cases and applications. A key objective of human factors research and practice is determining how these technology-rich applications can be designed and applied to improve human performance across a variety of contexts. This session will demonstrate some of the distinct and diverse uses of virtual environments and mixed reality environments in an alternative format. The session will begin with each demonstrator providing a brief overview of their virtual environment (VE) and a description of how it has been used to address a particular problem or research need. Following the description portion of the session, each VE will be set-up at a demonstration station in the room, and session attendees will be encouraged to directly interact with the virtual environment and ask demonstrators questions about their research and inquire about the effectiveness of using VE for research, training, and evaluation purposes. The overall objective of this alternative session is to increase the awareness of how human factors professionals use VE technologies and increase the awareness of the capabilities and limitations of VE in supporting the work of HF professionals.

On the Nature of Interruptions in Complex Dynamic Tasks

The formal study of interruption can improve workplace safety by providing insights into the cognitive processes underlying interrupted task performance (Boehm-Davis & Remington, 2009). Experimental studies examining the disruptive effects of interruptions have typically used basic laboratory paradigms (Trafton & Monk, 2007) and account for disruptive effects using prospective memory models (McDaniel, Einstein, Graham, & Rall, 2004) or activation-based models (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). However, the effects of interruptions in more complex dynamic tasks, such as air traffic control (ATC), may be different because they require operators to perform multiple task goals in a continuously evolving task environment. The current study examined the impact of two kinds of interruption on performance in simulated ATC. Participants ( n = 60) were required to accept/handoff aircraft entering/exiting their sector and to prevent aircraft pairs from conflicting (violating minimum separation standards). There were three within-subjects conditions: no-interruption (baseline control), a blank interruption (blank screen for 27s), and an n-back interruption (visual 2-back task, for 27s). Each ATC trial included two delayed-execute PM tasks: a conflict-resolution PM-task and a handoff PM-task. Both tasks were encoded before the interruption occurred. The conflict-resolution PM-task required participants to resolve a deferred conflict immediately after the interruption ended. Time taken to resolve this conflict was taken as resumption time. We predicted resumption time would increase for both interruption conditions due to the need to reorientate to the evolved visual ATC scene. We also predicted the n-back interruption would further increase resumption time due to blocking rehearsal. Interruptions significantly increased resumption time. However, in contrast to previous research using basic tasks (Monk, Trafton, & Boehm-Davis, 2008) resumption time was not greater in the demanding n-back interruption relative to the blank interruption. The handoff PM-task required participants to handoff an aircraft using a non-routine keystroke at 63s (on average) after the interruption. To be clear, the aircraft flashed for hand-off and the participant needed to remember to press the alternative handoff key instead of the routine handoff key. Prior research has examined PM in simulated ATC (Loft, 2014), and we extended it by examining how interruptions would impact PM. Based on findings in basic delayed-execute studies, we predicted interruptions would increase handoff PM-task errors. The average error rate on the handoff PM-task was 31%, but this did not differ between the conditions. Two important findings emerged from this study. Firstly, we did not find rehearsal to be an important factor in interruption recovery in simulated ATC. This indicates that orientating to an evolved visual scene may be the primary driver behind resumption time costs in this dynamic task. Secondly, we replicated the PM errors reported in previous simulated ATC experiments, but found that PM performance was robust to interruptions. Whilst the use of a student sample with limited training limits the generalizability of the present study, we recommend psychological models of interruption be applied cautiously, particularly in safety-critical environments. Human factors practice and research will benefit from further examining the nature of interruptions in complex task environments.

Operator-Centered Task Analysis

The practice of human factors in agriculture presents numerous challenges for the researcher. Difficulties include measuring operator behaviors in the agricultural field as well as identifying individual tasks, order of tasks, length of tasks, and operator motivation for each task. To confidently build a baseline for how operators use and appropriate their resources during the planting agricultural season, a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods were combined to create OCTA (operator-centered task analysis), a hybrid methodology to observe, document, explain, and potentially predict operator behaviors in the field. The OCTA model draws from four main methodologies: observation, interview, behavioral and interview coding, and task analysis. This work describes the development and implementation of OCTA, and how to replicate its use. While the OCTA methodology was developed in an agricultural context, it can be generalized for use with nearly any observable human-machine interaction system.

What Went Wrong? What can go Right? A Prospectus on Human Factors Practice

Human Factors has informed both research and practice for over 100 years [1]. In this time, many theories, methods, and design practices have been implemented. As a result, the way Human Factors as a discipline has been conceptualized and put into practice has undergone numerous changes. Human Factors, at its heart is the idea that technology influences humans, and that humans influence the performance efficiency and effectiveness of technology, and other humans. Recent approaches to Human Factors have created multiple baseline assumptions on understanding human system interaction. For example, McNeese et al. [2] identified four systems design paradigms wherein each produce a qualitatively different outcome: Technology-Centered, User-Centered, Data-Centered, Group-Centered. Although there is value and truth in each approach, individually each theme limits its scope by deemphasizing contributions from the others. Because isomorphic approaches abound in the field, this paper theorizes a more optimal approach to contemporary human factors - The Living Laboratory Framework – that posits a wholistic perspective addressing various underling parameters in complex problem solving and innovative design. In this contemporary approach, the theory–problems–practice becomes highly integrated, reflecting unique and dynamic methods to create human-system integration. Examples are provided in the domains of cyber operations and police cognition to demonstrate the value of this approach.

Human Factors Practice in Malaysia: Professional Liability, Accountability and Ethics

In Malaysia, practicing human factors and ergonomics has been significantly increased to the design and improvements of all kinds of work systems. Human Factors (HFs) experts and ergonomists are employed in various companies including oil and gas industries. However, it is a great challenge how these professionals contribute their skills to the design of products and systems that are ethically standard. There is also a need to ensure that the workers are safe and healthy in a productive environment. The choices of individuals practising HFs should thus be encouraged through the concept of professional liability, accountability and ethics that tell about the best practice we must do things as an ergonomist or behave properly to be HFs expert. It is about how our practices impact our society, and how we should be liable to our work. In terms of professional accountability and liability, we are facing tremendous challenges in our profession. As HFs experts, we are practicing to deal with usability or design issues lacking behind of efficacy and transparency of our profession. Our job is not only the design of job-tasks and maximizes work efficiency. Liability and trust issues in our profession means how we maintain us, how we recognize and treat us, how we ethically behave as a professional through the quality of our work, not the quantity of our work. Hence, our professionalism is question and perhaps critical in the way we do things.

Human Factors in Commercial Human Space Operations

What was unthinkable as little as five years ago now seems to be on the brink of becoming a reality in the foreseeable future – a world in which commercial space travel is as commonplace as commercial aviation travel is today. The scientific research community will play a vital role in achieving this reality while supporting the safety of both passengers and crews. This will require the application of sound human factors theories, principles, and practices to develop effective training programs and countermeasures as well as to design viable habitats on board commercial space vehicles for these new space travelers. Accordingly, the objective of this multidisciplinary discussion panel will be to identify and discuss the human factors issues that warrant investigation to support the safe and efficient advance of commercial human space operations.

Triangulation of Multiple Human Factors Methods in User Experience Design and Evaluation

There are many design and evaluation methods that have been developed to assess and improve the user experience. Each of them has a unique set of advantages and disadvantages and using them in the appropriate combination is an essential part of human factors practice. Methods vary along several dimensions, including the stage of the design process where they are most effective, the resources needed to apply them, and the types of results that they provide. Triangulation is an approach to maximize the effectiveness of the aggregate user experience design and evaluation by creating a strategic combination of methods that considers each dimension and how they interact. This session demonstrated four user experience methods applied to a single software application and followed with a panel discussion comparing and contrasting the results of each method and how they fit together.

Putting mind and body back together: A human-systems approach to the integration of the physical and cognitive dimensions of task design and operations

As human factors and ergonomics professionals we should be considering the total context within which the person must operate when performing a task, providing a service, or using a product. We have traditionally thought of the person as having a cognitive system and a physical system and much of our scientific literature has been myopically focused on one or the other of these systems while, in general, totally ignoring the other. However, contemporary efforts have begun to recognize the rich interactions occurring between these systems that can have a profound influence on performance and dictate overall system output. In addition, modern efforts are beginning to appreciate the many interactions between the various elements of the environment that can influence the components of the human systems. The next level of sophistication in the practice of human factors and ergonomics must begin to consider the totality of the human-system behavior and performance and must consider systems design interactions which result from these collective effects. Only then will we be able to truly optimize systems for human use.

The PhOCoe Model – ergonomic pattern mapping in participatory design processes

The discipline and practice of human factors and ergonomics is quite rich in terms of the availability of analysis, development and evaluation tools and methods for its various processes. However, we lack effective instruments to either map or regulate comprehensively and effectively, cognitive and organizational related impacts, especially the environmental ones. Moreover, when ergonomic transformations through design - such as a new workstation design or even an entire new facility - is at play, ergonomics professionals tend to stay at bay, relying solely on design professionals and engineers. There is vast empirical evidence showing that participation of ergonomists as project facilitators, may contribute to an effective professional synergy amongst the various stakeholders in a multidisciplinary venue. When that happens, everyone wins - users and designers alike -because eventual conflicts, raised up in the midst of options selection, are dissipated in exchange for more convergent design alternatives. This paper presents a method for participatory design, in which users are encouraged to actively participate in the whole design process by sharing their real work activities with the design team. The negotiated results inferred from the ergonomic action and translated into a new design, are then compiled into a "Ergonomic Pattern Manual". This handbook of ergonomics-oriented design guidelines contains essential guidelines to be consulted in recurrent design project situations in which similar patterns might be used. The main drive is simple: nobody knows better than workers themselves what an adequate workplace design solution (equipment, workstation, office layout) should be.

A Roundtable Discussion … Increased Focus on Human Factors Drives Device Safety Improvements

<i>A Roundtable Discussion</i> … Increased Focus on Human Factors Drives Device Safety Improvements

Sparking Innovation: How User-Centered Professionals Can Get a Seat at the Business Strategy Table

Dr. Soken was invited by the Product Design Technical Group to give a keynote address at the first of the Group's meeting sessions. His presentation explores and explains with examples how usability professionals can provide significant value to the business strategy dialog while at the same time raising the visibility and influence of our unique set of skills. Dr. Soken's extensive background includes Human Factors practice and management, innovation initiatives, and leadership development.

Panel: Human Factors in Weapons Safety

This panel will address the concept of Human Factors practice within the field of weapons safety and firearm use. Panelists will present some of their experiences in applying human factors information during expert witnessing, examining training, and discovering the facts during difficult cases. Panel members will discuss some of the problems, as well as solutions, for safe firearm use including training, labeling, weapon design, and storage from the prospective of the recreational shooter and the military. In addition, research data on weapon use and categorization of shootings will be presented and described.