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Subject:Re: Defining Human Factors From:Brad Mehlenbacher <brad_m -at- UNITY -dot- NCSU -dot- EDU> Date:Sat, 30 Oct 1993 20:57:51 -0400
> Can anyone out there define the field of Human Factors? Just curious.
Linda-->It's a bit tricky attempting to define a discipline, but here goes:
Human factors, Ergonomics, Human-Computer Interaction, and Interface
Design are the theory and practice of how humans build effective
artifacts. As such, researchers interested in human factors attempt to
extend psychological theory to identify and account for those aspects of
technology that represent improvements, innovations, and so on (borrowed
liberally from Clayton Lewis, 1990, and Card, Moran, and Newell, 1983). A
terrific and approachable read on the theory of design, in general, is Don
Norman's (1990) _The Design of Everyday Things_. Conference Proceedings to
check out are Baecker and Buxton's _Readings in Human-Computer
Interaction: A Multidisciplinary Approach_, CHI 88-93 (Computer-Human
Interaction conference), and the Association of Computing Machinery's
_Human Factors in Computing Systems_ conferences.
Hope the above is useful. Cheers, Brad.
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