Resources on Human Factors
Here's a list of online content to help you explore the science of human factors.
YouTube Videos
Let the United States Federal Aviation Authority introduce the broad disciplines that form the science of human factors.
Any human factors professional worth their salt should be able to explain the Norman door, as well as any other design example that encourages good or bad behavior. Also, meet Prof. Don Norman, the father of user experience.
Over 40 minutes of Dr. Terry Fairbanks, SVP and Chief Quality & Safety Officer at Medstar Health, giving a lecture on human factors and systems engineering in healthcare. What more could you ask for!
Recommended Reads
Don Norman
The Design of Everyday Things
This is the quintessential book that explains why and how human factors science influences the designs that help or hinder the things we do. An easy read for the HF beginner.
Kim Vicente
The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology
Not to be confused with the 2019 documentary. This book explores the interaction between humans and technology across various industries, and how designs don't take into account the characteristics of humans, leading to outcomes ranging from inconveniences to death. Lots of case studies!
Robert Wears & Kathleen Sutcliffe
Still Not Safe
For the patient safety and healthcare quality aficionados, this book highlights the issues and challenges that healthcare safety & quality programs face today, and how a human factors perspective can help. Read what co-author Kathleen Sutcliffe has to say.
Raja Parasuraman
Humans and Automation: Use, Misuse, Disuse, Abuse
The late Prof. Raja Parasuraman wrote this seminal paper two decades before the current automatiAI boom. The concepts and issues he described will plague us even more given the proliferation of AI across all aspects of life.
Caroline Criado Perez
Invisible Women
What happens when we ignore half of humanity? This book sheds light into the many decisions and designs that we take for granted, which has a profound impact against womenfolk. In the journey to create a better work system, human factors practitioners will need to be mindful that men and women are not built the sa
John Lee, Christopher Wickens,
Yili Liu, Linda Ng Boyle
Designing for People: An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering
Just as you can't learn medicine by reading novels, many human factors books are unfortunately written as textbooks. This is one of the newest textbooks in the market written by some of the legends in the human factors community.
YouTube Videos on Cognitive Concepts
These homemade videos introduce various concepts surrounding the information processing model, which serve as foundations for cognitive ergonomics.
1
It can be easy to spot a human error, but not all slip-ups are made the same, and neither should solutions. The information processing model can help us identify and frame how we might have fumbled.
2
Why do we make simple perceptual mistakes? Perhaps the science of visual perception can provide some answers.
3
Besides searching for the meaning of life, we spend a big chunk of our time searching for our car keys, cellphones, and location of the nearest toilet. What makes visual search easy, or difficult?
4
What is attention? What happens when our attention is interrupted? Are you even paying attention?
5
When you divide your attention over 2 or more activities at the same time, you are multitasking. Why is multitasking bad? Can we ever be successful at multitasking?
6
Whenever we think, we process our thoughts in our working memory, and access stored information in our long-term memory. Hopefully you can encode some of these good content into your long-term memory too.
7
Between calculated risks and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss - Charles Duhigg. How do we make decisions? Why are experts "better" at making decisions?
SQ's
Academic Publications
Healthcare
Designing a visually effective MRI safety poster by applying evidence-based human factors science
(see: www.MRIDoorPoster.com)
Improving hand hygiene compliance with patient zone demarcation: More than just lines on the floor
Surveying pediatric caregivers’ readiness for dyad isolation in the hospital during COVID-19
The 2019 WACEM expert document on the framework for setting up a simulation centre
Functional redesign of the Hospital trolley-Bed tray table
