Resources on Human Factors

Here's a list of online content to help you explore the science of human factors.

YouTube Videos

The Disciplines of Human Factors

Let the United States Federal Aviation Authority introduce the broad disciplines that form the science of human factors.

It's not you.
Bad doors are everywhere.

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.

Human Factors and Systems Safety Engineering in Healthcare

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.

Information Processing Model

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.

Visual Perception

Why do we make simple perceptual mistakes? Perhaps the science of visual perception can provide some answers.

Visual Search

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?

Attention & Interruptions

What is attention? What happens when our attention is interrupted? Are you even paying attention?

Multitasking

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?

Mental Memory

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.

Decision Making

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

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Commentary

Resources on Human Factors

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

YouTube Videos on Cognitive Concepts

SQ's Academic Publications

Healthcare

Process Control

Aviation

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SQ's
Academic Publications