| Text: Human Factors in Simple |
| and Complex Systems |
| Instructor: John H. Krantz, Ph.D. | by Robert W. Proctor and Trisha van Zandt |
| Office: Science Hall 112 | Other readings on reserve in Library |
| Phone: x7307 |
Three-Mile Island! Many people do not know where this place is but they know very well what happened there - the largest nuclear accident in U.S. history. Something went wrong. Nearly very wrong. Why? Obviously some mechanical system failed, but the failure that occurred had been anticipated by the engineers that built the nuclear power plant and should not have been much of a concern. Sophisticated pieces of equipment are designed with the expectation that some time some part of the system will fail. The reason Three-Mile Island became serious was that the information the operators had about the failure was poor and they responded inappropriately. The United States was within about 2 minutes of a disaster of the scale of Chernobyl and yet it was completely unnecessary. Had the computer control room been adequately designed, taking into account human abilities and limitations, the disaster at Three-Mile Island would not even have rated a front page note in the local paper of the area. In this disaster we have one of the defining examples of the need for and importance of human factors.
A good, yet simple, definition of human factors is the design of equipment that people use intentionally taking into account how people operate. Since human beings have characteristic ways of perceiving, thinking, and feeling which cannot be easily modified, it makes sense to change machines to fit us rather than the other way around. Human factors is the scientific/engineering field that collects the relevant data for understanding how humans interact with machines, and uses that information towards the design and implementation of human-machine systems.
The objectives of this course are two-fold: 1) to introduce the field of human factors and the fundamental concepts of the discipline, 2) to introduce the way in which human factors specialists think. To best accomplish these objectives the course is broken down into two parts. The first part of the class will provide the basics of human perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities relevant to human factors. The second part of the course will consist the class working on projects to gain experience using human factors knowledge in actual applied settings. Thus, this course will move from the classroom to application of that knowledge in order to give you a taste of the work done by human factors professionals.
| Day/Date | Topic/Assignment | Reading |
| Apr 29 M | Introduction to Human Factors | Ch. 1 |
| 30 T | Reliability and Error (Human and Machine) | Ch. 3\Kantowitz Ch. 12 |
| May 1 W | Human Hearing/Signal Detection
http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/fourier/ | 81-83; 96-103; 122-127; 152-157; 66-70 |
| 2 R | Human Visual Capabilities http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/receptive/ | 83-96; 108-122; 132-152; 161-178 |
| 3 F | Human Motor Capabilities | Ch. 13, 14, 15 |
| 6 M | Human Information Processing I | Ch. 4, 9 |
| 7 T | Human Information Processing II | Ch. 10, 11 |
| 8 W | Displays and Controls | Ch. 8,16,17 |
| 9 R | Test I/Task Analysis and Workspace Design | Ch. 17/Sanders Ch. 14, 15 |
| 10 F | Project 1 | readings TBD |
| 13 M | ì Meetings and Presentations TBD | ì |
| 14 T | ì | ì |
| 15 W | ì | ì |
| 16 R | Project 1 Report Due/Begin Project 2 | ì |
| 17 F | ì Meetings and PresentationsTBD | ì |
| 20 M | ì | ì |
| 21 T | ì | ì |
| 22 W | ì | ì |
| 23 R | ì | |
| 24 F | Project 2 Report Due/Class Wrap-up |
The class is broken down into three
sections each of which will have separate sets of assignments.
The first section of the class will consist primarily of lecture/discussion
on the background information of Human Factors. This section
will conclude with an examination. The examination will be worth
100 points and will be for a mixed format. The types of items
will be multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, problems
and essays, etc.
Human factors professions play two types of roles relating to the design of equipment: 1) as actual members of a design team developing a new device or evaluating and existing device and 2) as a researcher collecting and analyzing data necessary to do (1) more effectively. Two of the sets of projects deal with (1) and one deals with (2). The class will be divided into three groups with one group on each of the sets of projects below.
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The Class will be divided into the
following groups. You will be able to choose one of the three
project sets but only one group will be on each set.
The exam, each presentation and each
paper will be worth 100 points each. As can be seen, active class
participation is vital to the success of this course. Therefore,
participation will be worth 100 points, or nearly 2 letter grades.
Grades will be assigned on a 10% scale.