Designing for People

The Ergonomics and Human Factors conference 2013 takes place in Cambridge this week.  When I attend this conference I’m always amazed at the breadth of research that is undertaken within this discipline.  Just flicking through the programme I can see that there are sessions dedicated to Work & Wellbeing, Human Computer Interaction, Accessibility, Design Approaches, Standards, Risk, Transport, Ageing Workers, etc.  I wanted to emphasise in this blog that Human Factors (Ergonomics) is concerned with anything and everything that has a human element attached to it, and not just the design of chairs, which appears to be the common misconception.

I’m hoping that this year’s conference has papers that talk about innovative ways in which Human Factors has been applied.  I was particularly inspired by the recent Horizon programme on BBC 2 that emphasised the importance of the discipline in safety critical procedures, e.g. surgery, flying, fire rescue, etc.  I’ll report back at the end of the conference to highlight some of the interesting talks and people I have met.  Eddy Elton