Ergonomics Real Design - Latest Comments

Re: “Examples of Poor Design…are occasions to learn”

MileHighSi — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:23:28 -0000

Thinking on, the notch would also prevent a visitor from storing the keycard in their wallet. That would -actually- make it poorly designed.

Re: “Examples of Poor Design…are occasions to learn”

MileHighSi — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 19:10:30 -0000

I completely disagree. The keycard works and the instructions are clear enough. You can go too far with instructions - and assumptions that humans can't figure stuff out (see. instructions on hand dryers). Of course, this is assuming that whoever gives a visitor the keycard fails to tell them how to use it.

Also, if you're going to put a notch on the keycard to indicate which side up the card should be inserted, it should be on the bottom to allow more room for your instructions on the top.

Same goes for CDs, bank debit cards, etc etc.. do you think all of these need re-designing?

Out of interest, do you have any proof that there was no user testing done, or that anybody has actually had a problem?

Re: “Examples of Poor Design…are occasions to learn”

MileHighSi — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 18:59:43 -0000

I completely disagree

Re: Ergonomics: Process + People …

Paul (from Idea Sandbox) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 06:08:30 -0000

Thanks so much for linking to this article. I'm glad you like it! - Paul

Re: Ergonomically Designed!

hcdi — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:56:27 -0000

I think you are right Duncan, a 'certified ergonomic' stamp is a great idea particularly as an extension of the existing Ergonomics Society (or IEHF) accreditation scheme. Has something like this ever been attempted in the past?

Re: Ergonomically Designed!

Duncan Robertson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:35:44 -0000

Spot on. It's time we as ergonomists started to take some 'ownership' of our discipline. Until we have in place an official Ergonomics society (or IEHF) 'stamp' on a product to confirm it is 'ergonomically designed' the phrase will remain just one of many standard lines that can stated by marketing men. The result is those products which have genuinely had ergo input being lost amongst the plefora of those which have not.

Re: About Us

Mark Young — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:29:06 -0000

That's a very timely question - there's a relatively recent movement in the field towards 'neuroergonomics', being led by one of the eminent names in ergonomics, Raja Parasuraman (see http://archlab.gmu.edu/peop.... This is about using neuroscience measures for ergonomic applications - such as attention or mental workload in complex systems design - and is very much influenced by the psychological side of ergonomics. My feeling is that this will be a growth area, as engineers and designers increasingly turn to ergonomists for quantifiable measures of performance.

Re: About Us

Helen Charman — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:31:23 -0000

As a lay person I'm interested to learn how neuroscience has 'interfaced' with real world ergonomic design - that is, to what extent do our neurological processes shape ergonomic design?