Introduction to human factor

Human Factor is to improve people's tools, devices, machines, and their surroundings so that they can communicate with people's abilities (Capabilities), defects (Limitations), and needs (Need) better cooperation. It aims to make the engineering and technical design match the physical and mental characteristics of people, so as to improve the system efficiency, ensure human-computer security, and enable people to work effectively and comfortably in the system.

Different countries have different names for human factors. Engineering Psychology is widely used in Psychology in China, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Human Factors Engineering is widely used in the United States) western European countries are generally referred to as Ergonomics ). Researchers of different disciplines also have their own focus on the research content: ergonomics, ergonomics, or ergonomics research aims to adapt people's work or engineering technology design to their physical and mental abilities, the purpose of engineering psychology research is to reveal and describe human abilities (especially human information processing capabilities) and to provide research data of relevant persons to work and technical designers.

The earliest study of human factors originated in the United States. During the Second World War, high-performance weapons developed rapidly and often resulted in machine destruction due to the inability of operators to adapt to the new performance of weapons. To solve this problem, psychologists began to study the problem of weapon and equipment design and user matching. After the war, the research on man-machine matching relationships expanded the military field to the design of civil products, and the subject background of participants was also wider, not only psychology, but also people from the disciplines of physiology, human body measurement, medicine, and engineering technology are involved in the study of human factors. The study of human factors started late in China. In the early stage, it mainly combined with aerospace and aviation. Research on railway and Power Station Construction requirements. After the end of 1970s, the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Emy of sciences, the Department of Psychology of Zhejiang University, the Department of Industrial Engineering of Tsinghua University, and the Institute of Aerospace Medical Engineering conducted relevant research.

With the rapid development of technology and the improvement of the quality of life, people have pushed the level of life to another realm. In addition to the materials, functions, and tastes of the product, we hope that the product design will be more considerate, considerate, and humane. Therefore, the human factors in the product design have been given unprecedented attention. International companies such as Microsoft, IBM, HP, eBay, Haier, Huawei, and ZTE have established relevant departments. From the perspective of human factors, the most important feature of the product is "User Friendly ). any product, regardless of the human-computer interface (hardware interface, Software Interface), network products, daily necessities, or other products, must be human-centered in the design process. For example, when designing the buttons for a mobile phone, you need to consider the size of the buttons, the gap between the buttons, and other factors. These factors are based on the human body size and action scale.

A product design that does not take people into account usually causes a lot of unnecessary troubles to users, and often leads to usage errors, sometimes even unavailable. For example, do you know how to use a knife? On the surface, this is a very attractive knife. But the question is: which side of the knife is the hilt and which side is the blade? Even if you can tell which side is the handle and which side is the blade, can you clearly tell which side is used for cutting? This knife is designed with a defect that does not take into account the user's usage factors. So how can we improve its design? Norman's "default purpose" proposed in design psychology is a good way to solve such problems. That is to say, based on the shape of an object, users can understand how to use it.

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In general, the human factor is to make the product adapt to the characteristics of people. To make people's quality of life better, they should not ignore their own abilities, defects and needs, and adapt product design to people's abilities, defects and needs.