Psychology 2990A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Human Factors And Ergonomics, Engineering Psychology, Drawing Pin

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2990A/B
• Professor: Doug Hazlewood

Document Summary

Fitting the machine to the user and fitting the user to the machine. Prologue: names and definition: other common names for the field: Ergonomics: engineering psychology to summarize all common names, definition (p. 226): the science of. Determining appropriate behaviors for the efficient operation of machines: machine: everything from a thumb tack to a nuclear power plants, broadly defined. Highlights two goals that led to the development of the field: fitting the machine to the user, fitting the user to the machine. The common approach to designing machines was to design it and ignore the user: but events that occurred during ww2 showed this wasn"t a very effective approach. Too much noise (personnel couldn"t communicate with one another) Poor visibility (impossible to see objects in front of the tank) but could see things far away. Seating positions poorly designed they caused back and neck injuries: often caused more damage to the operators than the enemy.