HUMAN FACTORS PSYCHOLOGY
EXP4250/5256
Fall 2014
Instructor: Dr. Steven Kass,
Professor
Office: Bldg 41,
Room 253
Phone: (850) 474-2107
Web Site:
http://uwf.edu/skass
Email: skass@uwf.edu
Office Hours: TBD
Class Meets: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 4:00 pm
to 5:15 pm.
Location: Bldg 41, Room 134
Reading
Materials
Required:
Wickens, C. D., Lee,
J. D., Liu, Y., & Becker, S.
E. G. (2004). An Introduction
to Human Factors Engineering, 2nd Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson
Education, Inc.
Casey,
S. (1998). Set Phasers on
Stun and Other True Tales of
Design, Technology, and Human Error, 2nd Edition, Santa Barbara,
CA: Aegean Publishing Company.
Additional readings from
issues of Ergonomics in Design (included
as PDFs). Graduate students will
be expected to contribute to discussion
of outside reading assignments.
Recommended:
Norman,
D. A. (1990). The Design
of Everyday Things. New York,
NY: Doubleday Publishing.
Vicente, K.
(2004). The Human Factor:
Revolutionizing the
Way
People Live with Technology. New 
York,
NY: Routledge
Casey, S.
(2006). The Atomic Chef:
And Other True Tales of
Design, Technology, and Human
Error. Santa Barbara,
CA: Aegean Publishing Company.
Course Description: This
course is recommended for psychology students
interested in seeing how the
principles of their study apply to work
design, or
for
students of computer
science and other
disciplines who would like to learn
about the human user/operator side
of a system. This course is
intended as a survey of
the field of human factors
psychology.
Specifically, the principles
of psychology from various specialty areas (e.g.,
cognitive, experimental, industrial/organizational, physiological) will be applied
to the study of human performance in work settings.
Students will learn how work is designed to capitalize on cognitive
and physical
capabilities and
compensate for limitations of humans. Students will also become
familiar
with
the tools and techniques that human factors
psychologists
use to study human-machine
interaction
and work design. Students
will never view their own
experiences with
modern
technology in the same way, as they
will gain an appreciation for the capabilities
and limitations of humans in human-machine
systems.
Learning Outcomes:
Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:
·
Apply the principles of psychology (e.g., human physiology,
behavior, and cognition) to the
understanding and
design of
everyday work activities (assessed via exam);
·
Use
the methodologies
and tools of the human factors discipline to analyze, critique,
and solve problems associated
with human-machine
interaction (assessed via exam);
·
Develop (conceptually)
user-friendly human-machine interfaces (assessed via design project).
In addition Graduate
students will be able to:
·
Design and/or critique
human-machine designs using knowledge of the human senses (e.g., visual,
auditory, vestibular) (assessed via design project).
·
Select and apply the
relevant scientific literature and professional guidelines to support the
analysis, critique, and re-design of flawed interfaces (assessed via design
project).
·
Identify, describe, apply,
and concisely communicate in writing the appropriate psychological principles
in the critique of accident investigation case studies (assessed via case study
reports).
·
Summarize, integrate, and
orally communicate academic and professional literature in the field of human
factors (assessed via oral presentations).
Requirements
Exams: Three in-class
exams, each
containing 50 multiple-choice questions covering the assigned readings
and lectures. Absolutely no
makeup exams
will be given without
prior arrangements!
Design Project: Students will find,
photograph, and describe a system or systems
that
they believe
to have design flaws.
Each student
will create a presentation that describes 5 different ways in which the current product is
not consistent with human-centered design (e.g., violates human
factors principles, requires skills/perception outside of
human capability) and propose
how the design
can be improved
(DO NOT simply show a picture of a better designed product). Use YOUR OWN
examples. The findings will be provided as
hardcopy and electronic (PowerPoint is
suggested). If color is important to your presentation, make
sure that you print in color. Projects
will be graded based on use of correct human factors terminology, identifying
and connecting problems and solutions with correct principles, theories, techniques,
etc., clarity of presentation, originality, and overall quality (i.e.,
aesthetics, free of typos and grammatical errors).
Click here
for my own personal
example of
a bad design
or visit the Bad Designs Website. Here is an example of
a previous student's project.
Graduate students are required
to provide support for their analyses and design
recommendations
using the appropriate
human
factors research literature (minimum of 10 citations). That
is, specific recommendations
should be supported through analysis,
measurement, data, or
research findings.
(E.g., DO NOT simply state that something is difficult to see, tell me
what the correct size, shape, color, viewing distance, etc. should be based on
published guidelines, measurements, or empirical research findings).
Case Studies: All
students
(graduate and
undergraduate)
should be prepared to discuss the readings from the Casey book during class
time.
Graduate students are required
to write one page case studies for each selected
reading in the Casey
book. These readings
involve historical accounts of infamous accidents
and
catastrophes where
investigations have shown them to be caused by violations of human factors design principles. Students will describe how violations of human factors design principles
(from
the
related Wickens et al. text
book) contributed to these accidents
and what could have been done to prevent them
(using correct terminology and
principles). Case studies must
be turned in on the scheduled
date; late assignments will not be accepted.
Course Content:
Human factors is a
multidisciplinary subject including
aspects of psychology, engineering, and computer
science. However, this
course will focus
primarily on how psychological principles
and theories affect
human
performance and
the design of the human-machine interface. Course
topics
include information processing, cognitive workload, sustained attention, signal detection,
spatial abilities, virtual environments, safety, warnings, displays
and controls,
decision making,
social factors,
and stress. The instructor will draw on real world examples
of human factors principles
and provide demonstrations
of human factors tools used in military and civilian research and
design settings.
Method of Evaluation:
EXP4250 Undergraduate students
will be graded on three exams each worth 25% of your grade (75% total), a
design project
worth 15%, and homework worth 10%.
EXP5256 Graduate students will
be graded
on three exams each
worth 25% of your grade (75% total), a design project
worth 15%, case studies
and homework worth
10%.