Human Factors and Engineering Psychology

In the module Human Factors & Engineering Psychology students get prepared for a career as Human Factors specialist. The over-arching ideas and principles of Human Factors are introduced first, for example the Anti-Procrustes principle, which says that the primary aim is to fit the technical system to the human being, never the other way round.

Then follows an introduction to four domains where Human Factors plays a crucial role, namely automotive design, medical devices (such as infusion pumps), commercial software and websites, and operator control rooms (this is the place where large industrial systems are controlled, such as nuclear power plants). Human Factors design values and principles will be linked to content from the first year of study, such as cognitive functioning and abilities.

Human Factors specialists work closely together with engineers, such as computer scientists or industrial designers. The module prepares for inter-disciplinary collaboration in several ways. First, basic engineering principles are introduced, for example the role of user requirements and the project phases of systems development. Second, the module contains a genuine programming course, where students will learn to program their own interactive prototypes, psychological tests, cognitive models and interactive data visualizations. The chosen programming language Python, is easy to learn, highly versatile and well regarded in industry and academia. Third, a number of mini projects serve to practice activities and methods of Human Factors design and research. Working together in small teams, students will solve a number of problems. For example, eliciting and analysing user requirements, using and creating design guidelines, planning and implementation of a test suite for assessing human performance. The over-arching topic of the project course is “universal