Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton

Knowledge and understanding

• Be able to recognise the important issues concerned with the human factors aspects of tasks, products and environments.
• Be aware of methods of quantifying and predicting human comfort, human performance and human health.
• Recognise the role of standards, recommendations and regulations applicable to tasks, products and environments.
• Understand the environmental variables that can be measured to document an existing situation, those variables that may be altered, how they might be altered and by what degree, so that improvements may result.
• Distinguish between stress and strain in relation to human responses and recognise the existence of methods of measuring both the cause and effect in systems involving people.
• Recognise limitations to currently available methods of predicting human responses, and human performance, including inter-subject variability and intra-subject variability.

Cognitive (thinking) skills
Having successfully completed the module, the student will have the basic cognitive skills to:

• Read, understand and interpret the literature relating to human factors.
• Understand the principles of measuring, evaluating and assessing factors influencing human responses.
• Apply some standards, limits and criteria relevant to human responses.
• Recognise and select appropriate techniques for the investigation of human factors in systems.

Practical, subject specific skills
After completing this module, students should have the practical skill to:

• Identify, evaluate and assess the human factors aspects of tasks, products and environments.
• Apply relevant standards, limits and criteria.

Key transferable skills
Having successfully completed the module, students will be able to:

• Understand the importance of human variability in the design of systems.
• Understand the importance of human comfort, performance and health to systems.

To show how knowledge of the capability of humans can be used for the design of systems and machines and the optimisation of the working and living environment.

To examine the relevant physical, environmental, physiological and psychological information to enable the engineer to take acount of the human element in machine design, working environments and systems organisation.

An examination of relevant physical, environmental, physiological and psychological information to enable the engineer to take account of the human element in machine design working environments, and system organisation. During the course the following topics will be covered.

3.1 Environmental Factors The effects of the work environment on human comfort, performance and health. This includes the visual environment (e.g. hearing, effects of noise, auditory communication) the thermal environment (e.g. temperature, humidity and airflow), vibration (effects on comfort, performance and health), acceleration, impact and motion sickness.

3.2 Psychological Factors The psychology of human performance and human reactions. This will include reaction time, vigilance, manual controls (their design and methods of measuring continuous control performance), control coding, display design, control/display compatibility, psychological scaling methods and their applications, notices, questionnaires, psychological measures of stress, training.

3.3 Physiological Factors The physiology of work. This will include muscular action, metabolism, strength, lifting, working efficiency, heavy work, work-rest schedules, physiological measures of stress.

3.4 Systems design The application of human factors data to design. This will include anthropometry workspace design, seat design, simulation, systems ergonomics, analytical techniques, function allocation, task description, checklists.

One double lecture per week.
Students join the course with widely varying experience and knowledge of human factors, so in-class questions and discussion is expected.

Students are expected to devote some private study time to reading texts so as to supplement material introduced during lecture periods.

A coursework assignment will allow the student to build upon lecture material.

Secondary text

Human Factors in Engineering and Design, 7th Edition, M.S. Sanders
E.J.McCormick, McGraw-Hill International Editions
ISBN 0-07-054901-X

Fitting the Task to the Man, E. Grandjean, Taylor & Frances

Engineering Data Compendium, Human Perception and Performance, Volumes I, II, III, K.R. Boff
J.R. Lincoln, Harry G. Armstrong
Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

Handbook of Human Factors, G. Salvendy, Academic Press

Handbook of Human Vibration, M.J. Griffin, Academic Press