Human Factors Engineering: What is it? Why does it matter? How does TapRooT® solve human factors problems?

What do these words have in common: ergonomics, applied experimental psychology, Human-Machine Interface, and engineering psychology? They are different words that people use to describe human factors engineering.

What is human factors engineering?

The International Ergonomics Association website defines human factors this way:

“Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data, and other methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

Practitioners of ergonomics and ergonomists contribute to the design and evaluation of tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems in order to make them compatible with the needs, abilities and limitations of people.”

Why does it matter?

It matters for multiple reasons! Here are a few:

1. Productivity: increase efficiency, maximize quality and minimize errors.
2. Safety: reduce accidents, incidents, and damage to equipment.
3. Equipment reliability: Minimize system malfunction and maintenance cost. Get better user performance.
4. Training: Reduce training time.

How does TapRooT® solve human factors problems?

A goal of human factors engineering is to eliminate discomfort and risk of injury due to work so it makes good sense to incorporate human factors into your incident investigations. Not every root cause method does this, but human factors is built right into the TapRooT® System.

“Sometimes, people try to make human factors so hard,” says Mark Paradies. TapRooT® makes it easy! View this short video to learn more about how TapRooT® handles human factors problems and you can too!