"Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors engineering or HFE) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems."
The study of human behavior and performance in aviation, including pilot training, crew resource management, and human error prevention.
Human Perception and Cognition: Understanding how humans perceive and process information and making sure cockpit design, display and control placement is aligned to optimize pilot performance.
Human Error and Decision-Making: Analyzing human errors, decision-making, and analyzing factors contributing to it to improve systems, procedures, and training guidelines to ensure safety.
Crew Resource Management (CRM): CRM involves utilizing all resources available onboard during a flight, including crew, equipment, and procedures to optimize performance and communication, manage conflicts and achieve objectives.
Workload Management: The physiological and psychological demands of aviation work and how to manage workload and fatigues to minimize errors in aviation.
Human Factors in Aircraft Design: Designing aircraft that is safe, user-friendly, and efficient through ergonomic analysis, adapting the latest technologies, and conducting usability tests of tasks such as data entry, button push, control-flick, instrument reading, and communication.
Automation in Aviation: Understanding and managing automation to reduce human errors, the potential for pilots to become overreliant on aircraft systems, and interpreting flight data to ensure flight safety.
Aviation Safety Culture: Analyzing the influence of the organization and culture on aviation safety and designing mitigation strategies.
Stress and Fatigue Management: Develop and implement strategies to prevent stress and manage fatigue that can impact cognitive and mental functioning in pilots.
Human Factors in Aviation Incident and Accident Investigation: Conducting investigations, root cause analysis, and creating recommendations to prevent similar events from happening.
Human Factors in Air Traffic Control: Analyzing how air traffic controllers can improve communication, decision-making, situational awareness, workload management, and stress/fatigue management.
Human Factors in Emergency Response Planning: Developing an effective response plan during an emergency or crisis requires analyzing the human factors of the situation to ensure fast and efficient intervention.
Human Factors in Aviation Maintenance: Analyzing how to improve and mitigate human error while conducting inspections and maintenance to ensure that the aircraft is safe for flight.
Human Factors in Filght Simulator Design: Ensuring that flight simulators replicate real-life conditions and conduct tests for training and proficiency purposes.
Organizational Psychology in Aviation: Understanding how the organization manages the workforce, and implementing strategies to improve communication, workload management, and other work-related stressors.
Human Factors in Helicopter Design: Ensuring ergonomic design and placement of controls and systems in helicopters to optimize pilot performance, reduce pilot workload, mitigate human errors, and improve aviation safety.
Physical factors: This includes physical abilities of the pilot not limited to vision, hearing, physical strength, height and weight. It also encompasses external factors like noise, vibrations, altitude and temperature.
Mental factors: Human factors introduced by the pilot's mind, including cognitive abilities such as alertness, judgment, memory, attention, and decision making, including automation reliance and cognitive biases.
Environmental Factors: The cockpit environment and ambient elements such as lighting, sound, and temperature that might affect the pilot's performance.
Social Factors: Factors arising from the relationship between the pilot, Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs), airline crew members and other stakeholders, including interpersonal dynamics and pilot's response to their colleagues and superiors.
Organizational Factors: Human factors resulting from the policies, procedures, systems, and structures within the aviation industry that affect the pilot's roles, duties, performance expectations, and management styles.
Training Factors: Human factors in aviation can result in lack of sufficient training, instructions, and feedback that cultivates and enhances pilots' skills, knowledge, and decision-making abilities.
Communication Factors: The quality and effectiveness of communication exchange among the ATCs, pilots, ground personnel, air traffic reporting agencies, and other related aviation personnel plays a crucial role in operational safety.
Ergonomic Factors: The physiological and physical challenges of the work environment, such as seating, lighting, and cockpit layout, and the manual handling of equipment, including controls, knobs, and switches.
"The primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment."
"The field is a combination of numerous disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology, anthropometry, interaction design, visual design, user experience, and user interface design."
"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 methods to design to optimize human well-being and overall system performance."
"Human factors engineering is relevant in the design of such things as safe furniture and easy-to-use interfaces to machines and equipment."
"Proper ergonomic design is necessary to prevent repetitive strain injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders, which can develop over time and can lead to long-term disability."
"Human factors and ergonomics are concerned with the 'fit' between the user, equipment, and environment or 'fitting a job to a person' or 'fitting the task to the man'."
"To assess the fit between a person and the used technology, human factors specialists or ergonomists consider the job (activity) being done and the demands on the user; the equipment used (its size, shape, and how appropriate it is for the task), and the information used (how it is presented, accessed, and changed)."
"Ergonomics draws on many disciplines in its study of humans and their environments, including anthropometry, biomechanics, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, industrial design, information design, kinesiology, physiology, cognitive psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, and space psychology."
"Human factors research employs methods and approaches from these and other knowledge disciplines to study human behavior and generate data relevant to previously stated goals."