EP&T: Human factors in design: A quick primer
by Kevin Bailey, CEO, Design 1st
The physical and cognitive aspects of a product are arguably the most important, but they comprise only a part of human factors analysis.
Ottawa-based Design 1st worked with Calibre Biometrics in developing a real-time wearable fitness metabolic performance tracker. Photo source: Calibre Biometrics
To the consumer, products arrive in the world fully formed. Rarely, if at all, do they think about the series of steps that brings a given product from someone’s imagination to their living room. And if they are thinking about those steps, it almost always means the product designer has done something wrong.
That’s because the ideal outcome, for the product designer, is that their end-users never think of them at all. The consumer simply uses their product, happily, without complications or complaints, until it’s lost or broken.
Of course, it takes an extraordinary amount of work to produce that degree of satisfaction in the consumer. Even the simplest product needs to be analyzed, tested from every angle, before reaching the consumer’s hands. And as it happens, the philosophy underlying this process has a name, well-known to every product designer: human factors analysis.
This article originally featured in EP&T. Read the full version here.
