What does a Human Factors Engineer do?
Do all consumer product manufacturers have Human Factors departments? [ Back to top ] No. Only very large consumer product companies have their own Human Factors departments. In the case of software companies, the human factors/usability team might be incorporated into the development group. Companies that are too small to have their own departments subcontract specialized human factors or usability engineering firms to perform their research, develop and test their designs. On what basis are products, tasks or tools evaluated? [ Back to top ] How something is evaluated depends on what category of good it is. Some of the criteria used are: anthropometry – how well the product fits the static human body; biomechanics – how well the product adapts to the users limits in range of motion and other physical capacities; heuristics – rules of thumb about human-product interactions derived from experience; function – whether it does what it should do with a reasonable amount of effort and intu
