The human factors of system design: Understanding and enhancing the role of human factors engineering

Design decisions which govern the operability of human‐machine systems should be made by people who thoroughly understand human factors principles, methods, and data. In practice, however, these decisions are often made by people trained in other design disciplines. These individuals may not be aware of, misinterpret, or not value this information. To ensure that human factors information is better integrated into the design process than is currently the case, we need to understand the context, perspectives, and activities associated with system design. Based on a review of design literature and eight field studies, this paper characterizes human‐machine system design in terms of its social and organizational context and the activities of its individual participants. Information access and utilization is seen as the common denominator across individuals. However, due to differences among design disciplines in how phenomena, problems, and solutions are represented, information across disciplines is often misinterpreted or misused, Implications of this analysis for design supports that can improve information integration into design, especially from the human factors domain, are discussed.