Psychology › Section M · Industrial-organizational psychology › Topic M.4
Human factors and workplace design
When a nurse picks the wrong setting on an infusion pump or a pilot pulls the wrong lever, the easy verdict is human error. Human factors psychology asks a better question: what about the design made the error likely, and how can it be redesigned so that people get it right?
In this topic
- Fitting the job to the person
- Design lessons from the cockpit
- Physical ergonomics
- Attention and vigilance
- Signal detection: hits and false alarms
- Design principles for everyday things
- Worked example: four burners, four knobs
- Human error and the Swiss cheese model
- Worked example: Three Mile Island
- Checklists, fatigue and automation
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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