Never Again: Human Factors/Ergonomic in Design of Consumer Products:

Have you ever thought about the products you use each day and how and why you use them?  Consumer products are a huge category to tackle so I’m going to focus in on an item that most of use and/or interact in some way:  the car.  The “never event” for a car is pretty easy to see—accidents can cause serious injury and/or death.  The design of cars has significant HF/E involved in them—good and bad.

A car is made of numerous components that come together to make up the vehicle that we drive.  Let’s look at a couple of the components individually:  the seats and the windshield wiper and light controls.

We’ve all sat in car seats that were either very comfortable or not.  What does our (human) comfort depend on?  For one thing, our size and shape and how it fits (or not) the size and shape of the seat.  In addition, the type of seat cushion, the covering (fabric/leather) and the ability to adjust the seat (height, seat back tilt, lumbar support, heated/cooled, etc.) also determine how well the seat fit us.  That being said, what’s comfortable to me is probably not comfortable to you.  Because of the differences between people and the need to have the seat comfortable, the car manufacturers have learned to build in seat adjustments in the driver’s side and to a lesser extent the passenger’s side.  HF/E is used to determine the dimensions of the seat and the size, shape, placement and function of the controls.

Have you ever rented a car and just drove off without figuring out how the windshield wipers or lights worked?  I’ve done so and then found myself struggling to turn on the wipers when the rain started to pour down.  I remember thinking that it shouldn’t be so difficult to turn these on.  However, I’m used to the way my car at home works which is making it difficult for me to figure out the rental car.  In addition, I’m not thinking normally and calmly because it’s raining very hard, I’m in unfamiliar territory, I don’t want to miss my next turn and my frustration is building with each passing second.  Should car makers consider the human factors I was going through at that moment when designing how the wipers worked?   Yes.  Can they design a wiper mechanism that is intuitive and simple for every person to use under any circumstances?  Obviously, they haven’t yet!  However, car makers employ HF/E professionals in order to improve the usability of their vehicles.

Now consider all of the other components of a car and you can appreciate how the design (not the “look” of the car) is vital to our ability and performance in driving.  Consider the recent story of Toyota cars unexpectedly accelerating rapidly causing injuries and accidents.  The root cause is still is up in the air as there has been no evidence of mechanical/electrical problems in the cars and yet blaming it on driver (human) error isn’t accepted either.

What about driver fatigue and/or inattentiveness?  We hear of car makers adding features that will automatically slow the car down if it senses it is too close to the car in front of it.  What about the bane of parking—parallel parking?   There are car makers that have devised a way for the car to park itself.  This task and risk of error is then taken away from the human.  These are two examples of how HF/E is used in design to account for human tendencies (errors) and prevent accidents (never events) from happening.

Is it possible to design a car that perfectly physically, mentally and emotionally fit every human on the planet?  Probably not.  However, by continuously studying human/car interaction, the components and the car as a whole will continue to improve and hopefully the result will be reduced accidents and “never events”.