Human Factors and Ergonomics

Janitors are essential workers, employed as caretakers of public spaces like business offices, airports, and shopping malls. Despite playing a critical role in the economy, janitors are some of the most vulnerable workers in the service industry. Often immigrants and non-English speakers, they make relatively low wages while performing physically demanding work, which is associated with the development of musculoskeletal disorders. This webinar presents a cross-sectional survey study of Californian janitors in 2022, which investigates the impact of precarious work...

This 8-week, asynchronous online course will focus on the role of Human Factors & Ergonomics (HF/Ergo) in the design of occupational tasks and consumer products. The first two weeks will introduce you to the design cycle and the concepts of User Experience and Human-Computer Interaction. We will then define human characteristics and variability through a detailed examination of anthropometry, as this is essential for human-centered design. We will follow this with two weeks on the relevant factors to consider when designing manual materials handling tasks, patient lifting in healthcare...

This course explores the essential topics of human information processing, controls and displays, sensory and cognitive contributions to systems, and implications for the design of systems in the workplace. The field of human factors and ergonomics is interdisciplinary, with applications wherever humans interact with equipment in a system's context. Examples will be drawn from a wide range of work contexts, including medicine, transportation, and computer tasks. Learners will differentiate cognitive ergonomics, and how it fits into design and analysis. Typical design problems will be...

There is high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders and fall injuries among employees in work vehicle environments, yet little attention is given to understanding why. Effective ergonomic interventions can lower the physical demands of work tasks, thereby lowering the incidence and severity of associated MSDs. Reducing injury related costs alone make ergonomic interventions a useful tool for improving a company’s productivity and overall business competitiveness. Preventing injuries by improving access to objects stored in a vehicle requires rethinking...