The end of the 60th

So 2009 is coming to an end, and with it I think a rather successful 60th anniversary year for the Ergonomics Society - or should I say, the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (IEHF), for on 20th October the change of name was officially approved by Companies House.

Naturally I'm biased towards the exhibition at the Design Museum - which runs to 7th March 2010, so we are prolonging the celebrations a bit. Trying to be as objective as possible, 'Ergonomics: Real Design' has gone down pretty well so far. Last time I reported on the excellent media coverage at the opening and the VIP reception a few days later. Since then it has been picked up by other national and international listings (including the Wall Street Journal), and the other day I learned it was even getting exposure in New Zealand courtesy of Dave Moore of the NZ Ergonomics Society. By all accounts visitor feedback is good and footfall at the Design Museum is up, though we're in the process of conducting our formal evaluations to see just how big an impact the exhibition has had.

Next year we plan to keep the momentum going through (hopefully) touring the exhibition internationally, and an IEHF campaign to better integrate ergonomics into design process. Despite the fact that it's "just another year", I'm sure we'll be just as busy and I do, of course, plan to keep you updated here!

In the meantime, it only remains for me to wish everyone reading this, a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Ergonomics: Real Design

Well, it's finally arrived - all of our hard work over the last year or so has paid off, and the Ergonomics: Real Design exhibition at London's Design Museum is now open.

There was a media preview last Tuesday, which generated us some excellent coverage on the BBC and in The Independent, as well as several popular design magazines. Then it opened to the public on Wednesday, and by all accounts the feedback is good, and people are engaging with the exhibition as we hoped.

Last night was the big fanfare though - the Ergonomics Society (now officially known as the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors) held a private VIP reception for over 100 people, which - in my humble opinion - went down very well indeed. There was certainly a real buzz about the place, and for me it really brought it home that the exhibition had really happened. I think until I saw people actually going round it, it hadn't quite sunk in with me. All very exciting.

I must say thanks again to everyone who pulled together to make it happen - Fergus, Gemma, Margaret, Laura, Roger, Colin, and of course Reg, who got the ball rolling in the first place and has stuck with the project all the way through. Finally, a nod to the sponsors, the EPSRC, who are evidently quite pleased with it as it's currently featuring on the front page of their website too.

For more info, see the Design Museum's website.

Driving Ergonomics Special Interest Group

Yesterday I went to the inaugural meeting of the Ergonomics Society’s newest Special Interest Group (SIG) – the Driving Ergonomics SIG. This was hosted at Cranfield University, though the SIG has been set up and chaired by Nick Gkikas of Loughborough University.

There’s currently some 20-odd members in the SIG, and more than half of those turned up yesterday. It’s a really good mix of academic and industrial members too, with representatives from the likes of Jaguar, Nissan, and TRL.

The meeting had a speed-dating feel to it, with rapid fire presentations from a selection of attendees – Steve Summerskill from Loughborough, Chris Day from Nissan, me, and Nick Reed from TRL – all in less than an hour! But this was quite nice to get a sampler of the backgrounds of members. And whether by accident or design, there was good balance between physical ergonomics (Steve and Chris) and the more cognitive side (Nick and me).

It already promises to be a highly active SIG, with much discussion (at the time and afterwards via the new LinkedIn group) about the objectives of the SIG and what various members want to get out of it. We’re planning to meet quarterly, and longer-term ambitions are to have some outputs – maybe a conference session, for instance. I certainly think it’s a Good Thing, and with such an enthusiastic membership it has a lot of momentum behind it.

I’m only sorry I couldn’t get to the pub for more discussion afterwards – but then I was driving home, so couldn’t have sampled the local’s finest anyway…

Armchair ergonomists

I’ve been to a couple of events this week that have inspired me to think more about how to engage a wider public with ergonomics and human-centred design issues.

The first was the British Science Association’s Science Communication Conference, an excellent event with a star-studded list of presenters, including Lord Professor Robert Winston, Professor Kathy Sykes, and Professor Jim Al-Khalili. One of the key principles of this whole area is that we (as scientists) don’t just sit in our ivory towers and assume everyone’s stupid and that we have to teach them. Science Communication is a two-way process, and actually most (non-scientist) people are starting from a baseline with a bit of knowledge about a lot of things.

This is something I think wholeheartedly applies to ergonomics. In fact, most people are amateur ergonomists – everyone knows, on some level, when they’ve used a product or system that has been well (or badly) designed. A lot of them would have a good idea of how they want it fixed, too. I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? A human-centred design process starts with identifying the users’ needs, and who best to tell us about them? So the only problem, as far as I see it, is that these amateur ergonomists just don’t call it ergonomics – and consequently might not think to turn to ‘professional’ ergonomists or The Ergonomics Society.

And that brings me onto my second point – which was inspired by discussions at The Ergonomics Society’s awayday, where Council met up to discuss our vision and strategy for the future. The old ‘ergonomically designed product’ chestnut was rolled out (which I’ve blogged on before – and will come back to later), and that set my train of thought off on armchair ergonomists again. Because it’s about understanding what ergonomics is really about – so not only are people sometimes acting as ergonomists without knowing it, they’re also being sold a perception of ergonomics which is inaccurate.

There’s a great little anecdote from our experience at Cheltenham which illustrates this nicely. I got talking to a little girl and her family about our stand and what ergonomics is all about, and they told me a story about a design exercise the girl did at school recently, to design a pencil that’s easier to use for people. She explained how she made it slightly bigger so it’s easier to hold, shaped for the hand, and grip areas for the fingers. I told her she was being an ergonomist without even realising it! The best bit was that she refrained from just putting a bit of rubber on the pencil…

Cheltenham Festival of Science

No prizes for guessing what this post is about – last week we took a sample of the Real World Design exhibition to the Cheltenham Festival of Science as a sneak preview for them and a test run for us. Needless to say, this was a fantastic opportunity, afforded to us by some great work in the Ergonomics Society office, which we grabbed with both hands.

Cheltenham is one of the biggest science festivals in the UK, and always attracts some star names – we caught a glimpse of Robert Winston floating about; also in attendance and giving lectures were the likes of Richard Hammond, Carol Vorderman, and Alice Roberts (though I'm personally disappointed I didn't bump into her).

The preview exhibit we took was related to the ergonomics of the Sky TV remote control, which is the most advanced piece of work we currently have on the exhibition project. Fergus Bisset, the design researcher on the project, did a stellar job of putting together an innovative stand at short notice, complete with interactive elements. Fergus also carried the can for the whole duration of the festival, assisted on different days by staff and members of the Ergonomics Society, who kindly gave up their time to help out (pictured right is Dave O’Neill, Chief Executive of the Ergonomics Society). Our thanks go out to all, it was an enormous help and above and beyond the call of duty.

All in all I think we can say it was a successful week – just getting the exhibit into Cheltenham was an achievement in itself! But we also had a lot of interest from children and adults alike, helped no end by being on the EPSRC’s ‘Impact Trail’, so the children were encouraged to come and see us for an answer in their question booklet. It’s also been a learning experience in taking things forward to the big exhibition in November – which I know will come round sooner than we think.

Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture

On Tuesday evening this week I had the pleasure of attending the Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture, given by Professor Rob Stammers of the University of Leicester, on 'Kenneth Craik: a progenitor for ergonomics'. It was at the Royal Society of Arts, just off the Strand in London - a prestigious venue with very nice hospitality beforehand!

Craik was a psychologist who did his most profound work during the Second World War, and as Rob explained, was really ahead of his time in coming up with ergonomics issues and theories that we're still working with today. And remember that this is a good 5-10 years before the formation of the Ergonomics Research Society (now The Ergonomics Society) in 1949.

There were many gems in Craik's work that stood out for me, not least of all his exposition of the systems approach as necessary to understand the interplay between human and machine. For me, as someone still (relatively!) early in his career, this was a bit of a revelation as I always thought that systems thinking was a relatively recent approach - it's certainly only just getting into the minds of road safety experts (see the Department for Transport's recent consultation - I'll come back to this another time).

The other one that really hit me was how - as Rob explained it - Craik saw ergonomics as a means of genetic modification in design evolution. In other words, we can't wait for design to evolve out the bad genes, as there's too much at stake - we have to accelerate the process. This is a lovely turnaround from what I often teach my students, in that technology and design are nowadays evolving so quickly that they're outpacing the human ability to keep up.

Crash-proof cars!

I'm fortunate enough to be involved with various groups through my work with the Ergonomics Society, one of which is the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), as I sit on their Vehicle Design Working Party. At our meeting this week, which was kindly hosted by Thatcham, we got to play with a bunch of new cars fitted with various advanced driver assistance systems.

I'm not going to risk my neck by naming manufacturers, but in short we were able to try a variety of collision mitigation and avoidance systems, as well as different variations on lane departure warning and lane-keeping assist systems. These particularly appealed to me as I'm interested in the effects of such automation on the driver and how the technologies interface with the human.

I've written a paper on how automotive automation can be divided into 'vehicle automation' and 'driving automation' - with the former being all those 'below the line' aspects, which don't impinge on the driver's conscious awareness (such as ABS or ESC), while the latter affect the more 'in your face' aspects of driving (such as ACC or lane-keeping systems). Collision mitigation is an awkward one as it can straddle the line - but in the cars we tried this week, the system only kicks in as a very last-minute attempt to save the day, way after the driver would respond, so in my opinion this falls just on the side of vehicle automation. So it was great to get the chance to try both sorts - and I'd like to share my own personal views on these.

On the whole, the collision mitigation systems were impressive, with successive generations improving on the last (and even a new prototype system that isn't on the market yet, which was widely viewed to be the best so far). Some of them had early warnings, like an icon on the dashboard or an auditory warning - which were really quite ineffectual in such emergency situations. The latest version improves somewhat on these by flashing a massive red light (pretty much a brake light) on your windscreen slightly in advance of intervening itself - giving you at least half a chance to respond.

There was much more variation in application - and opinion - for the lane departure systems though. Different manufacturers opted for different feedback options, whether that's a seat rumble, a steering wheel vibration, or an auditory warning; one manufacturer goes so far as to 'help' the driver by providing gentle resistance to get you back in lane. Personally I felt the steering wheel vibration was most ergonomic, as it's almost exactly what you'd get on a white line rumble strip - so very naturalistic and in line with drivers' expectations. The seat vibration came second for me, with its advantage of being directional (left buttock for left lane excursion and vice versa). I liked the lane-keeping assist, but I thought it was rather subtle and could easily be ignored by most drivers (it feels a bit like a road camber). The auditory warning again was least effective, giving no naturalistic relation to the task nor direction information.

Interface issues aside, the really interesting thing I noticed was the level of debate around the lane-keeping assist/departure warning systems as compared to the collision mitigation systems, with the latter meeting with universal approval from the group. Possibly this might have something to do with the more consistent interfaces, but I think there's also something in the vehicle/driving automation distinction, being as the collision mitigation systems were essentially below the line - like I said, way beyond the point of recovery for human reactions. It really was a safety net. Lane-keeping, on the other hand, was seen as still the driver's domain, and a lot of people were frustrated at the tactile feedback systems - despite these ostensibly being the most 'ergonomic'.

Ultimately, if we are to go down the route of crash-proofing cars through technology (which seems to be the trend - EuroNCAP now assess cars according to their crash avoidance technologies such as ESC), I think we do have to pay attention to the driver/vehicle distinction with automation, and be a lot more careful about how we implement driver automation.

Ergonomics Society Anniversary Conference

The highlight of this week has to be the Ergonomics Society 60th Anniversary Conference, held Wednesday and Thursday at the Royal College of Physicians just by The Regent’s Park in London.

Actually the festivities kicked off on Tuesday evening with a VIP reception, where we were showered with wine and nibbles and treated to a couple of top drawer speeches from Dr Ian Gibson, MP for Norwich North, and Professor Pieter Rookmaaker, President of the Federation of European Ergonomics Societies (FEES). Dr Gibson’s speech was particularly encouraging, being a member of the Innovation Universities and Skills Committee and someone who’s especially sympathetic to the ergonomics cause. Prof Rookmaaker also drew our attention to the first European Ergonomics conference to be held in Bruges from 10th October 2010 – surely a must-attend event.

Wednesday and Thursday were the main session days, where there were several plenary papers given by esteemed ergonomists from around the world, plus a bunch of interesting sessions on topics from public health, through human factors integration, to accidents and human error.

I teamed up with Prof Jan Noyes from Bristol and Dr Sarah Sharples from Nottingham to give a session on automation, which proved intimidatingly popular with standing room only at the back. One of those where you deliberately avoid looking at the audience for fear you’ll get stage fright. I also chaired a session on road ergonomics with papers from Dr Alex Stedmon (also at Nottingham), Nick Gkikas from Loughborough, and Dr Sandy Robertson of UCL.

Fergus Bisset (who was Twittering away during the conference) and I had a stand promoting the Real World Design exhibition at the Design Museum (see my blogpost here for more), which attracted good attention from the delegates and gave us some more ideas for exhibits in the medical and consumer product areas.

Socially it was great as well, always a good opportunity to catch up with old networks and make new ones, with a very posh dinner on Wednesday night courtesy of our hosts at the RCP. And let’s not forget the location – a glorious part of London, so quiet and leafy that you could easily forget you’re actually in the capital. The RCP itself was an excellent venue, especially the Dorchester Library where the VIP reception was held.

Next year’s conference reverts to the more traditional format – this one was special for the anniversary – and will be at Keele University in Staffordshire. Hopefully see you there!