Plenary Discussion: Relevance of Physiological and Psychological Criteria to Man-Machine Systems: The Present State of the Art

Abstract

Ergonomics seems to be more physiologically-oriented than does human factors engineering, its American counterpart. Quantitative support for this view is provided by content analyses of papers presented at certain meetings of two European and one American professional society, and of papers published in the journals Ergonomics and Human Factors. Several possibilities are adduced to account for this divergent emphasis placed on the use of physiological and psychological criteria. More serious than such differences is that it is not immediately apparent how most criteria used in ergonomic and human factors research relate to the criteria that are used for the design and evaluation of systems. If we are to have a viable technology we need to be able to show the relationship between the criteria used in experimental work and those used in the practical world.