Bridging psychology and engineering to make technology work for people.

Engineering grand challenges and big ideas not only demand innovative engineering solutions, but also typically involve and affect human thought, behavior, and quality of life. To solve these types of complex problems, multidisciplinary teams must bring together experts in engineering and psychological science, yet fusing these distinct areas can be difficult. This article describes how Human Systems Engineering (HSE) researchers have confronted such challenges at the interface of humans and technological systems.

A pilot study of non-routine events in gynecological surgery: Type, impact, and effect.

Objective: Quantifying non-routine events (NREs) assists with identify underlying sociotechnical factors that could lead to adverse events. NREs are considered any event that is unusual or atypical during surgical procedures. This study aimed to use prospective observations to characterize the occurrence of non-routine events in gynecological surgeries.

Human Factors in Medical Device Design: Methods, Principles, and Guidelines.

A total of 400,000 to 500,000 patients die in intensive care units (ICUs) each year, largely because ICUs care for the sickest patients. On the other hand, factors such as workload, shift changes, handoffs, alarm fatigue, inadequate team communication, and difficult-to-use medical devices contribute to the problem. This article focuses on the human factors of those medical devices, a significant cause of adverse events in the ICU.

Characteristics of team briefings in gynecological surgery.

Preoperative briefings have been proven beneficial for improving team performance in the operating room. However, there has been minimal research regarding team briefings in specific surgical domains. As part of a larger project to develop a briefing structure for gynecological surgery, the study aimed to better understand the current state of pre-operative team briefings in one department of an academic hospital.

Better instructions for use to improve reusable medical equipment (RME) sterility.

Objective: The objective was to evaluate human-factors-based instructional aids on endoscope reprocessing.

Background: The project stems from recent failures in reprocessing (cleaning) endoscopes, contributing to the spread of harmful bacterial and viral agents between patients. A previous study discovered three themes that represent a majority of problems: (1) lack of visibility (parts and tools were difficult to identify), (2) high memory demands, and (3) insufficient feedback.

Using knowledge structures to redesign an instructor-operator station.

Frequently, user interface (UI) designers must choose between modifying an established, but suboptimal and familiar, UI or to avoid such changes. Changing the UI's, organization may frustrate users who have become familiar with the original design, whereas failing to make changes may force users to perform at an unsatisfactory level. This paper presents two studies that investigate whether users familiar with a poorly designed UI would find items faster, and prefer a reorganized UI that conformed to domain expert knowledge, or would their familiarity with the original UI yield faster performance and higher satisfaction.

Nonconscious activation of an elderly stereotype and speed of driving.

Under the guise of evaluating a head-up display in a driving simulator, 11 participants (5 men), ages 21 to 35 years, completed scrambled-sentence tasks (while waiting at stop signs) designed to prime an elderly stereotype. Each driver completed both the Elderly Stereotype and Control conditions with order counterbalanced across participants. Further, order of presentation of word sets for each trial was random.

Feedback preferences and impressions of waiting.

Objective: Three experiments examined the effects of various feedback displays on user preference, apparent waiting durations, waiting time reasonableness, and other user experience measures.

Background: User interface guidelines advocate keeping users informed about system status; however, the duration estimation literature shows that focusing on temporal information makes the wait seem longer. How can designers reconcile these issues?

Methods: In three experiments, students chose movies from a simulated movie database and then were shown feedback displays (static, sequential dots, constant-rate progress bars, or variable-rate progress bars) for different durations.