Human Factors Psychology: Scientific Reasoning in an Interdisciplinary Field

人为因素是心理学在工业中迅速发展的应用。随着产品的开发，人因心理学家帮助规划产品设计，以最大限度地提高产品对用户的适应性。将人为因素考虑纳入设计中可以产生缩短学习时间、提高性能可靠性或最大限度地减少与产品使用相关的事故等优势。心理学和工程学之间这种跨学科合作的生产力导致了对这一领域人才的需求增加。 到目前为止，心理学中的人为因素课程一直集中在研究生阶段。在人为因素的本科课程是罕见的，在该领域的适当的实验室培训是不太可能的。然而，基于实验室的培训在本科水平的人为因素提供了一个独特的机会，发展技能的科学推理在一个跨学科领域与明确的应用到日常生活中。 本项目旨在建立一个培养本科生的人因实验室。该实验室由计算机工作站组成，包括专门用于人为因素调查的设备和软件。人为因素课程向学生介绍该领域的问题和概念，并强调实验室工作作为学生学习与人为因素问题相关的假设检验过程的背景。完成课程的学生有资格与跨学科设计团队合作，完成西雅图大学科学与工程项目中心当地行业合同项目。实验室是测试这些团队项目中生成的设计假设的理想场所。在这个程序中训练的学生将在这一领域的就业或研究生学习特别强有力的候选人。

Human Factors is a rapidly growing application of psychology in industry. As products are developed, human factors psychologists assist in planning product design to maximize the fit of product to user. Integrating human factors considerations into design can yield such advantages as shortening the learning period, enhancing reliability of performance, or minimizing accidents associated with product use. The productivity of such interdisciplinary collaborations between psychology and engineering has led to increased demand for people trained in this field. Up to this point, human factors programs in psychology have been concentrated at the graduate level. Undergraduate course offerings in human factors are rare, and appropriate laboratory training in the field is even less likely. However, laboratory-based training in human factors at the undergraduate level offers a unique opportunity to develop skills in scientific reasoning in an interdisciplinary field with clear application to everyday life. This project focuses on building a human factors laboratory for training undergraduate students. The lab consists of computer workstations, including equipment and software specialized for human factors investigations. The human factors course introduces students to issues and concepts in the field and emphasizes lab work as a context in which students learn the hypothesis-testing process relevant to human factors questions. Students who complete the course are eligible to work with interdisciplinary design teams completing projects under contract from local industries in the Science and Engineering Project Center at Seattle University. The lab is an ideal location to test hypotheses about designs generated in these team projects. Students trained in this program will be especially strong candidates for either employment or graduate study in this field.