ABSTRACT
The discipline of ergonomics/human factors is at an important point in its development. It is a discipline which has always been linked with design, whether of work practices or products or systems, but developments in the recent past have placed a new emphasis on the nature of those links. Domestic and other products have always to some extent been the subject of anthropometric and biomechanical scrutiny, at however crude a level, and other aspects of human characteristics have been routinely employed as limiters in the design of complex systems, usually for expert or trainable users. The electronic revolution has precipitated an unprecedented invasion of hitherto esoteric problems into the common domain, and together with the greying of the population of that domain, has created new demands on ergonomists and the design profession. So-called ' intelligent products' have been seen sometimes to be remarkably stupid, and the strategies of traditional ergonomics revealed as inadequate to deal with the problem. The statement that "allowing the possibility of use says nothing about how a product will be used" (Green, Chapter 10) may be seen as a truism, but it helps to focus on the changes which are taking place in ergonomics and design research and practice. The user as a s et of quantifiable characteristics is giving way to the user as an unpredictable part of a complex interaction, and in turn the emphasis is being placed on researching what has been termed the ecology of that interaction. This ecology is never more complex than when domestic products and users are the central issue. The view of ergonomics taken in this book is a broad one, and steps over the boundaries of the classical work efficiency definitions to deal with the complete user/product interaction. An attempt has been made to give an overview of some of the best of current practice and to identify a number of issues that the profession will be called upon to address in the years to come. Whilst the discipline is currently thriving to an unprecedented degree (Jordan, Chapter 21), its continued success is likely to be dependent on the effectiveness with which it meets these new challenges.
