ABSTRACT

The main goal of human factors specialists, as part of the design team, is to help develop products and systems that are compatible with the users’ logic, so they can use them easily and efficiently. As time goes on, the market for the majority of consumer products will become more competitive and therefore hard to penetrate because consumers have very high expectations: they want to choose the “perfect” product. To better comply with the expectations of the market, it is important for human factors specialists to go beyond the criteria of usability by taking into account other dimensions such as aesthetics (i.e. product appearance, style) and innovation. This requires a more active collaboration with all design partners and also a better preparation of students in human factors programs to face the realities of the industrial world.