ABSTRACT
In ergonomics, we like to believe we have come a long way since then. What is often seen as the revolution that birthed our field, after all, flipped this model. The “human factor” was not the cause of trouble, but the recipient of it. Most in the field will have heard about the tinkerers of WWII-engineering psychologists like Alphone Chapanis, Paul Fitts-who were able to eradicte whole families of incidents and problems not by telling people to try harder and take more responsibility, but by intervening in the conditions that made up people’s working environment, including its engineered and organizational features. Rather than seeing human errors as the brain bloopers of morally or mentally deficient people, ergonomics’ insights and interventions showed how “errors” are systematically connected to features
of people’s tools and tasks. Change the conditions of work, and you change the behavior that goes on inside of that workplace.
