ABSTRACT
As products liability cases increasingly focus on allegations of failure to warn, user manuals and warnings become critical product safety elements. At the same time, the growth of global commerce has dramatically expanded user groups. For the writers of manuals and warnings to address product safety concerns adequately, they must know who is using their company’s products and what the product’s hazards are. User analysis is complicated by age, gender, culture, and experience variations among different groups of product users. Effectively using in-house and external sources of user information is critical to manual and warning design. At the same time, conducting a systematic and comprehensive hazard analysis of the product will help guide design decisions as well. A good hazard analysis is best conducted by a cross-functional team, and should be completed early in product development and then repeated as the product and user groups change. Hazards found are then categorized by the severity of the potential harm that could result and the likelihood of occurrence. Mitigation measures should follow standard hazard-control hierarchy and be well documented.
