Summary of Mini-Assignments

Section	Word limit recommendation	Mark (%)
1. Human Factors in Design	1100	20
2. Application of a Human Factors Method	600	15
3. Cognitive Human Factors	1100	20
4. Physical Human Factors	1100	20
5. Environmental Human Factors	1100	20
Overall: presentation, standard of English, and referencing	n/a	5

Section 1: Human Factors in Design

1. Provide an overview of your socio-technical interface. This should detail what you are (conceptually) proposing to design and why it is important or necessary. This should include key literature to demonstrate your idea is evidence-based.

2. Choose three of the interaction principles from ISO 924-110 (Ergonomics of human-system interaction) and describe how they are relevant to your proposed interface.

3. Describe the demographics of your participants if you were conducting a study to evaluate a performance factor of your interface and explain how you would recruit the participants.

4. Describe the ethical considerations that would need to be made if your interface was to be designed and tested with end users.

Section 2: Application of a Human Factors Method

Choose one of the Human Factors Methods covered in the lectures and follow the procedure to apply the method to your proposed interface (or part of it). Your answer will need to cover:

1. Name of method.

2. Justification for why it was chosen (with references to support your answer).

3. Output of method application (relevant to the chosen method, i.e. diagrams, tables, charts or text).

4. Summary of results (i.e. what has been found, how this would influence your design considerations for the interface, any changes you would make to the interface because of the findings, anything else of interest).

Section 3: Cognitive Human Factors

1. Identify the organisations and entities that are relevant to your interface and place them at the appropriate levels of the system using the Actor Map diagram and give an example of how failure might propagate through the system.

2. Describe how your interface would support a user’s awareness of its state, mode or awareness of the wider environment.

3. Describe and evaluate the relevance of automation to your interface/system.

Section 4: Physical Human Factors

1. Identify the hardware or applications that are relevant to your interface (see examples description in section 4 of this document) and describe the design aspects of your interface related to the physical factors (i.e. anthropometry and vibration motion). This should include key literature to demonstrate the design aspects that you choose are evidence-based.

2. Describe the design principles used to improve the physical performance of the identified hardware or platforms.

3. Evaluate the effects of physical factors (anthropometry and vibration) on interface design (i.e. how to adjust the design to fit targeted user group and the efficiency of system under vibration environment).

4. Advise the methods that could be used to mitigate the adverse impact and improve the performance of the interface.

Section 5: Environmental Human Factors

1. Identify the hardware or applications that are relevant to your interface (see examples description in section 5 of this document) and describe the design aspects of your interface related to the environment factors (i.e. visual, thermal and acoustic). This should include key literature to demonstrate the design aspects that you choose is evidence-based.

2. Describe the design principles used to improve the environmental performance of the identified hardware or platforms.

3. Evaluate the environmental factors (acoustic, visual and thermal) that affect the interface or systems performance

4. Advise the methods used to improve the performance of the interface or system under each environmental factor and discuss the interactions between these environmental factors.