Most organizations today understand the valuable contribution employees as people (rather than simply bodies) provide to their overall performance. Although efforts are made to make the most of the human in organizations, there is still much room for improvement. Focus in the reduction of employee injuries such as cumulative trauma disorders rose in the 80 s. Attempts at increasing performance by addressing employee satisfaction through various methods have also been ongoing for several years now. Knowledge Management is one of the most recent attempts at controlling and making the best use of employees knowledge. All of these efforts and more towards that same goal of making the most of people s performance at work are encompassed within the domain of the Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics field. HFE/E provides still untapped potential for organizational performance as the human and its optimal performance are the reason for this discipline s being. Although Human Factors programs have been generated and implemented, there is still the need for a method to help organizations fully integrate this discipline into the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of this research is to develop a method to help organizations integrate HFE/E into it business processes. This research begun with a review of the ways in which the HFE/E discipline is currently used by organizations. The need and desire to integrate HFE/E into organizations was identified, and a method to accomplish this integration was conceptualized. This method consisted on the generation of two domain-specific ontologies (a Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics ontology, and a Business ontology), and mapping the two creating a concept map that can be used to integrate HFE/E into businesses. The HFE/E ontology was built by generating two concept maps that were merged and then joined with a HFE/E discipline taxonomy. A total of four concept maps, two ontologies and a taxonomy were created, all of which are contributions to the HFE/E, and the business- and management-related fields.

Technological advances in products and systems have brought emotional design or emotional engineering to the forefront of research. While several measures to assess emotional expression of products have been developed, the source of the emotion rating of a product or system was often unclear. The purpose of this dissertation is to conduct three studies to examine the causes of emotional ratings and to establish if product-specific emotion rating scales are useful for capturing accurate user evaluations. Three studies were conducted using citrus juicers. Juicers were chosen for several reasons: their wide variety of styles, one self-explanatory purpose (to make juice), and the fact that their benign nature is unlikely to harm participants. Study 1 isolated juicers that had unique emotion profiles to use in the Study 2. Participants rated 41 juicers with fourteen product-specific emotions. Participants predominantly used "five" of the fourteen emotions in their juicer ratings. Ten juicers with the highest rating consensus, within these five emotions, were chosen for Study 2. Study 2 determined that anthropomorphic tendencies are predictive of emotional ratings. Extreme Anthropomorphism from the Anthropomorphic Tendency Scale (ATS) was used to test individual differences (Sims et al. 2005;Chin et al., 2005). Individuals with low anthropomorphic tendencies were more critical of the products. Sex differences also were analyzed, and significant interactions were found. Women exhibited different preferences for juicers than me. First impression ratings from Study 1 were validated by first impression ratings from Study 2. Finally, Study 3 measured the impact of product interaction on emotional ratings. Participants used seven juicers to make a minimum of four ounces of juice. Pre and post-interaction ratings were compared to determine the effect of interaction on the emotional appraisal of products. The results confirmed that interaction had an impact on affective ratings. As opposed to experienced users, novice users deviated in their pre-post appraisal, especially on aesthetically boring but highly usable products. Novice users based their entire initial appraisal on aesthetics, while experienced users were influenced by their past experience. Humans rely on past experience to recall likes or dislikes. The findings here suggest that aesthetic appraisal of products (or other environments) will remain influenced by past exposure/experience with those or similar products. Thus, only true novices can remain unbiased by past experience for aesthetic appraisal and capture a true 'first impression'. Also, past experience of users should be assessed when conducting research that relies on emotional appraisal of products. These findings may be especially useful in product development where new designs are based on a golden standard, competition, or go through several iterations of testing. The results may be used to guide human factors professionals to develop measures that more accurately capture affective ratings, and thus create more pleasurable products and systems.

Insomnia is a sleep disorder which is classified by one's persistent inability to fall asleep or maintain sleep. One common yet controversial approach to treating insomnia is sleep hygiene education (SHE). Sleep hygiene is defined as behaviors that promote quality sleep. SHE is typically provided through as a paper sheet containing a list of recommendations, and the findings regarding its efficacy are mixed. Providing insomnia sufferers with a SHE treatment modality that offers practice, feedback, and motivation may be effective at treating insomnia. Therefore, the first goal of the present study is to examine the efficacy of a game-based SHE intervention. After using the game-based intervention for 30 days, participants had significant improvement in overall sleep quality, as well as numerous subcategories of sleep quality. Participants also had a significant decrease in state levels of anxiety. Moreover, previous research has found that certain personality traits are related to one's propensity to achieve a flow state, which is the experience of colloquially "being in the zone" when completing a task or activity. Therefore, the second goal of the study was to examine whether personality predicted flow propensity. Personality was not found predict flow propensity. Finally, a third goal of the study was to examine whether one's propensity for flow predicted sleep improvement. In other words, it was expected that those with a higher propensity for flow would experience better treatment outcomes due to their ability to engage more with the intervention. However, flow propensity was not found to predict sleep improvement. The study's findings collectively demonstrate the efficacy of a game-based treatment approach to insomnia, regardless of individual differences. Recommendations for future research directions are provided.

A deep space concept vehicle created from a core stage barrel section of the Space Launch System rocket has been designed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for use in future manned Mars missions. The spacecraft, known as the Space Launch System-Derived Habitat, features a dedicated space for exercise equipment. A human factors assessment was performed to determine whether or not the exercise area has adequate volume for multiple microgravity exercise machines to be used by multiple crew members simultaneously. It was determined that in its current design the exercise area does not have adequate volume to house the machines required for bone and muscle maintenance as required for long-duration spaceflight missions. It was recommended that the volume either be vastly expanded or dissolved entirely in favor of multiple, smaller exercise volumes that could each house one machine.

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Workers are challenged by the increasingly complex multitasking environments they experience. To interact effectively with these environments, they must avoid overload. When workers get overloaded (when their mental demands exceed the resource capacity) quality drops, performance degrades, and safety suffers. What is largely unknown, however, is whether these results translate to postural tasks. Postural stability exhibits an entirely different set of challenges: injury, the danger of slips and falls, and risks associated with aging workers or those who have mental or physical challenges. An assembly line worker, for example, must assume different postures, interact with the product in some way, and react to visual and auditory alarms. Mistakes could be dangerous. It is clearly important, then, to understand the interactive effects of mental and postural workload. The goal of this research was to quantify the effects of mental and postural demands on overall workload. To accomplish this, we implemented three studies that were designed to capture the synergistic effects of different task types on overall workload and compare different types of workload measures against each other to help further design research in the area. We designed a dual-task mental/postural protocol to test the differential effects of a series of cognitive demands found in dual-task postural studied. The results of the first study depict a clear picture: the addition of an auditory task to unstable seating decreases postural sway. Based solely on this result, it might be concluded that workload did not increase. Using the same protocol while measuring mental workload however, we found that workload did in fact increase both subjectively and objectively, even when similar postural benefit was found. Even as performance seemed to improve, the participant moved nearer to possible overload and performance decrement (a condition we did not induce in this research). Based on the differences found between the different measures, we believe the importance of measuring overall workload as well as individual task performance in cognitive/postural dual-task research is very high. / Ph. D.

In interdisciplinary and cross-functional groups and teams, members pool diverse perspectives for the purposes of new product design and innovation, but these different perspectives may cause interruptions in effective communication. This study examines the use of analogies and metaphors as effective communication tools in interdisciplinary group settings. Analogies and metaphors are an important aspect of our cognitive activities. Communication using analogies and metaphors plays an important role in constructing our knowledge structures. In this study, an instructional tool with group activities has been designed and tested to teach the effective use of analogies and metaphors in interdisciplinary and cross-functional group and team settings. The tool was designed using theories of pedagogy and includes activities for group members. The instructional tool was tested in interdisciplinary group settings. The results from a mixed methods analysis of data the collected are presented as contributions to the research in group communication and analogies and metaphors. The study also identified characteristics of effective analogies that may be used as potential communication tools in interactions between members from different disciplines and functions. / Master of Science

The objective of this study was to determine which size symbols should be used by the U.S. Army for an operator control unit to indicate the status of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). Three sizes of symbols were studied. The symbols subtended 20, 40, and 69 minutes of arc corresponding to 0.116, 0.233, and 0.400 inches high when viewed at a distance of 20 inches from a touch screen. Twelve participants were asked to watch the symbols on a map display and touch one of four UGV symbols when it stopped moving. Different numbers (0, 8 and 12) of distracter symbols with the same height as the UGV symbols appeared during the experimental trials. The time to notice that a UGV symbol had stopped (recognition time) and to touch the screen (response time) were measured. Participants were asked for Subjective Workload Assessment Technique (SWAT) ratings for each combination of symbol size and number of distracter symbols. Errors committed while attempting to touch the correct symbol were counted. Participants made very few errors attempting to touch the wrong symbol. Results for the time and error measures were as expected for changes in symbol size. As symbol size increased, recognition time, response time, and extra touches decreased. Significant differences were seen in these measures between the subtending 20 and 40 minutes of arc and between symbols subtending 20 and 69 minutes of arc. Also, as expected, subjective mental workload increased as symbol size decreased with differences seen between all symbol size levels. No significant differences were observed for workload manipulation (number of distracter symbols) as measured by time and error. However, SWAT scores did show a significant difference as a result of number of distracters. The differences between 0 and 8 distracters and between 0 and 12 distracters were significant. There was no significant interaction between symbol size and number of distracters for any of the measures. Overall results suggest that symbols smaller than those recommended for keypads may be sufficient for interactive map displays. For static platforms with barehanded operators, symbols that subtend 40 minutes of arc may be sufficiently large to ensure adequate touch screen performance under low to moderate workload conditions. / Master of Science

A significant amount of research has investigated the underlying neural mechanisms that enable the direction of attention throughout a search array. The biased competition model (Desimone & Duncan, 1995) proposes that an attentional template (the neural instantiation of the search target) is created when the target representation in visual working memory (VWM) is communicated to frontal regions which then bias early visual areas to attend to target features. Despite this, much of the current work focuses solely on the target representation in VWM, which is only one small part of the attentional template according to biased competition. Thus, I used functional connectivity analyses, to examine theta-gamma coupling across the brain, to validate the biased competition model and add to recent work that focuses exclusively on VWM. My results show that frontal to posterior theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling is a measure of the attentional template. Greater phase-amplitude coupling was consistently observed on trials in which attention, as measured by early search eye movements, was directed towards the target rather than a distractor and was associated with superior target recognition. These findings demonstrate that frontal to posterior biasing of early visual areas is a critical neural mechanism of the attentional template.

Yes / This article reviews studies conducted “in the wild” that explore the “ironies of automation” in Robotic Assisted Surgery (RAS). Workload may be reduced for the surgeon, but increased for other team members, with postural stress relocated rather than reduced, and the introduction of a range of new challenges, for example, in the need to control multiple arms, with multiple instruments; and the increased demands of being physically separated from the team. Workflow disruptions were not compared with other surgeries; however, the prevalence of equipment and training disruptions differs from other types of surgeries. A consistent observation is that communication and coordination problems are relatively frequent, suggesting that the surgical team may need to be trained to use specific verbal and non-verbal cues during surgery. RAS also changes the necessary size of the operating room instrument cleaning processes. These studies demonstrate the value of clinically-based human factors engineers working alongside surgical teams to improve the delivery of RAS. / National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme (project number 12/5005/04). We acknowledge the support of the NIHR Clinical Research Network. The research by Hallbeck and colleagues made possible in part by the Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery. The research of Weigl and colleagues was supported by the Munich Centre for Health Sciences (MC-Health). The research by Bisantz and colleagues was supported by the University at Buffalo, the ATLAS lab, and the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation. The research by Anger and Catchpole was funded by National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Biomedical Engineering Award R03EB017447 (Catchpole/Anger) and the UCLA Medical Student Training in Aging Research Program-the National Institute on Aging (T35AG026736), the John A. Hartford Foundation, and the Lillian R. Gleitsman Foundation.