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A Guide to Human Factors and Ergonomics

The author states in the Foreword that this book is intended to be a basic text for a first course in human factors/ergonomics (HFE) at the undergraduate and the graduate levels. He goes on to say that ‘Some of the text is adapted from a book that I wrote a few years ago: A Guide to the Ergonomics of Manufacturing, but most is new’. He also states that the text is suitable for many types of student and professional: engineers, computer scientists, behavioural scientists as well as medical doctors and physiotherapists. The review of this book should be tackled in two ways: a review of the book in its current form as a standalone text and a review of the book as compared with its predecessor A Guide to the Ergonomics of Manufacturing (Helander, 1995). The new book is identified as being a second edition despite having a completely different title to the first edition. The author is clearly making a very definite and quite personal statement by creating the new title of A Guide to Human Factors and Ergonomics. This approach is very evident once the new sections of this second edition are read. The author adopts the hybrid term of HFE and applies it in the abbreviated form in areas where normally there would be a reference to either human factors or ergonomics, but not normally both. Ergonomists are referred to as HFE experts or HFE specialists. The book is split into three parts. Part I deals with Information-Centered Human Factors, Part 2 with Human-Body-Centered Ergonomics and Part III with Organization/Management-Centered Human Factors. Some of the book could be described as informative, in other words, it gives background information on the subject. But the major proportion of the book is instructive. In other words, it provides detailed instruction on how to generate a suitably designed working environment with the design being based on what is known about human abilities and limitations, which is this book’s strength. The instructive sections of the book are clear, concise, realistic, logical and practical. This is where the comparison with the first edition of the book becomes important. The portions of the second edition which carry the most powerful and effective instructional material are actually a direct, word-for-word repeat of the first edition. Every chapter in the first edition appears to have been transferred directly into the second edition and new additions have been woven around the original material. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the author has joined them together seamlessly for a number of reasons.