What Does an Engineering Psychologist Do?

Engineering psychology , a branch of psychology. It refers to the study of human psychological activities and their laws in the interaction between humans, machines and the environment. The purpose is to make the design of machinery and equipment and the working environment suitable for the various requirements of the human body, so as to achieve a reasonable cooperation between human, machine and environment, so that people under different conditions can work efficiently, safely, healthily and comfortably And life. The research scope is very wide, involving human science such as physiology, anatomy, anthropology, biomechanics, medicine and technical sciences such as electronics, mechanics and computer. ^[1]

Its purpose is to match the design of engineering technology with the physical and mental characteristics of people, thereby improving system efficiency, ensuring human-machine safety, and enabling people to work effectively and comfortably in the system.

Adapting humans to the requirements of machines is a basic feature of human-machine relationship research before the 1940s. When designing machines, engineers often only focus on improving the mechanical properties of the machine and rarely consider the user's requirements; the work of psychologists is also limited to the selection and training of operators for ready-made machines.

During the Second World War, due to the greatly improved weapon performance and complexity, even selected and trained operators were difficult to adapt to, resulting in many machine deaths or accidental hits on the target. This forces people to re-examine the design of the equipment and promotes the recognition that the machine and the operator are a whole. The weapon can only function safely and effectively when it matches the physical and mental characteristics of the user. Based on this understanding, the concept of man-machine system was proposed. In this way, people began to shift from the main research to the adaptation of humans to machines to the research of adapting machines to humans, thus forming the discipline of engineering psychology. Chapney's Application

Some engineers who design machinery, cars, appliances, and other mechanical devices occasionally have whimsy. They want to make those control buttons and valves more suitable for natural human perception and athletic ability. For example, even in early cars, the connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels was already this way. If you want to turn left, the driver turns the steering wheel to the left. This may seem like the most obvious thing, but the earliest cars were steered by the rudder stick. If you want to turn left, the driver has to turn

Engineering psychology mainly studies the physiological and psychological characteristics of the human body related to technical design, and provides human data for the design of human-machine-environment systems. For example, in order to make the design and arrangement of the working space, workbench, cockpit, controller, and various other personal appliances suitable for the physical characteristics of the user, the static structure of the human body, dynamic functional dimensions and human biomechanical parameters must be determined; A high-quality human-machine information exchange device must study human communication characteristics and ability limits, and human information processing models; in order to improve the reliability of the system, it is necessary to study human alarms when the work is overloaded or low load. Responsiveness and behavior characteristics during emergencies; individual differences in human abilities and subjective and objective conditions that affect the ability level to play are also important topics in engineering psychology research.

1. Variables: It is a basic concept in psychological research. The size of variables can be observed and measured. The purpose of scientific research is to find out the relationship between various variables. 2. The variables in the research of engineering psychology mainly involve behavioral variables. This variable has two main dimensions: quantitative

Human engineering has been a fairly well-known branch of applied psychology, and people doing it work on a wide range, from large passenger jets to subway control centers, from bedside radios to home computers. Humanity engineering psychologists have studied dozens of questions, including whether a scaled rotating disk is easier to read with a fixed mark or a pointer is more easily read around a disk with a fixed scale. (Rotating the disc is a better design), how to make the handle of the control button easier to find some (one way: mark by different colors; the other way: make different shapes according to its purpose, so that you do nt have to look at it Know which one--for example, make the landing stick's joystick head round, like a wheel, and make the auxiliary control stick into a sheet-shaped wedge). Until recently, the most disaster-threatening equipment in the United States, the nuclear power plant, had not benefited from human engineering in its design. After the Sanli Island nuclear power plant accident in 1979, the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission made up for it. They recognized that the company that originally designed and built the US nuclear power plant lacked psychologists conducting human engineering research. This may also be the reason for the serious defects in the manual operation part of the Three Mile Island machine system. The operator could have been reminded to notice that the sign of a stuck valve in the automatic parking system was not too conspicuous; almost 30% of the system logos were hung too high for the operators to see; Some colors indicate normal status on some control panels, and faults on others. As a result of these discoveries, the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission hired about 30 psychologists to re-enact new regulations and

1. Operational research. With the improvement of technical level, the research on operation is also changing. Early work such as FW Taylor's work time research, FB Gilbraith and LEM Gilbraith's motion analysis, and later research on the operation of conveyor belt production are classic works in engineering psychology. For example, after transitioning from mechanical engineering to automated production, people stay away from the objects being manipulated, and monitoring becomes the main mode of operation for people. In the future, this issue will become more important and become a comprehensive research topic. It includes the design of new instruments, special training and selection of personnel, and work system arrangements. 2. Human-machine system. Under production conditions, information transfer and mutual adaptation between humans and machines are the prerequisites to ensure the reliability and high efficiency of a large system. Engineering psychology has made many contributions in this regard. It is also of great significance to apply the results of cognitive psychology and the objective analysis of human psychological processes to solve automated control systems and large-scale defense projects. The current trend is to expand human-machine systems to more comprehensive systems such as man-machine-environment-society. With the popularization of electronic computers, human-computer interaction will be the focus of future research in engineering psychology.

3. Improve the quality of work and life. Whether the working environment is suitable for ensuring human safety, health, and comfort, and for ensuring high production efficiency, is one of the central issues of engineering psychology. Research in this area is about the quality of work life. It is getting more and more widespread concern. Because with the general improvement of living standards, people not only demand that the working environment can be adapted to physiological needs, but also pay more and more attention to the psychological needs of workers. For example, we attach importance to the enrichment and expansion of work content, reduce simple and repetitive labor, improve the meaning of work to people, and increase worker satisfaction.

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4. Improvement of organization management. Modern managers should be good at identifying goals for the organization, coordinating relationships within the organization (such as enhancing sense of belonging and cohesion), improving connections outside the organization (such as strengthening communication and coordination), and focusing on the use of technology developed by the organization so that an enterprise, The unit has the ability to organize itself to improve. However, these tasks are difficult to be carried out by the organization itself, and socialized consulting agencies will increasingly participate in improving the management of the organization, that is, the organization system will gradually move from closed to open. This will become an important trend in the development of engineering psychology. The United States has referred to traditional engineering psychology as engineering organizational psychology. 5. Human resources development. The automation of the production process will change the way people play a role in production, but it cannot rule out human participation in production. And with the improvement of production technology, the role of people will become more prominent, and the quality of people will be higher. In the future, engineering psychology will play a greater role in improving people's motivation level, improving training methods, scientifically evaluating and selecting people, as well as professional design and personnel arrangements. Engineering psychology will also provide a basis for scientifically developing a system for personnel management. ^[2]