Ergonomics Books

This book covers a lot of material and has presented as many diverse topics as possible in the field of biomechanics and ergonomics.

The contributing authors are from reputed organizations and it shows in the good coverage of the material, with up to date references.

However, some of the chapters were too disconnected and the book can be reduced in volume by 10% by eliminating excess information.

This excellent book offers a variety of perspectives on not only the psychology of space but also the ways that these spaces are masculinized and created to promote the ideals of heterosexual masculinity. Of particular note in this anthology are "Rock Hudsons Bachelor Apartment in Pillow Talk", an analysis of the bachelor pad and its overt design with the intention of accentuating the heterosexual and "closeting" the homosexual in the partitioning of male desire; and the sometimes humorous "Electric Carving Knife", a device marketed toward men as a means of perpetuating the male tradition of the meat carver. I also very much enjoyed the essay on "Gay use of the streets", concerning the appropriation of public spaces as a means of forming a cultural network in the cities of the 1920's.

This is a very interesting examination of masculinity, and anyone interested in this topic should enjoy this multi-dimensional analysis of masculinity and its architectures. It comes with my heartiest recommendation (and, for any men out there, you probably will never again look at the electric carving knife in quite the same way!)

not intended for people that don't want to go very deep in to the topic from many directions. if your not that type of reader then its a hard read but if you are then this is probably on of the better books out in the market in the subject. so if you interested in taking you're site to the next level and support or at least know about the options , this is a great start point.

4 and not 5 only because it was a hard read for me, although probably the only good book in the topic out but still is a hard read.

A guidebook, aimed at User Interace / Human Factors students or professionals. Chapters are written in an easy to read language. It addresses a variety of topics: from interaction design process and guidelines, inpout devices, sound interfaces, standards, evaluation, new Human Factors, cultural differences, pleasure in product use, to a useful overview-summery of all the guidelines. It presents several tools, techniques and guidelines, and as a toolbook of guidelines for a variety of topicsm it is useful for HF / UI practitioners reference. Most guidelines are presented and explained in a clear and fairly easy to read way. It is made up of several contributions, each with a different style of writting, from quite several proffesionals in the field of HF. The book is a practicioners reference, rather than a book with a narrative, that tried to make a certain point through it's struicture. I found it interesting that you can read this book's chapters add-hoc, when you need to and according to what part you need to consult, withoun neceserily reading them in the sequencial order they are presented in the book.

The book is an excellent source of reference. It compliments the quality of the preceding editions with additional material that is often surpassed in other books.

I guess this is the engineering student's nightmare. You would have to slug through a book with numbers and concepts minus the presentation. It's a good book for the subject matter if you can bear the torture.

Sanders text is a review of all the significant areas of Human Factors technology. Over the years, Sanders has developed the best textbook in the field with the best examolws of applications. Recommended for everyone in this field.

Overall I found this book to provide a myriad of information. I was excited about office design and all of the aspects concerning this area. In many regards the book is out of date - computers, especially. But the concepts of chair design were particularly well presented. Much of the information was very detailed - noise, illumination, displays. I was, however, impressed with the amount of research the authors did by the way they cited the vast amount of research in each of the various sections. Also, they did keep their sense of humor and acknowledged the real world in their analysis.

This book is an excellent beginner's manual for Human Factors. It is used in several college's Human Factor's initial courses.

The topics it covers are the basic "physical" human factors topics. There is breadth but not depth. However it does not do much with UI design. There is nothing on Web design or computer station design.

This book's data is limited to examples that illustrate various points in the book. If you need detailed anthropometric data or workspace recoommendations you won't find it here.

Alan Cooper's book About face can help you with the UI part.

Jakob Nielson's Web Usability or Steve Krug's Don't make me think book can give you information on Web design.

Woodson's Human Factors Design Handbook can help you with the computer station part. At lot of money for just this though.

If you need detailed anthropmetric date, the sources I am most familiar with are:

Human Factors Design Handbook by Woodson(though it is a biased sample, if this is all you can get it is better than nothing) Woodson's newer book (2nd edition) gives computer station information, but is pricey for just this.

The measure of Man and Woman by Henry Dreyfuss and Associates (dated in 1970s)

BodySpace by Stephen Pheasant (in metric)

International data on Anthropometry by Hans W. Jurgens (gives you some international data found nowhere else).

Another thing that may help you is the table of contents:

Table of Contents:

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1. Human Factors and Systems

2. Human Factors Research Methodologies

Part 2: INFORMATION INPUT

3. Information Input and Processing

4. Text, Graphics, Symbols and Codes

5. Visual Display of Dynamic Information

6. Auditory, Tactual and Olfactory Displays

7. Speech Communications

PART 3: HUMAN OUTPUT AND CONTROL

8. Physical Work and Manual Materials Handling

9. Motor Skills

10. Human Control of systems

11. Controls and Data Entry devices

12. Hand tools and devices

PART 4: WORKPLACE DESIGN

13. Applied Anthropometry, Work-space design and Seating

14. Arrangement of Components within a Physical Space

15. Interpersonal Aspects of Workplace Design

PART 5: ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS

16. Illumination

17. Climate

18. Noise

19. Motion

PART 6: HUMAN FACTORS APPLICATIONS

20. Human Error, Accidents and Safety

21. Human Factors and the Automobile

22. Human Factors in Systems design

APPENDICES

A. List of Abbreviations

B. Control Devices

C. NIOSH Recommended Action Limit Formula for Lifting Tasks

"Human Factors in Engineering and Design" is a well researched book that is recommended for anyone studying ergonomics and human factor issues in engineering and design, particularly at undergraduate level. It is a comprehensive coverage of the various relevant and pertinent topics that students and practitioners should find useful.

The topics covered include information input, human output and control, workplace design, environmental conditions and human factor applications. I found the book to contain all the information pertaining to human factors that I needed, although some few areas are outdated, which however, did little to diminish the import and utility of the book.

The book is well written in simple, plain English making it easily understandable to a wide audience. The only drawback is the price, which some students may find a bit steep, even though it is well worth it.

This book is a great aviation safety book because it describes why accidents occur in aviation and what is done to prevent them. I recommend this book to anyone that enjoys aeronautics.

This is currently a required reading for ERAU. The author is very knowledgable; however, he needs a better editor. It is difficult to decipher the author's meaning at times due to his tendencies to ramble.

This book is by far the WORST book I have ever had to read. This book is required reading for ERAU. Our instructor said this is one of the most comprehensive books dealing with aviation safety, but it does not change the fact that the spelling and sentence structure is awful. It is full of contradictions and barely makes any sense. Do not buy it unless you absolutely, positively have to!

Concise, clear and through view of the inner and outer working environment of an aviators life. Very well researched and documented in an easy to understand format, no technojargon to confuse the novice. Required reading for any current or aspiring commercial pilots, and a must have for industry safety affiliates. Good use of informative and entertaining illustrations and graphs, not stuffy or boring. Up to date with current technology and encompasses history as well. This is an excellent book.

"Human Factors in Flight" is an excellent book in human factors for aviators that is well written in simple English making it easy to follow and understand by non-experts in the field. Human factors encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork.

Human factors is concerned with the cognitive and interpersonal skills required to manage the flight within an organised aviation system. In this case, cognitive skills are the mental processes required for gaining and maintaining situational awareness, for solving problems and for taking decisions.

Interpersonal skills include effective communications and good teamwork. Good interpersonal skills encourage the creation of synergy and the development of successful teamwork. Both cognitive and interpersonal skills are enhanced by a good emotional climate amongst the crew, but they are also easily degraded by stress, so management of the emotional climate and stress becomes and integral and important element of good human factors.

Safe and efficient flight operations depend for their success not only on the attainment of sound technical knowledge and skills but also on the mastery by aircrew of the cognitive and interpersonal skills which form the basis of good human factors.

Human factors is not merely an abstract management concept but rather is a discipline that embraces principles and skills which, when coupled with good technical knowledge and expertise, will allow the crew to make the best use of all available resources to realize optimum effectiveness in the conduct of operations whilst simultaneously maximising the safety of the flight.

This excellent book is recommended for all pilots and cabin attendants, regulators, safety managers and aeronautical engineering students.

Productivity Improvement Muda

Although this book has valuable information regarding traditional time and motion techniques, it does a poor job of addressing the lean manufacturing aspect. In today's dynamic manufacturing environment, the Industrial Engineer is forever pressed to increase throughput and reduce inventories rather than study time standards in infinite detail. Given these constraints, the fusion of more contemporary lean manufacturing techniques with traditional time and motion studies was severely lacking in this textbook.

As time has progressed, manufacturing professionals have become more detail oriented due to the competition within the industry and also due to the high costs of production. With the concept of lean manufacturing being continuously improved, manufacturing will have a high % of efficiency. My goal is to see manufacturing processes have a 100% efficiency. This is a good book to use in undersstanding the big picture of lean manufacturing.

Good explanation of traditional work measurement techniques and does discuss their application to support the "trendy" lean manufacturing techniques. As such, will help practioners of lean techniques to use a sound engineered/quantified approach. At times, seems like a commercial for author's consulting business. Page paper quality, photocopy pictures and illustrations are not professional quality. Price is questionable given printing quality.

As a Human Factors professional that owns the 1st addition, shortly after purchasing this version (2nd edition), I questioned my wisdom.

This book is about 200 pages shy of the original and not surprisingly repeats many of the same information as it's predecessor. Unfortunately, it gives us little more than dated information with a bit of new stuff tacked on.

What really dissappointed me was that the anthropometric data that is provided here, dates back to that of the original's 1960's data. What is the point of a new edition? The census data stated here is so dated it is ridiculous, both in composition as well as age. I wish I had known that this data was not updated prior to my investing in the new edition. I would not have purchased it.

I question the usefulness of data published in so recent a book based primarily on Air force personnel of the 60s. That type of data had it's day & was appropriate at it's original publishing. Today's Human Factors professional needs more diversified data that is more international in it's scope. For that matter, I'm certain 1960s air force personnel (who are screened for height and weight) hardly represent the year 2000 demographics of the United States much better.

I found it interesting that the same graphics that may have been the best you could do in the original were repeated in this new document. Couldn't they refresh some of the look, clean up some of the old graphs. As the original was, this document is a mix of font styles, graphics and inconsistent data presentation. Does this truly represent the user of the document well? I recognize presentation is not "everything" but on a second pass of the same information you could dress it a bit better at least.

The major addition predictably is the data surrounding workstations and computer usage, however, I'm questioning it's usefulness relative to the anthropometric data also here. Is this new data based on aged human measurement data too? Will it only fit the 1960 US air force man and woman?

I think this book would have been better printed as an addendum to the original version costing about $25. This way the workstation data could be added plus any items that are new.

A review of our book stated that the body measurement data came from 1960 Air Force studies. The reviewer should be pleased to know that the book actually contains some of the latest anthropometric data available for the U.S. population. Just before publication of the Human Factors Design Handbook, the U.S. Army completed measurements of nearly 9000 subjects. These data are contained in our book. While this is not a profile of the civilian population (male and female subjects ranged from age 18 to 51), it does provide fairly good estimates. Unfortunately, even now there is no comprehensive survey data for United States civilian population. Currently the Society of Automotive Engineers is coordinating a massive survey of United States and European civilian populations. The project participants include Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and several industrial partners. The survey is called the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource, or CAESARTM and data should be available late in 2001.

Just before updating the Human Factors Design Handbook, the author completed development of NASA's Man-Systems Integration Standards. This is the NASA "bible" of human factors design guidelines. Readers should feel confident in that these resources and data (including anthropometrics) were integrated throughout the revised edition of the Human Factors Design Handbook.

This handbook provides an extremely comprehensive review of hundreds of measures. Each review has a general description, strengths and limitations based on data, data collection requirements, thresholds of critical values that have been empirically tested, and references. Hundreds of reports and articles are referenced. The document has brevity, clarity, and integrity. There is no author's conjecture.

This book was written to fill a definite need for applied human factors practitioners. Unfortunately, the frustrations outweigh the benefits. It does catalogue a number of measures, but fails to succeed in its aim. The text reads more like a stack of literature review notecards than a handbook or guide. At times, it hands out results without talking about what a given researcher was measuring or addressing. It is almost as if they published an expanded draft outline instead of the real book it was supposed to grow into.

It's title clearly states that it addresses Human Performance Measures. Liberally splashed in amongst the measures, however, are entry after entry of experimental tasks that present vague task results without talking about the measures used to determine those results. It does so without pointing out that these items are tasks, not measures. When it does address true measures, it offers no explanation of when that type of measure is appropriate, or even how to use it. Instead, in simple literature review fashion, it simply cites results of different journal articles.

This volume is completely hamstrung by the publisher formatting of the text. When you flip through the book, it appears to be a single, 188-page-long run-on paragraph. Reading a specific section reveals the same problem: headers and subheaders are barely (if at all) distinguishable from the text, which is of low to moderate value anyways.

It is a perfect example of an information flea market - There are a very few good bits of information in there, but you have to spend a whole lot of time digging around to find it. The topic was a great idea, but the execution was lacking. It just takes too much digging time for the potential payoff.