Starting Up in the New Era of Human Factors

Abstract

Technology is quickly catching up to even the most cutting-edge human factors research. Studies in interaction methods and behavior, which were planned to be purely academic, are suddenly directly applicable to commercialized products. Wearables, mobile devices, voice recognition, augmented reality, intelligent systems and remote education are all here, they work well and the pace is not slowing anytime soon. Society is also changing. There are more of us, we're moving to cities, we're getting older, we have more buying power, and, all over the world, adoption of these new technologies continues to grow. This has happened hand-in-hand with changes in industry. Its global reach, massive scale and detailed performance and usage data are leading to the creation of new products and services at an astonishing rate. All of these trends are setting the stage for a golden age of human factors research and applications, one that will be bigger and better than its roots in aeronautics. To promote and ensure this rich future, researchers and practitioners will need to be more connected to one another. It's easy for academic researchers to fall behind the rapidly advancing industry that practitioners live in every day. It is also easy for practitioners to be completely unaware of foundational research that can guide new products to success.