Human factors

Why do we need to study human factors? Well, there is a simple and common-sense answer: we are making things for humans. In more technical terms, the success of any product, service or system will depend on user acceptability. User acceptability will be decided based on productivity, safety, enjoyability and similar key performance indicators (KPIs). So, we will first try to learn what makes us human, what is special about us. We will not go into philosophy but stay technical. We will also not try to summarize the whole gamut of medical science or psychology in a single chapter. We will rather cherry-pick a few aspects of human perception, cognition and motor action that are relevant for interaction design or investigated by interaction designers.