An Overview of Standards in Modern Human Factors

Human factors and ergonomics (HFE) research is an important field for improving safety and minimizing risks associated with product-use errors through avoidance of intended or unintended mistakes. For industry, standardization can make the dissimilar elements into systems easier, provides a path to user acceptance, reduces product costs, and opens more markets. For HFE, standardization will increase safety and minimize the risks caused by product use errors and improve productivity. This paper presents an overview of standards in modern HFE. It explains the origins of modern HFE, the use of standards in HFE, and the past and future of HFE related standardization.