Human Factors, the science of understanding and supporting how people interact with technology, draws upon and creates knowledge in at least three traditional academic disciplines. First, the mental component of these interactions draws upon and contributes to psychology and the study of the mind and brain. Second, the central role of design in human factors draws upon and contributes to engineering approaches for systems analysis and modeling. Third, the representation of information flow between people and technology draws upon and contributes to computer, communication and information science. Finally, the human-technology systems themselves providing the context of human factors reflect diverse areas such as aviation, healthcare, automobiles, computers, the Internet, medical devices, consumer products, power generation, criminal justice, and fire fighting.
Our program at the University of Illinois is truly interdisciplinary with a faculty representing a range of expertise from engineering to liberal arts and whose interests range from theoretical development to practically relevant research guiding design, training, and the use of automation. Faculty backgrounds include psychology, communication, computer science, information science, industrial engineering, and aerospace engineering.
The strengths of our faculty lie in both of the complementary approaches that characterize most modern human factors research activity: In applied psychology, the methods, theories, and findings from psychological science are applied to creating interventions such as training and design to enhance system safety and performance, while in cognitive engineering, analysis and modeling techniques from the engineering, computer, and cognitive sciences are applied to inform the overall design of human-technology systems. |
