Rising to the challenge
Human factors experts have identified six “grand challenges” the profession is facing to improve the world we live in and respond to the major issues facing society. A group of 20 human factors professionals examined the knowledge and skills needed to tackle these challenges and outlined directions for future research.
The six challenges _ which were chosen from a longlist of 74 suggestion – are:
- Evolution in societal thinking
- Future of human work in industry 5.0
- Climate change and sustainability
- Future of education and training
- Future of personalised health
- Life, technology and the metaverse
The group said: “Given that society now faces a growing and highly complex set of interrelated global challenges, action is required to ensure that human factors and ergonomics can fulfil its role in helping to understand and respond to such issues.
“Whilst the utility of applying human factors and ergonomics in areas such as work design, transport safety and process control is well known, its role in responding to grand challenges has received less attention.
“The primary aim of this collective effort is to define and discuss a set of grand challenges believed to represent key and pressing areas of work for the human factors and ergonomics discipline and profession.
“In doing so, our intention is not only to outline key grand challenges, but also to propose a way forward to ensure that human factors and ergonomics can respond to each challenge, including how specific human factors and ergonomics methods can be applied.
“A final aim is to communicate to the human factors and ergonomics community the role of human factors and ergonomics in responding to major global issues and challenges.”
Read the full article in Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science