What is Human Factors?
Human Factors is how we understand what happens when things don’t go to plan.
Not just when there’s a crisis—but in the everyday reality where the task, the tools, and the expectations don’t quite line up.
It’s about noticing how people really do their jobs:
how do people adapt?
what they prioritise?
how they make decisions under pressure?
how they carry risk without always naming it?
It’s not about fixing individuals.
It’s not a post-incident checklist.
It’s about asking, “Why did this make sense at the time?”
That’s the version of HF I’m interested in.
Work as Imagined vs Work as Done
A core point of Human Factors is the idea of perception vs reality. I think you do you job a certain way and vice versa, but the reality of how we do our work can be very different.
Understanding how to see past our ‘Work as Imagined’ and seeing how the work is truly done (or not) is how we start to build a plan to make the task easier, simpler and ideally, safer.
Useful resources
There’s a lot of information out there, but it can be hard to wade through. So below are a few key articles and links to help you get started thinking about the world of human factors.
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And I should be able to sing like Michael Buble, but that’s not going to happen. People will make mistakes. Thinking that someone is paid enough to not make mistakes is missing the bigger issues.
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In the nicest way possible, I don’t believe you. Two things, do people find work arounds for issues in your work, and (or) are people just not talking about when things go wrong. Either because they’re worried about the repercussions or they don’t see reporting as important?
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You’d think, wouldn’t you? But that’s not always the case. Things make sense to people at the time, and at the time, events are just “common sense”.