National Ergonomics Month

HFES Chapters Plan NEM Activities

     A number of HFES Local and Student Chapters are holding events in honor of National Ergonomics Month 2009. Consider using some of these creative ideas to promote awareness of human factors/ergonomics in your area.

     The Atlanta Chapter is working on a Backpack Awareness Campaign for a local high school. The aim of this campaign is to educate school-aged children about how to choose and wear backpacks to decrease back pain and avoid musculoskeletal developmental problems associated with continued use of overly heavy backpacks. The campaign is planned for the spring 2010 semester, but during October, chapter members will meet with high school teachers to organize it. Chapter members will also teach an industrial design class on HF/E practices and guide students in a project to design better backpacks for younger children.

     The Clemson University Student Chapter will celebrate NEM 2009 by promoting the HF/E discipline to a local high school psychology class. Members will give a presentation explaining the HF/E field using pictures, videos, and case studies. They will conclude with an activity identifying an ergonomics issue at the high school and brainstorm and discuss design solutions. Chapter members will distribute information about where the high school students can find out more about HF/E or even get involved with the Clemson University Student Chapter. Chapter members hope to continue their relationship with this local high school and return for more activities in next spring.

     The goal of NEM 2009 for the Georgia Tech Student Chapter is to educate the campus community about HF/E. More specifically, members aim to help the campus community become aware of everyday design issues relevant to them and to educate them about how HF/E principles can help overcome these problems. The chapter is planning a Bad Design on Campus Contest. The contest is open to all Georgia Tech undergraduate and graduate students. Those who wish to participate will be required to submit details about a bad design on campus with a suggested redesign. Two winners will be chosen, and winning submissions will be posted on the student chapter Web site and highlighted in a campus newspaper article.

     The Pennsylvania State University Student Chapter is hosting a "Human Factors in Industrial Engineering" lecture series for NEM to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of HF/E. Weekly lecture topics will include human factors in health care, computer science, operations research, and product design. The goal of the lecture series is to stimulate undergraduate and graduate students' interest in the utilization of HF/E concepts and tools in order to gain insight into problems in other engineering areas.

     The Purdue University Student Chapter is planning three major activities for NEM: a Web site design competition, a technical meeting, and a field trip. The aim of these activities is to increase the awareness of HF/E among the Purdue student body. The goal of the Web site design competition is to introduce students to one major area in HF/E: human-computer interaction (HCI). Interested individuals will learn about fundamental design principles of HCI and gain hands-on experience from actual design practices. All submitted works will be evaluated in terms of functionality, usability, aesthetics, and creativity.

     For the chapter's technical meeting, "Human Factors Labs Uncovered," representatives from different HF/E labs at Purdue will present their current research projects to chapter members and other interested individuals. Members will visit the Holleman-Niswonger Simulator Facility at the Purdue airport, where they will learn how simulation technology can be used to train pilots and facilitate experiments in aviation.

     At the University of Idaho, the HFES student chapter is working on getting articles about HF/E and their chapter into all three major university publications in the month of October. Members are also planning an information design workshop focusing on chart, table, and graph design for students and faculty from many disciplines, especially the sciences. Chapter members will give presentations and psychological demonstrations about HF/E to local high school science classes, and two chapter members will make presentations about HF/E at their high schools and undergraduate alma maters. As a special project for NEM, the chapter will conduct an ergonomic evaluation of the department conference room, making suggestions as to how best to structure it for a classroom and what types of ergonomic furniture should be purchased for it.

     The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Student Chapter has a number of activities planned for NEM. To kick off the festivities, they will host a bake sale to benefit a local food pantry and will advertise their inaugural Bad Designs on Campus Competition. This competition will target all psychology, engineering, and HF/E students and encourage them to bring to light some of the design challenges and problems on campus. The winner, who will receive a monetary prize, will be announced at the end of the month, and the group will meet to propose design solutions. Finally, the chapter will host a research symposium, in which current graduate and undergraduate students will highlight their research and prepare for the upcoming HFES Annual Meeting.

     The University of Oklahoma Student Chapter is revitalizing its presence on campus. In order to attract students from such disciplines as industrial engineering, psychology, aviation, and computer science, members are planning a site visit to the Federal Aviation Administration's Civil Aeromedical Institute on November 13. Officials from the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center will give an overview of their emergency aircraft evacuation training methods. The chapter intends this event to serve as a springboard for its growth and outreach initiative over the next year.

     HFES thanks the following contributors to this article:

Sarah Acton, President, Atlanta Chapter; Nathan Klein, President, Clemson University Student Chapter; Keith R. Bujak, President, Georgia Tech Student Chapter; Monifa Vaughn-Cooke, President, Pennsylvania State University Student Chapter; Leon Zeng, President, Purdue University Student Chapter; Kylie Pfeifer, President, University of Idaho Student Chapter; Scarlett Herring, President, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Student Chapter; and Drew Harnish, President, University of Oklahoma Student Chapter.

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