Human Factors and Ergonomics - Practitioners

Practitioners

Human factors practitioners come from a variety of backgrounds, though predominantly they are psychologists (from the various subfields of engineering psychology, cognitive psychology, perceptual psychology, applied psychology and experimental psychology) and physiologists. Designers (industrial, interaction, and graphic), anthropologists, technical communication scholars and computer scientists also contribute. Typically, an ergonomist will have an undergraduate degree in psychology, engineering, design or health sciences, and usually a masters degree or doctoral degree in a related discipline. Though some practitioners enter the field of human factors from other disciplines, both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Human Factors Engineering are available from several universities worldwide. The Human Factors Research Group (HFRG) at the University of Nottingham provides human factors courses at both at MSc and PhD level including a distance learning course in Applied Ergonomics. Other Universities to offer postgraduate courses in human factors in the UK include Loughborough University, Cranfield University and the University of Oxford.