Development of theory and practice in ergonomics

Abstract

The author had long been thinking about writing this article. In the USSR, and subsequently in the post-Soviet period, one of the factors limiting the development of ergonomics was a misunderstanding of its core by overwhelming majority of engineers, designers, developers and technologists. In those cases where they had begun to realize its importance and then learned this discipline, previously unknown to them, I encountered a resistance to incorporating its principles and data in engineering and design activities. This was substantiated by the fact that ergonomic statements had often been formulated only in a qualitative form, and not in a quantitative one. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.