The Spring 09 Newsletter of the Product Design Technical Group of HFES starts off with an editorial by group chair Steve Belz, which articulates a cliche, but accurate situation:
"…Human Factors professionals, as a discipline, are remarkably poor designers.
There, I said it – but before you tune me out, please hear me out. I would love to be wrong, but I believe the evidence suggests otherwise...
Even the most forward thinking graduate programs fail when compared against our graphical and industrial design colleagues. The blank page is our profession’s Achilles heel. Making something from nothing and developing distinctly differentiated design alternatives – distinct from the status quo and from each other – is tremendously challenging for many in our profession. Indeed, I have met only a handful of Human Factors professionals who are truly talented in this area.
By contrast, Human Factors professionals tend to excel in evaluating design, an area which these very same colleagues struggle. Turn us loose on an existingng design and we become masterful in our ability to articulate potential advantages and disadvantages of a particular design or set of designs."
Steve concludes his editorial by soliciting suggestions that would lead to the improvement of design output from human factors professionals.
I am in 100% agreement with Steve, and can speak from personal experience - just take a look at any random presentations pulled from a Human Factors & Ergonomics Society conference and compare them to typical presentations from AIGA, IDSA, (fill in your design organization conference here). While one would expect an inherently higher level of design quality such organizations, this is more than a quantitative difference, it is a qualitative one. Beyond a better use of typography, graphics and layout, there is a qualitative gap betweenexpectations at technical conferences (like HFES) and design conferences.
Traditionally, human factors conference audiences don't expect much from visual communication - they expect to see data, statistics and references - the visual equivalent of the primary product of human factors professionals, the technical report. Whereas designers create designs as their outputs, and therefore treat all of their work, whether presentations or products, accordingly.
There is a simple solution to this for human factors professionals. One that will make their presentations stand out as elegant, entertaining and engaging. Do what I do and don't create presentation on your own - work with a skilled designer who has the right set of skills and expectations to achieve quality results.
