International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics (Human Machine Environment) and human factors and ergonomics (Human Factor Environment) the title indicates, ergonomics and human factors and ergonomics may be two separate disciplines. By the conjunction "and" we will be able to support such an interpretation. If ergonomics and human factors and ergonomics are synonymous, why not just use a name? A few years ago, in the United States, this area of the main professional organization decided to join "ergonomics" in its name. They also decided to add the conjunction "and" instead of the name separated by a dash or a slash, this form is more often used to imply synonymous. Now society called "Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics Society ( HFES ). If the ergonomics and human factors and ergonomics are the same, then why not use a slash but" and "or call it people ergonomics / Society ergonomics of it? and for that matter, why not call this encyclopedia is ergonomics / human factors international Encyclopedia of Engineering? slash (omitted in the spoken language pronunciation) pronunciation is difficult. Therefore, in this area who do not know, when they heard the word of a string of words, if you do not know the second word is an adjective, you may find versions contain slash sounds strange. Thus the human engineering and human factors and ergonomics are connected in a name sounds better. in fact, there is a magazine uses "and" human factors and ergonomics ergonomics and manufacturing. and the magazine and the encyclopedia has with an editor ( W. Karwowski professor).
Many professionals (although not everyone), that the term ergonomics and human factors and ergonomics are synonymous. For some people, involved in physiological ergonomics, and human factors and ergonomics involved in perception and cognition. Ergonomics comes from the interaction between people and their surroundings between research work environment (very broad definition of the environment, including machines, tools, surroundings, tasks, etc.) evolved. The use of "human factors engineering" is a North American phenomenon, it is engaged in some "mental activity" human mental processes work (research, teaching, laboratory) is used. Most of the rest of the world was more frequent use of the term ergonomics is "mental activity" and "physical activity '' of the total activity. For the latter, in the field of biomechanics and design of the physical site to be more emphasis on in the United States, the term "ergonomics" is generally used to imply "neck" of physical activity, with the term ergonomics is used more and more and more often hear, and it has become more in line with rest of the world.
In the United States, along with ergonomics become more widely known, ergonomics has been added due to label the Master of Engineering (public through the mass media market, such as advertising on the car and chair). Also, in this area, a level higher than the high-level organization of national and cultural organizations, known as the International Ergonomics Association ( IEA ). Moreover, the use of a global society ergonomics of the word, only the United States contains a human factors and ergonomics in the title.
Since more and more closely ergonomic and physiological aspects jointly, in order to better align it from the mental / difference out of the cognitive part of the label "cognitive ergonomics" and " industrial or occupational ergonomics" It will be more widely used. In fact, there are some HFES technology group used these differences. We look forward, in the United States, the term ergonomics can be more widely used, but we also want people to continue to be able to distinguish between physiological and cognitive aspects of this field, including the magazine title. For human factors engineering and ergonomics ( HF / E ) implies that the same body of knowledge seems to get more and more consensus. Despite this integration, this subject is still missing the name of a consensus. Most lay public, businessmen, government officials and university academics in this field in general do not understand, but most people are very easy to understand physics, chemistry, mathematics, aerospace industry, perhaps because they have had in the school's basic curriculum the basic learning. Similarly, the new discipline of psychology hundred years of history, has also been very good understanding, and now many universities have provided courses. However, HF / E has not reached this level of awareness is. In fact, in college, knowledge in this area is quite scarce. In the United States, Martin and Wogalter ( 1997 ) of the students tested the HF / E practical courses. The four-year universities in the United States, from four types (graduate, doctoral, master's, bachelor) University randomly selected 50 schools. In these samples schools, only 2% of (a) degree schools and only 10%Master opened a school on HF / E courses. There are 62% of doctoral institutions do not offer separate HF / E courses, 44% of research institutions do not HF / E courses. In addition to the introduction of books or industrial psychology / had briefly review the section in organizational psychology, in fact, most college students no opportunity to learn in this area, especially if the university is not an industry / systems engineering department. Subspecialties in ergonomics and cognitive ergonomics subspecialty department, although the industrial engineering sector is the main source of ergonomics research and teaching, not all US industrial engineering department has a man-machine engineering courses. One problem here is that it is not considered to be a special university field - the role of education and research is left to others may or may not have a revenue department.
A clear and critical problem is dominated by two names we talked about above. Human factors and ergonomics is a general, vague term, one can not deduce therefrom the name and domain knowledge of its contents. Lay people might guess in this area deals with human beings, but they may not recognize it deals with human interaction and technology. Instead, they lay people may think that a human factors and ergonomics psychologist dealing with some special forms of treatment, or the interaction between people (Interestingly, this is a human factors and ergonomics are not covered field). This problem only occurs in psychologist, he said that their field is a human factors engineer engineering will also have a lot of questions by the layman understanding leads.
Compared with the term ergonomics, the problem is different. Unfortunately, one of the problems, "Ergonomics" and the word economics is very similar: two words can easily be confused listeners and readers. But taking into account this difference, which parallels can be turned into an advantage, as Hendrick ( 1996 years) in the publication of his influence to "good ergonomics science is good economics" in the title.
Ergonomics (Ergonomics) in the " ERGO " refers to the work. Therefore the breadth of this field can be regarded as limited to this prefix. Therefore, how to define "work" is crucial. A lot of people might "work" is limited to employment-related activities. This reference framework will not include recreational activities in the field (the field is intent contained area). However, the work can be interpreted very widely, as it relates to the general goal for the completion of a physical energy loss process. Therefore, where the majority of human activity (and their bodily processes) can reasonably be considered to be at work, therefore, Ergo work linked up. However, in addition to work and human factors include, what to define this field? No matter what the actual name is, someone will ask what this area is to constrain what its unique content is what it's central theme is, how can we give it a concise statement to describe this area? Here, we have defined the problem, not just another exercise as a debate, but as a basic assessment of this assessment is about how our region stands at 21 the early years of the century, and how to find a way to drive our business to achieve a higher level of social identity and values.
检验一个领域是如何涵盖其中小区域的方法之一就是看它在各种定义中是如何被描绘的。定义反映了人们如何使用可用的语言来详细说明某些主题或概念。最经常被用来描述一个地区范围的术语可以是理解的显着源头。在目前的工作中，我们从以前涉及众多的定义的分析的工作（Dempsey et al. 2000; Wogalter et al. 1998）中提取了简洁的短语描述HF/ E。
此前，我们采取的语言是从由利希特等（1990年）编译的78种资源中而来一组134个的定义，并辅以他们与其他从35种来源（包括HF/ E教科书和小册子，万维网网站，介绍心理学，工业/组织心理学和安全工程的课本（Wogalter等，1998））而来的56个定义。被选择的定义词拟用来形容一个受以下一个或多个名称所限制的领域：人机工程学，人的因素，人因工程，工程心理学。有些是很短的，是字典类型的定义词（如“工作研究”和“人机界面”），其他的长类型的则给定了这个领域的内容和目标。表1中给出了定义的例子。
在限制最经常提到的单词的最终名单的过程中，Wogalter等（1998）第一次剥离了原来组定义的某些元素，例如表连接的没有实际展示意义的单词（例如the，and，to，which）。此外，基本的名称标明这个领域已被删除，例如术语“人机工程学”如果是作为定义的一部分出现，则会被删除。当术语“人因工程学”，“人因工程”，“工程心理学”发生在这些特定的序列时，也会被删除，但如果术语发生在其他词汇上下文和序列中，其本身将保留。保留下来的术语则将按字母顺序排序。当词的结局/后缀并没有改变其基本词的含义时，相同的前缀根的词将合并。然后，高频词被用来创建中等长度的表达领域的HF/ E的定义。Wogalter等（1998）认为，在134个定义词中被提及的频率最高的词表明他们对这个领域的描绘是有意义。通过组合这些高频术语，可以形成该字段定义的基本或核心。频率适中的术语可通过装饰方法,目标和其他细节来细化定义。以这种方式来派生定义的一个例子是：HF/ E涉及了安全，高效的人机系统的研究和生产的工程设计中的应用。使用相同的分析方法，Dempsey等（2000）提出了以下的定义：人机工程学是“以提高人体机能为目的的人机系统的设计和工程。”人类的性能包括健康，安全和生产力。长度适中的另外几个例子出现在表2中。
在表3（下面）中，我们已经以另一种方式来分类这一套术语。这里有一个小类别是按照标题是谁，什么，怎么样，什么时候/在哪里，和目标来分类的。这种分类的快速研究无疑激发了一个或两个适合的定义。该表还提供了一套简明的参考术语用于描述我们的领域。
通过对整套定义词的检测练习，随着领域的内容,方法和目标的不同，报表反映出了细节和目的的多样性。根据不同的标准，有些语句将不会被认为是一个真正的定义，而只是方法或目标的描述。
在2000年8月，国际人类工程学协会执行理事会通过了如下定义（http://www.iea.cc/ergonomics/）：“人因工程学是与人类和一个系统的其他元素相互理解有关的科学学科，是一个应用理论，原则，数据和方法来设计达到优化人类福祉和整体系统性能的学科。”虽然IEA的定义是相当冗长的，但它传达了许多关于人机工程学领域的不同的想法。
在美国的一项调查和一系列的焦点小组（亨德里克1996年）透露， HFES成员的主要抱怨是不计其数的领域以外的人对这个领域知之甚少。正如在一开始就讨论，问题的一部分，一直是我们的名字，但也有些问题可能是我们的定义是不人性化的。大部分定义都没有考虑到可能接触的不同群体。使用单词列表的研究结果如前所述，可以根据针对不同的收件人组（如：工程/科学专家与非法律专业人士），而形成一组不同的定义。事实上，定义可针对你说话或工作的对象而调整。
技术是一个塑造人类行为，功能强大的单一力量。很多时候，关于是谁使用它或受它影响，技术是“盲目”的。一个人数相对较小，但处于增长的HF/ E专业人士群在寻求一种扩大的技术系统与用户之间的协调。随着技术变得复杂，在HF/ E得到一种协同的关系需要更大的努力。在未来几年内，这种努力对于获得真正的技术进步将是一种至关重要的途径。为了更有效地实现其目标，这个领域需要一个清晰，简洁，明确和实用的词来形容我们的努力。我们猜想，伴随着身体和认知能力的修饰，术语人机工程学能扮演好它的角色。
表1
定义的举例
Brown, O. and Hendrick, H.W.(l986) ...人和他的职业，装备，和最广泛意义上的环境，包括工作，娱乐，休闲，家居，旅游的情况之间的关系。
Chapanis，A.（1995）...关于人的能力，人力的限制和其他相关设计的人性化特点，是一种身体的知识
Hancock, P. A. (1997) ... 是科学的一个分支，旨在开启人机对抗，人机协同
Mark, L.S. and Warm, J.S. (1987)...尝试优化人与环境之间的契合
Howell, W. and Dipboye, R.(1986)人 - 机系统的设计
Meister, D. (1989) ...设备和系统的设计，开发，测试和运行应用程序的行为原则
Clark, T.S. and Corlett, E.N.(1984) ...研究人的能力和特点，影响设备的设计，系统和就业，其目的是提高效率，安全和福祉
Sanders, M.S. and McCormick,E.G. (1993) ...供人类使用的设计
Wickens, C.D. (1992) ...是在设计系统中应用知识的工作，容纳人的性能的限制和利用了人为操作的过程中的优点
2
从最常见的术语中的中等长度定义
（a）设计和制造的人机系统
（b）在工作环境中进行科学运用
（c）研究人和安全操作有关的能力极限
( D ) to improve cooperation between the user and task knowledge
( E between) system and the machine interface
3
A short list, is assigned to a description of Human Factors / simple category structure terms of ergonomics
Who what how and when / where the target
Human system engineering environment safety
Human machine design work comfort
User equipment application life efficiency
People Product Research
Technology Optimization
The next generation will be more human factors engineering for the integration of intelligent human-computer field, after all, is inseparable combination of physical and mental physical and mathematical coupling.