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7. HUMAN FACTORS
General Notes. This material has been scanned from the original typescript, while we have done our best to remove errors, some may well remain. You can access other parts of this particular Progress Report either from the menu at the bottom of this entry or by navigating back to the Unit history timeline. References for this report are indexed by number and these can be found in a dedicated section also accessible from the menu at the bottom of this entry.
7.1 Perceptual and Control Problems in Postal and Telecommunications Systems (Baddeley, Barnard, Brown, Copeman, Dennett, Long, Marcel, Hull, Wing)(Project No. 7)
This project covers all the research and advisory activities of the APU under the human factors consultancy with the Post Office. Research activities during the past three years have included:
1. A study by Barnard of structured conversation between Directory Enquiry Operations and the public.
2. Brown, Hull and Hartley's comparisons of alternative methods of constraining handwritten postcodes for machine reading.
3. Investigations by Brown, Hull and Cox of difficulty in telephone call data-entry and retrieval by switchboard operators (33).
4. Design of pictograms in user instructions by Barnard and Marcel (17).
5. Work by Brown and Hull on the discriminability and memorability of colour cues among a new range of postage stamps.
6. Investigations of variables affecting waiting behaviour during post-dialling delays in the telephone network by Long, Dennett, Marcel and Wing (100; 206).
7. Assistance from Brown with the preparation of a Post Office Human Factors Handbook.
8. A study by Hull and Baddeley of factors affecting memorability among altered postcodes.
9. Numerous ad hoc studies of various ergonomic factors in display and control design for P.O. equipment.
Among the more demanding advisory activity principally undertaken by Brown, could be included:
(a) Effects of modifications to a range of telephone switchboards.
(b) Design of coding desks and displays for postal sorting.
(c) Design of microfiche information retrieval systems for Directory Enquiries.
(d) Ergonomic problems in equipment and procedures design, deriving from changes in minimum height requirements following the Sex Discrimination Act.
(e) Hardware and software design problems associated with the proposed introduction of a Directory Enquiry/Computer Information Retrieval System.
(f) Keyboard design for equipment handling data from the national Giro system.
7.2 Effects of Trends in Task Characteristics on the Psychological Well-being of Telephone Switchboard Operators (Brown, Wastell, Wilson)(Project No. 19)
Suggestions and complaints received by Brown via the Post Office Human Factors Research Committee indicate that the job satisfaction of telephone operators is possibly being insidiously degraded by successive changes in switchroom equipment and procedures. Studies will investigate (a) The critical social factors relating to the job, as perceived by groups of operators, and (b) The relationships between performance measures and physiological indices, among individual operators working at the switchboard.
7.3 Provision of Human Factors Information on Work and System Design (All APU Staff)(Project No. 12)
The unit receives 300-400 requests per year for information, advice or assistance. These range from enquiries to requests for research to be carried out. Press queries range from being asked by the television programme Tomorrow's World to advise on techniques for training English batsmen to withstand Australian fast bowlers, to invitations to supply further details of the unit's research; Wilkins' work on spectacles to control TV induced epilepsy is one exar.ple of this, others include Brown's work on young drivers and the work by Godden and Baddeley on diver performance.
A second class or enquiries ask for advice or assistance with specific problems. These may be concerned with a special area of expertise within the unit as in the case of the many enquiries we have had from local authorities concerned with our work on the design of forms. Other examples are the request for advice on the design of stress experiments- which come from a range of sources including the British Antarctic Survey, the Royal Lifeboat Institution and such government laboratories as the Institute of Aviation Medicine and the Army Personnel Research Establishment. In some instances, we do not h3vc the expertise to advise directly, buc we can usually assist by redirecting the enquiry to an appropriate outside authority.
Most enquiries can be answered either directly or via a visit from the enquirer, and do not require any further research. Occasionally however a query will lead to a small experiment aimed at providing the necessary information, or in some cases to a major research commitment. The unit's new project on closed head injury is a case in point. We were initially invited by Dr. Freda Newcombe to advise on the interpretation of results of a major study of memory impairment in closed head injury carried out jointly by a number of groups of neuropsychologists in this country and the Netherlands. This led to an involvement in suggesting further experi¬ments and ultimately to the decision to attempt to become mora actively involved in this area, leading to the setting up of a major new project. Other examples of this process are the joint man-computer interaction project with IBM (Project No. 23) and Project No. 21 on the design and evaluation of auditory warning systems.
We regard our outside contacts as important for two reasons. First they allow us to act as a channel of communication between psychologists and the general public, and secondly because they provide an important source of new and potentially fruitful problems. Such additional stimulation is a crucial factor in determining the particular mix of pure and applied research that characterises the unit's work.