Engineering Psychology and Human Performance

Good content. My only qualm is that he abbreviates a lot of terms and theories as acronyms. So I could be reading on page 343 and he'll reference something discussed on page 134 as "e.g., the OT does this" and I won't remember what OT stands for, then I have to go digging in whatever page he defined it on. This books needs a key for all the acronyms he uses. Or instead of contradicting himself STOP USING ACRONYMS because you are increasing my cognitive memory load and decreasing my human performance!

This book has improved the way I think about industrial systems. This book helped me to understand the importance of a proper system. Good design improves safety, efficiency and reduces operator fatigue. Human factors engineering usually has different goals than the normal engineering classes. Sometimes, it's better to run wires in more than one place. Sometimes, it's worth the cost to have displays with adjustable height's to accommodate different operators.

TL;DR:The book's content is great, but it's presented in a somewhat rough manner that needs some editing.Review:This book was used in a graduate engineering course as required primary reading. Wickens and Parasuraman are pretty well-known within their field, so it was a treat to use a book authored and edited by these guys on topics for which they've set the tone. The book's bibliography is rather extensive and could be very helpful for someone looking to do research in the confluence of engineering psychology and human performance.My issue with the book stems from editorial polish in diagram drawing and brass tacks editing (typos, dropped commas, misformatted citations). First, some of the representational diagrams (those used to illustrate ideas, not plot data) in the book look like they were drawn in MS Paint. For example, page 94: the bottom left-hand oval-looking thing is supposed to be person's head? Come on, you people can't be serious about that. Figure 11.5 on page 367: can't this be done with straight lines, or can't the point of confluence from the four choices (where the "Performance" line egresses and moves back to "Appraisal") be centered on the bottom to improve image balance? I think graph drawing with dedicated software packages, even something like MS Visio, could improve the layout for some of these diagrams and aid comprehension.Regarding typos, dropped commas, and misformatted citations, they show up periodically throughout the text but are only minor distractions. The best instance I can remember are the strings of citations in Chapter 10 that regularly drop commas in multiple-author citations. Take a look at page 338-39: we have (Dingus Hanowski & Klauer, 2011); Tsimhomi Smith & Green, 2004); Regan Young Lee and Gordon (2009); and (Caird Willness et. al., 2008) that are all missing commas separating the last names of the authors. Like I said, these aren't major issues that detract from the work, but they are things that should be caught during editing.In sum, it's a good book that's a little rough around the edges. I'm glad to see some of the new material in this fourth edition (for example, how neuroergonomics and molecular genetics could play with human factors), and the existing material is quite expansive in its treatment of topics within engineering psychology. If you want to learn about the subfield, have a look at the text. I'm marking it down a star to address the editing that it needs.

I am very disappointed in the quality of this rental. I just unboxed it and a whole section of the book fell out. As a result I will have to glue an entire section of the textbook back to the spine.

There are many typos in the Kindle edition, including broken equations.P(Hit) 5 P(H) 5 5/ 20 5 0.25lecting

Have to get this book for class. VERY technical and very expensive. It is not a pleasure-reading book.

for school

Thank you! Great book.