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equal opportunity employment journal
September 2021
The Role of a Human Factors Engineer An interview with Sam Curtis by Ryan Ferrell
First, broadly describe your work.
More specifically, what do you do?
The company I work for designs and manufactures robotic products that are used for minimally invasive surgery. Because we work on medical devices, we have to prove to the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) that our devices are safe and effective. One of the ways we do this is by detecting possible errors a person could make while using the device, and then trying to reduce the likelihood of that error occurring through various solutions. This is called user-error identification and risk mitigation. My job is to improve the user experience and reduce the likelihood of harm to the patient and our users. The FDA-recognized term for my job is human factors engineer (HFE). But I could also be called a user researcher or human-centered design engineer.
As a human factors engineer at a medical device company, I have to be a subject matter expert on people, their environment, and the technology at use in that environment. What my job boils down to is identifying potential errors that a person could make while using our technology to perform surgery. I consider all the ways a nurse or surgeon could misinterpret using our products and how harm could come to a user or patient as a result. We do this primarily through user testing, which involves bringing in participants (surgeons and nurses) in order to get feedback. For example, during a usability study I might observe the study participants misinterpreting a control, such as a button.
Any place where people interact with technology, you can apply human factors engineering.
