Interaction Homme Machine - Chapitre 3

Module: Interaction Homme Machine - Chapitre 3: Règles Ergonomiques dans les IHMs

• Ergonomie: Defined as the "scientific study of the relationship between humans and their work environments, methods, and tools, and the application of this knowledge to design systems that can be used comfortably, safely, and efficiently by the greatest number of users."

• Ergonomics Objectives: Aims to make interactive systems effective, reliable, safe, productive, and high quality. Prioritizes user well-being and skills development, focusing on performance.

• Types of Ergonomics:

  • Physical Ergonomics: Focuses on anatomical, physiological, and biomechanical aspects of work postures, repetitive movements, workstation layout, equipment design, and safety.
  • Cognitive Ergonomics: Concentrates on mental processes involved in human-system interactions (e.g. perception, memory, reasoning, motor responses). Examines issues such as mental workload, decision-making, expert performance, job stress, and user training.
  • Organizational Ergonomics: Optimizes social-technical systems (organizational structures, rules, and processes). Covers communication, resource management, work design, work schedules, and collaborative and remote work arrangements.

• Principles of Ergonomics:

  • Utility: A system should serve a specific human activity, assisting users and streamlining tasks.
  • Usability: A product's characteristics should allow easy and effective use by individuals, tailored for the task at hand.

• Ergonomic Quality Criteria: Numerous recommendations exist in ergonomic guidelines, such as those by Bastien and Scapin, Nielsen's heuristics, and Coutaz's rules. These guidelines cover various aspects like guidance, workload, adaptability, error management, and clarity of codes/labels.

• Nielsen's 10 Heuristics: Aims to develop user-friendly interfaces with principles such as simplifying dialogues, using the user's language, minimizing memory load, following standards, reflecting the real world, providing feedback, allowing users to undo mistakes, helping user recognition and diagnosis of mistakes, and ensuring assistance and documentation

• Coutaz's 7 Golden Rules: Emphasizes consistency, brevity, minimized cognitive load, user control, flexibility, structured dialogues, and error prediction.

• Design Style Guides: Effective interfaces consider user interaction patterns, like the 'Z' pattern for quick exploration, clear visibility of elements, and easy access with the mouse. Color choices, contrasts, and the number of colors are critically important for readability and avoiding confusion. Interactions should take a maximum of 2 seconds for a response, minimize actions needed for information, and ideally require no more than 3 actions to reach desired content.