Anna-Lisa Osvalder

• Prof. PhD
• Professor at Chalmers University of Technology

To perform well an organization is dependent on the employees’ competence. However, there is a large risk that important knowledge disappears when experienced employees leave the organization. In process industry experienced operators and shift teams stand for invaluable knowledge about operation and control of the plant, both as explicit (expresse...

This paper presents a multi-case study on universal crisis information design, focusing on individuals with communication disorders, the elderly, and immigrants. Using a research-through-design approach and various qualitative data collection methods, the study explores accessible information solutions by examining the accessibility of crisis infor...

In recent years, the automotive industry has increasingly prioritized comfort to meet rising consumer expectations for luxurious car experiences. Comfort, a subjective concept associated with well-being and relaxation, encompasses multidimensional aspects rooted in physical, psychological, and functional aspects. While existing comfort models focus...

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) noncompliance has been addressed through various lenses. In current literature, there is a greater focus on improving training and safety culture. Improving PPE design to persuade PPE compliance is less explored, especially in sectors beyond healthcare. This study investigates the reasons behind PPE noncompliance...

The energy system is undergoing significant changes and is expected to continue to evolve. Energy demand is anticipated to increase, as is renewable energy capacity, and technical solutions are advancing. For electrical power, traditionally centralized production is increasingly complemented by distributed production, transforming fundamental syste...

Several factors contribute to the use, non-use, or inadequate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in construction work. This study aimed to analyse correct usage of various PPE, such as helmet, ear protectors, goggles, respiratory mask, gloves, protective clothing, and a safety harness. Correct usage was assessed as guessability, which refer...

Denna rapport sammanfattar forskningsprojektet “Personlig skyddsutrustning - Strategier och rekommendationer för ökad användning genom anpassning till användare, uppgift och kontext”. I projektet har användningen av personlig skyddsutrustning inom branscherna bygg, sjöfart och skorstensfejning studerats. Framför allt har orsakerna analyserats till...

Accurate knowledge management is vital for an organization to perform well. Managing explicit knowledge is relatively easy but managing tacit (implicit) knowledge is not. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge from experts to novices in an organization is therefore essential. Maritime pilotage is a safety-critical operation in which pilots use their...

Highly automated vehicles are opening new opportunities for alternative sitting postures, such as the reclined posture, when drivers disengage from conventional driving tasks. This paper presents an experimental setup to assess drivers’ experiences of the reclined sitting posture and the human machine interfaces (HMI) for transitions between uprigh...

The objective of this study was to design and evaluate new means of complying to time constraints by presenting aircraft target taxi speeds on a head-up display (HUD). Four different HUD presentations were iteratively developed from paper sketches into digital prototypes. Each HUD presentation reflected different levels of information presentation....

The maritime pilot is an expert with knowledge on a specific navigational route. The maritime pilot cadet undergoes maritime education and training in classrooms, onboard vessels and in simulators. Developing visual expertise is a basic objective. Transferring knowledge from experienced maritime pilots to maritime pilot cadets is challenging since...

Objective: The purpose was to study how occupant age affects seat belt fit and comfort by comparing older adults and younger occupants in the front seat of a passenger vehicle. Methods: An exploratory user study was performed for the front seat of a stationary large passenger vehicle in a laboratory environment, including 11 older (aged 72–81) and...

Formative human factors (HF) evaluation is an important activity in control room design. Its purpose is to provide design feedback in the development process, preferably early so as to lower the risk of late and sub-optimal design changes. Early evaluation requires assessment of higher level design decisions due to the gradual specificity of design...

Spoken information is the fastest way to reach many travellers with important information. To evaluate different user groups’ perception, experience and need of spoken information at railway stations, an online survey with 287 respondents and short interviews with 33 people were performed. The results showed that the need of spoken information and...

The aim of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ‘Work and Technology on Human Terms’ was to be a modern, highly accessible study material in Ergonomics/Work science to contribute to safer and healthier workplaces. The course targets engineering students, but also students in economics, human relations, physiotherapy, occupational health, as well a...

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ‘Work and Technology on Human Terms’ (www.onhumanterms.org) was launched in July 2017 with the aim to contribute to safer and healthier workplaces by increasing the knowledge about how products, systems, and work organizations can be designed on human terms. The purpose of this paper is to present the results o...

This paper describes the results of the conceptual and practical strategy work performed by the Swedish Ergonomics and Human Factors Society (EHSS) today. The rationale of EHSS is to strengthen the quality of ergonomics/human factors knowledge and practice in Sweden and form a multidisciplinary platform across disciplines and professions for collab...

The way traffic information is presented is not optimal for all travellers despite that, transportation systems should be accessible to everyone. The purpose of this study was to investigate how people with various disabilities perceive, experience and need audible and visible traffic information when travelling, especially at railway stations. The...

In recent years, there has been growing interest in collaborative consumption of office environments and thereby implementation of Activity-based Flexible Offices (A-FOs). Relocating to an A-FO introduces a desk-sharing policy as well as a multitude of new workspaces with different speech policies into the employee’s work context. This paper descri...

Introduction In collaboration with five Swedish universities of technology, Prevent has produced an online course in English, based on the textbook ‘Work and technology on human terms’ to be used as a modern, highly accessible study material. The purpose is to contribute to safer and healthier workplaces and to improve organisational performance. T...

Objective: To increase the protection of child passengers in crashes preceded by evasive steering, understanding of how children interact with the seat belt in such situations is essential. This study aims to quantify child kinematics and describe child-to-restraint interaction during evasive steering maneuvers. Methods: Eighteen child volunteers (...

Safe operation is a central objective for nuclear power plants that must be supported by the entity managing the operation, the control room system. Safe operation is dependent on how technology is used, so it is important to take human factors issues into consideration. During design or modification of the control room system, its ability to suppo...

Emergency braking can influence children’s posture and seatbelt interaction. To better protect children in crashes preceded by emergency braking, this study aims to quantify kinematics and seatbelt engagement during braking events. Eighteen rear‐seated children were exposed to braking events with 1 g deceleration in a passenger vehicle, restrained...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the users in an Activity-based flexible office (A-FO) follow the intended desk-sharing policy, and further explore if any use profiles and patterns emerge regarding workstation choices and preferences. Survey data was collected at a case organisation in Sweden. From all the 66 employees that had been...

Prevent has collaborated with five Swedish universities of technology to produce an online course in human factors engineering, ergonomics, work science and related subjects. The online course could serve as a pedagogic tool to attract more students to the subject, not only in engineering university programs, but also in economics and human relatio...

Experienced operators, who have worked in process industry for many years possess extensive tacit knowledge regarding how to operate and control the plant. The purpose of this study was to propose methods for knowledge transfer regarding process control. Four conditions are important for successful knowledge transfer: resources from the management,...

In product design, it is important to consider presumptive usability problems and use errors. A number of evaluation methods are available, analytical as well as empirical. This study aimed to investigate how well the results from the two analytical methods, enhanced cognitive walkthrough (ECW) and predictive use error analysis (PUEA), match the re...

Safe and functional nuclear industry design is a topic of growing interest due to new builds and modernization projects in the operating nuclear power plants. Provided that good design of components and systems is critical for safe operation of the plants, understanding what influences the process of learning for safety in design activities is of u...

Process control operators need well-designed control room environments to focus better on tasks to be performed. The aim of this study was to evaluate if a high-end control room concept including the latest ergonomic features had any effects on operator comfort and alertness compared to a traditional control room. Twelve professional operators part...

Today the market offers a large selection of office chairs with numerous possibilities of adjustments for wide-ranged sitting postures, but it is difficult for the users to understand how the various settings should be adjusted to achieve the best individual postures at work. The objective of this study was to find out how different adjustments of...

Objective: The objective of this study was to explore passengers' comfort experience of extra seat belts during on-road driving in the rear seat of a passenger car and to investigate how the use of extra belts affects children's and adults' attitudes to the product. Methods: Two different seat belt systems were tested, criss-cross (CC) and backp...

BACKGROUND: Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are a common reason for health problems and sick leave in many professions. A work arena where MSDs have not been sufficiently studied is stable work. Here many heavy and repetitive work tasks are performed manually with old-fashioned working tools. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to use an analytic...

Knowledge and application of human factors and ergonomics (HFE) has significant potential as a useful tool and solution provider in the development, design and implementation of safe, efficient and sustainable artefacts and systems. Yet, it seems that this HFE knowledge is not utilised to its full potential. In a world of competing financial and co...

The performance of a nuclear power plant‟s operational steering entity, the control room system, has a major impact on operational safety. The construction and modernization of nuclear power plants create a need to evaluate control room systems to assess if they fulfil their purpose to support safe operation. The aim of this study was to identify a...

After several decades of small incremental improvements, the development of ergonomics in truck driving environments is now facing a potential change with the introduction of autonomous driving. The knowledge on what happens to the driver’s posture and vision related behaviour with an increasing level of automated driving is still very limited. The...

A nuclear power plant is a socio-technical system where safety issues are of greatest importance when designing the control room system. Resilience deals with safety in socio-technical systems and for resilient performance to be possible systems must be able to respond, monitor, learn and anticipate (the four cornerstones of resilience). The aim of...

Evaluation methods of today often focus on cognitive ergonomics (such as mental workload or usability) or physical ergonomics (such as physical workload or body posture). This article describes an analytical methodology of a joint systematic search for potential deficiencies in the human–machine interaction; such as high physical and mental workloa...

A complex socio-technical system needs to optimize on safety when designing the human-machine systems. The purpose of this study was to learn about organisational challenges in redesign projects in the nuclear domain. Interview results showed that stakeholders had focus on either technology driven or human factors driven design. A conclusion was th...

In the work with usability for the traffic environment, safety aspects are crucial, especially for the elderly population. This paper presents the use of a classical risk analysis method, Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), when analysing usability aspects in two case studies regarding trams and elderly users. In these studies, the FTA-method was used as an...

In health care, the use of technical equipment plays an integral part. To achieve a high level of patient safety, it is important to avoid use errors when handling equipment. Use errors can be mitigated by performing analyses of potential use errors during the design process. One proactive analytical method for use error analysis is Predictive Use...

Sitting postures and comfort experience were analysed from six children aged 7‐9 (131‐145 cm) seated on an Integrated Booster Cushion (IBC) and a high‐back Booster (hbB) during 1 hour on‐road drives, respectively. Data were collected from video recordings, questionnaires and interviews. When seated on the IBC the most frequent posture was with the...

There is an on-going process of modernisation of Swedish nuclear power plants, and also new plants are being built around the world. When control rooms are modified it is highly significant to maintain safe operation of the plant. Therefore it is important to evaluate the control room from a human factors perspective. The purpose of this study was...

To avoid use errors when handling medical equipment, it is important to develop products with a high degree of usability. This can be achieved by performing usability evaluations in the product development process to detect and mitigate potential usability problems. A commonly used method is cognitive walkthrough (CW), but this method shows three w...

The present paper reports a study composed of three research activities exploring the economics of ergonomics in a shipping context. First, a literature study aimed to review previous studies on the economics of ergonomics in general and within the maritime domain in particular; and moreover, to ascertain the key ergonomic factors addressed in cont...

The aim of this paper is to make a review of studies concerning problems with alarm systems and to make a theoretical analysis of these problems. The aim is also to show some general design ideas to improve alarm presentation in process descriptions. Using research results from situation awareness and decision making a number of suggestions for fur...

In a thermal power plant the operators' roles are to control and monitor the process to achieve efficient and safe production. To achieve this, the human-machine interfaces have a central part. The interfaces need to be updated and upgraded together with the technical functionality to maintain optimal operation. One way of achieving relevant update...

The task of handling reach trucks frequently involves poor working postures. The location of the steering wheel in most reach trucks is in front of the operator which requires the drivers to bend forward and stretch their hands for holding onto the steering wheel. To overcome visibility restrictions, this posture is aggravated by twisting and bendi...

Equipment used in sports is of great importance, especially when the equipment is in direct contact with the athlete or is important for safety. In the sport kitesurfing environmental factors and the equipment design are crucial for the comfort and safety. The participants' choice and opinion of equipment can show which factors are considered most...

This paper explores how operator work can be categorized by using a model based on cognitive systems engineering. Operator tasks and needs during work in complex and highly automated systems were mapped using a workshop technique with 12 experts from different industrial domains. The results from mapping the tasks and needs onto the model showed th...

This study examined the physical demands involved in manual manure handling in horse stables when using two different long-shafted work tools, a shavings fork and a manure fork, and investigated how variations in shaft length affected the physical workloads of the user. The methods used were generic task specification (GTS) and the Jack human simul...

Equipment used for high-risk sports, such as kitesurfing, needs to be efficient for the intended use and the user, and thus meet the mechanical demands and provide sufficient safety. Accidents related to kitesurfing occur, and the consequences are sometimes catastrophic. One important factor is the equipment design, which can influence the type and...

Head impact to the seat back has been identified as one important injury causation scenario for seat belt restrained, head-injured children and previous research highlighted vehicle maneuvers prior to impact as possible contributing factors. The aim was to quantify kinematics of child occupants during swerving maneuvers focusing on the child's late...

Human factors engineering methodology is important for design of complex systems, such as control rooms and distributed control systems. Available methodologies are however seldom adapted to industrial needs, which limits the use of the existing human factors engineering research base. In this paper we argue that human factors engineering methods...

Participation in sporting activities can lead to injury. Sport injuries have been widely studied in many sports including the more extreme categories of aquatic board sports. Kitesurfing is a relatively new water surface action sport, and has not yet been widely studied in terms of injuries and stress on the body. The aim of this study was to get i...

The purpose of this study was to obtain an overview of the specific movement patterns in kitesurfing, and the participants' perceptions of musculoskeletal stress, pain and discomfort. Task analysis and survey studies were used to provide an overview of the sport, and to identify problematic issues associated with the performance of the tasks. Three...

An on-road driving study comprising six children aged 8-13 years (138-150 cm) was conducted to increase the understanding of children's natural sitting behavior during a car ride. Each child was video recorded during a pre-determined 40-minute route in the rear seat of a modern car. The route was taken twice; once when the child was restrained usin...

This chapter shows the importance of user profiles in the interface design process, and especially aims at updating the current knowledge of research about novice/expert issues and emphasizes novice and expert users' difference in various interaction situations, as well as providing key implications for interface design. It is indicated that the ef...

The paper presents a generic conceptual interface to visualise automatic sequences in process industry applications exemplified by a feed water sub- system. The design is based on operators’ information need during use of automatic sequences. The information need was elicited using interviews with nuclear power, thermal power and pulp and paper pla...

Chalmers Publication Library (CPL). Forskningspublikationer från Chalmers Tekniska Högskola.

To achieve efficient and safe use of a human-machine system, it is important to consider both the human and the technical components of the system. If machines are adapted to the human characteristics, abilities and limitations, the probability of human error decreases. The scope of this paper is to present an analytical usability evaluation method...

The purpose of this naturalistic study was to investigate the effect of booster seat design on the choice of children's seating positions during naturalistic riding. Data was collected through observations of children during in-vehicle riding by means of a film camera. The children were positioned in high back boosters in the rear seat while a pare...

Medical ergonomics has become an important topic in the field of ergonomics due to the increasing deficiencies in medical device design. The aim of the present study was to use usability testing as a benchmarking tool of modern and complex ventilator machines in a real hospital setting to propose future redesign ideas for a target machine - SERVO-i...

This paper describes an empirical field study performed in a nuclear power plant simulator control room and presents how the use of an automatic turbine system (ATS) affects nuclear power plant turbine operators' ability to stay in control during different levels of automation. The paper also presents how the operators cope with the automation inte...

Chalmers Publication Library (CPL). Forskningspublikationer från Chalmers Tekniska Högskola.

This paper summarises good practice regarding alarm system design and management. The results have been derived from a number of studies from different process control domains. A discussion is made concerning the need of studying good practice rather than focusing on solving existing alarm system problems, in order to design safe, efficient and res...

Booster cushions are effective tools to protect children from injuries in car crashes, but there remains a large amount of misuse. The aim of this study was to assess potential misuse of booster cushions in an observational laboratory study, and to identify whether booster cushion design, age or clothing had any effect. 130 Swedish children from th...

Motivation -- The use of automation technology tends to steadily increase in a wide range of applications. With this comes a demand to design systems that support team play among human operators and automation to avoid problems related to monitoring work. Research approach -- The study was performed as a field study using semi-structured interviews...

In order to provide helpful proposals for future redesign of insulin pump interfaces, a study was carried out to investigate the expertise difference between novice users and expert users when interacting with a simple user interface of insulin pumps. In this study, two user groups with 13 participants in each, evaluated an insulin pump interface o...

In health care, the use of technical equipment plays a central part. To achieve high patient safety and efficient use, it is important to avoid use errors and usability problems when handling the medical equipment. This can be achieved by performing different types of usability evaluations on prototypes during the product development process of med...

To enable increased efficiency, effectiveness and safe handling of medical equipment, applicable frameworks are needed that support evaluation work during the product development process A use centred design approach for medical devices has been developed, resulting in a framework consisting of three parts: (1) A Human Factors Engineering process,...

Alarm systems play an important role in the operation of complex process control settings. A reliable and userfriendly alarm system developed according to the operators’ conditions contributes to maintaining safe and efficient operation. Many projects performed within the power generation industries are modernisations of legacy systems. The guideli...

The strict safety requirements and the confidential character of the development process of medical equipment call for suitable theory-based usability evaluation methods to be used by in-house cognitive engineering experts at medical companies. In this study, the Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) method was employed to evaluate two types of graphical user...

Information presentation on the monitor screen of ventilator machines affects nurses' response and decision-making during ventilation treatment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether a new GUI (graphical user interface) prototype, the so-called circular display prototype can make deviations easy to detect. A numerical display prototype w...

Healthcare today often relies on complex technical equipment. This increases the importance of usability as a selection criterion when hospitals purchase new equipment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of cognitive engineering methods as tools to incorporate the usability aspect in the selection process.Users’ questionnaires (UQ...

Usability is an important aspect in medical device design. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of Enhanced Cognitive Walkthrough (ECW) and Hierarchical Task Analysis with Interaction (HTA-I) in the design of two new user interface concepts for infusion pumps. Usability tests showed that the new concepts had greater usability than a...