Work Equipment Design Issues
One among other parts of the work system is work equipment design. Design issues in this chapter rather refer to the design of the interfaces of the equipment for human-system interaction (e.g., graphical user interface, on/off-switch of a circular hand saw) than to the design of the whole equipment or tool (weight of a drilling machine, specification of excavator).
The design of work equipment should always be derived from the design of the task interface so that it becomes clear that the work equipment supports human task performance. Subject to the operational stage of the task (e.g., normal operation, maintenance) interaction and information interfaces may require different design solution.
Interaction and information interfaces are always part of the work equipment (e.g., computer monitor, graphical user interface for machine control, on/off-switch of circular hand saw) and one work equipment often has many information and interaction interfaces, depending on the task and the context of use.
Background information and design principles will be presented as follows: