Human Factors Engineering @ NOKIA: Celebrating HFE’s 70th Anniversary with Bell Labs
Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry. The legacy of that research now extends far beyond the telephone: the keypad design Mr. Karlin shepherded into being has become the international standard on objects as diverse as ATMs, gas pumps, door locks, vending machines and medical equipment […] In 1947 he persuaded Bell Labs to create a unit, originally called the User Preference department and later Human Factors Engineering, to study these larger questions.”
John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, New York Times.
As shared in my previous post, we were gearing up for Nokia’s event on Human Factors Engineering and kept busy with the final touches. The event management team at the Technology Leadership Council (TLC) had first planned to host this company conference on November 29. More recently, we moved it to December 6 to better manage some of the logistics.
However, since we will commemorate HFE’s 70th anniversary at Bell Labs this coming year, we have decided to shift gears: we are now working on a celebratory event expanding upon the current agenda. The date for the new conference has not yet been set. But, “third time’s the charm” and the event’s visibility, new scope and impact in 2017 are set to outdo our initial objectives. So, stay tuned : )
In the meantime, our team would like to thank everyone involved in planning and supporting activities up to this point. Given this new undertaking, we would also like to welcome those of you coming on board.
Last but not least, we are very grateful to our guest speakers and hope to be able to re-engage them for the bigger event.
You can click on the left picture to go back to my earlier post to see Nokia’s videos for some of the products and projects listed on the event’s current agenda. The following four ones feature our four guest speakers in some other videos, which happen to be available online.
VIDEOS
David Shrier, MIT
Tom McTavish, IIT
Rodo Kotorov, Information Builders
Gordon Vos, NASA
Happy Thanksgiving : )