CommonSpace columnist and professional ergonomist David Carr discusses the importance of making Scottish society fit its people
THERE was a minor stooshie recently when Edinburgh City Council installed bus shelters on Hanover Street. They were unusable due to the slope – people could not sit down because of the height of the seats. A trivial error perhaps – but perhaps illustrative of a failure of design to take account of local geography. Edinburgh has hills.
There have been more general complaints about the shelters, provided by French giant JC Decaux. They provide insufficient shelter against the Scottish weather. There are rumours – I admit that I have not got out my tape measure and international anthropometric datasets to check this – that their seats, while suitable for the French population may be too high for a noticeable proportion of smaller Scots.
Here we see a minor example of the way in which commercial solutions – dictated by the demands of public tendering – can so often militate against meeting local people’s needs.
This is a basic demand of ergonomics – that spaces, tools, systems, environments should be adapted to people and not the other way around.
This is a basic demand of ergonomics – that spaces, tools, systems, environments should be adapted to people and not the other way around. A classic ergonomic text is Swiss ergonomist Etienne Grandjean’s Fitting The Task To The Human which acknowledged human variability and speaks for design which puts all of us first.
Ergonomics is not all about body size. Designs must take into account humans’ physical, psychological and social beings. My own particular interest is in socio-technical systems – the idea that the design of technological systems impacts upon organisations.
Systems must be compatible with people’s natural way of organising themselves. This applies in workplaces. It also applies to wider society.
Among professional ergonomists there is a distinction – it is a tendency, not an absolute – between two overlapping approaches. An alternate term, ‘human factors’, originated from America. It tends to refer to the idea of the human as a system component.
So for example – in a military system people are there to support the aim of making sure that a missile hits its target at precisely the right time. This is assumed to be the human’s goal.
Systems must be compatible with people’s natural way of organising themselves. This applies in workplaces. It also applies to wider society.
A more humanistic school of thought – originating from Europe – suggests that technology exists to serve individuals and team goals. So for example, a ship does not simply exist to serve a military or commercial goal but is the focus for a community which works together to meet a common aim. And that community has to be sustainable over time – good environments encourage people to remain at sea and to retain their skills.
In my own working experience I can compare and contrast the experience of working with UK military ships and in the Swedish merchant industry. There has been some good ergonomics done on the Clyde. But there has been something of a disconnect between human and technical aspects.
The same is true to some extent of Swedish maritime ergonomics – engineers don’t always understand humans – but at least ergonomics is a household term in Sweden. There is a recognition that one must design as if people matter.
A phrase that brought it home to me was when a Swedish seafarer colleague talked about “navigating by heart”. People are not mechanistic operators of ships – the ship is an extension of the mariner.
It is the hope in Scotland that people matter. We are not components in a machine, our lives to be dictated by some foreign goal, profiting some foreign enterprise. Our society – the way we do things – should serve us, our own goals and desires.
At present the fabric of our often inappropriate environments delimit how we live – our housing, our city streets and commercial premises are not designed for our own purposes.
The Common Weal’s Book Of Ideas talks about design For life. At present the fabric of our often inappropriate environments delimit how we live – our housing, our city streets, the commercial premises which exist to suck money out of us – are not designed for our own purposes. Very often they do not fit into our specifically Scottish context.
Our local, human needs are things like cheap, well insulated, spacious, liveable housing – not more identikit ‘property’. We need cheap, nutritious food that supports local agriculture, rather than large supermarkets.
The difference is between infrastructure which is commercially owned – which we serve – and infrastructure which serves us. We need designs which we choose, to meet our needs – not designs which just happen.
An example of where The Book Of Ideas has followed an ergonomic approach is in the design of public services.
Currently, our public service provision is extremely hierarchical and does not find it easy to take account of service users’ needs – or even to talk to them. But by providing commonly available communications technologies it will be possible to flatten the hierarchies, allow service providers to work effectively as teams and to include service users’ views.
This may or may not decrease staffing requirements – an important consideration under the imposition of the austerity regime – but it will potentially free up people for the service user facing activities that often take a back seat to management. This will not happen by accident. It will take a will to make it happen – to design for life.
I have mentioned shipping not only because it is the area in which I have worked professionally but because I genuinely believe it is important to Scotland’s future. We are a maritime nation with many miles of coastline and many islands. It is through economic oversight that we have overlooked our geography.
We should get serious about ergonomics. As a fundamental principle, our tools should fit us – our systems, our lives.
Lateral North’s Atlas of Productivity indicated the rich offshore renewable energy resources that Scotland possesses. There is great potential for opening up our inshore seas to passenger and freight shipping. Scotland is well placed to support increased traffic in the North Atlantic. A maritime future would fit with Scottish people’s needs. It would build on their existing marine engineering skills. It would match Scotland’s geographic character.
Our design for life should take account of these riches and ensure that they are appropriately realised – in a way that delivers local jobs, supports communities, provides a sustainable future, is environmentally friendly.
If they are to work to our advantage they must have a distinctly Scottish character. There is also a good deal of ergonomics work to be done to get infrastructure and technology right – to design it specifically for our local purposes.
Compare and contrast. Scotland has a major port facility on its west coast, within reach of Glasgow. It is gouged out of the Gare Loch. It provides jobs mainly for temporary incomers. Fewer – although some – for local people.
The ergonomics work involved is about running reactors, firing missiles. The profits for that work go elsewhere. The goals it serves are anathema to Scottish democratic values.
This applies not only to our physical systems but economic and political. They should fit us – not we them.
We should get serious about ergonomics. As a fundamental principle, our tools should fit us – our systems, our lives. This applies not only to our physical systems but economic and political. They should fit us – not we them.
We must design our physical. economic and political systems to meet the needs of people. We must take account of our specifically Scottish needs. We must design for Scottish people – noting our variability. We must design for our Scottish context and environment.
Picture courtesy of Scania Group