Since computers are used in nearly every workplace and workers are feeling the accompanying visual, back and wrist strain from working on computers all day, the demand for human factors engineers has increased. They might be employed as consultants to business owners setting up or remodeling their offices or as experts in the design of user-friendly equipment for use in almost any aspect of modern life. For example, ergonomics engineering helped devise an automobile seat, brake pedal, accelerator and steering wheel combination that conforms to the human body and responds to human reflex. Ergonomic theory also contributed to the design of a back-friendly chair, a computer keyboard that precisely suits delicate wrists and typing habits, a finger-friendly push-button telephone, a space suit to support life and bodily function and many other products.
Only a few colleges offer an undergraduate degree directly related to human factors engineering. Like the job title, the name of the degree varies: applied psychology, engineering psychology, aviation human factors or industrial and systems engineering. Other degrees that would provide adequate undergraduate training for the master's degree and an eventual career in the human factors engineering field include psychology, industrial engineering, biology, physiology, anthropology or computer science. Most employers, however, require the appropriate master's degree as well.
Graduate schools in this field base admission decisions on a student's undergraduate academic performance, letters of recommendation, relevant work experience and score on the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE. As of 2011, the website for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society listed 77 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada as having human factors engineering graduate degree programs. These programs usually are offered through schools' psychology or engineering departments, and many schools offer both master's and doctorate degrees.
A human factors engineering master's degree program teaches courses such as work physiology, safety engineering, statistical design and analysis, systems engineering and integration, human factors methods, perception and attention, research methods, human judgment and decision making, design and analysis of human-machine systems, memory and cognition, human-computer interaction, occupational health psychology, cognition and aging, aviation psychology and human error. In addition to the classroom studies, many programs require a student to participate in a research or internship project and to prepare and defend a thesis.