Human Factors and Ergonomics Standards¶

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 9781119636113.Ch50.Pdf
Tags: [hfe-standards, iso, regulations, guidelines, standardization, ergonomics-standards]

Summary¶

A standard is a document established by consensus and approved by a recognised body that provides rules, guidelines, or characteristics for common and repeated use, aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order in a given context (Karwowski, Taiar & Rodrick, 2021, citing ISO/IEC, 2004). The chapter reviews human factors and ergonomics standards at national, regional, and international levels, centred on ISO and European (CEN) standards. It gives particular attention to the multipart ISO 9241 standard and recent trends including human-centered design for interactive systems and the human-centered organisation.

Body¶

Context¶

Karwowski, Taiar and Rodrick (2021), in their handbook chapter on human factors and ergonomics standards, review HFE standards at national, regional, and international levels, centred on ISO and European (CEN) standards. Following ISO/IEC (2004), they define a standard as a document established by consensus and approved by a recognised body that provides rules, guidelines, or characteristics for common and repeated use, aimed at an optimum degree of order in a given context. Within this knowledge base the article is the normative counterpart to the discipline's design and evaluation work: it documents how HFE knowledge is codified for repeated use, complementing the audit practice in Hfe Audits, the usability methods in Usability And User Experience, and the life-cycle integration argued for in Human Systems Integration, and connecting them to inclusive design via Design For All.

Key Points¶

Standards formalise consensus knowledge for repeated use. They are normally based on knowledge from science, technology, and experience and aim to promote optimum community benefit, which grounds HFE standards in collective expertise rather than individual judgment (PDF p. 3, orig. p. 1308).

Standardisation occurs at multiple geographic levels — national, regional, and international — with worldwide standardisation provided primarily by ISO, the IEC, and the International Telecommunications Union. HFE practitioners must therefore navigate standards that vary by jurisdiction while drawing on a common international base (PDF p. 4, orig. p. 1309).

ISO 9241, Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction, is the central ergonomics standard for interactive systems. Karwowski, Taiar and Rodrick describe it as a multipart standard, noting that its Part 1 on the basic principles of the user-performance approach has been withdrawn and that the ISO 13406 standard adds recommendations for visual displays. Its detailed treatment reflects its role as the reference framework for usability and interactive-system design (PDF p. 7, orig. p. 1312).

Recent trends extend standards toward human-centered design and organisations. The authors identify human-centered design for interactive systems — exemplified by ISO 9241-210:2019 — and the human-centered organisation among recent developments, alongside European (CEN) standards (PDF p. 40, orig. p. 1345).

Conclusion¶

Karwowski, Taiar and Rodrick (2021) conclude that HFE standards are evolving from prescriptive product requirements toward process- and organisation-level human-centered design guidance. This shift, exemplified by ISO 9241 and the emergence of human-centered organisation standards, ties standardisation directly to the broader human-centered design tradition.

References¶

Karwowski, W., Taiar, R. & Rodrick, D. (2021) 'Human Factors and Ergonomics Standards', in Salvendy, G. & Karwowski, W. (eds.) Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. karwowski2021hfestandards

Open Questions¶

How do national, regional, and international HFE standards diverge, and how should designers resolve conflicts among them?
How are human-centered design standards keeping pace with AI-mediated and autonomous interactive systems?