The consideration of human factors in product design at the engineering programmes of a Brazilian university

Human factors/ergonomics (HFE) can make great contributions to product design (PD). This paper presents a cross-sectional study conducted at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), located in Florianopolis, SC, Brazil, with the students of the engineering department in order to assess their understanding of HFE and its use by students in PD. The results showed that 70.3% of students do not apply HFE in PD and it has no correlation with the fact of taking an HFE class or with the PD methodologies they use. Because of that, it presented an analysis of the approach of HFE in the PD methodologies known by the students, clarifying that these methodologies do not provide proper support for the HFE application.