Loss of postural balance can possibly lead to increased risk of slips and falls in work places. Present study was performed to investigate the effects of noisy environments on postural stability during standing. It is known that a sound is characterized by the frequency and pressure level of the sound. Therefore, effects of the frequency and pressure level on postural stability were of primary concern. Ten male subjects participated in the experiment. Subject's center of pressure(COP) position was collected on a force plate while they were exposed to different frequency and pressure levels of the sound. Measured COP was then converted into the length of postural sway path in both anterior-posterior(AP) and medio-lateral(ML) axis. Results showed that the length of sway path in AP axis was significantly affected by the frequency of sound. The length of sway path was lowest at frequency level of 2000Hz and increased below and above this frequency range. The sound pressure level, however, did not significantly affect the postural sway length in both AP and ML axis. The results imply that industrial workers in noisy environments should be aware that their abilities of postural balance can be disturbed significantly.

Although several theories and models have been proposed to explain the effects of cultural differences in team decision making, many aspects of team decision-making in multi-cultural contexts such as team performance, team communication, and team cognition still remain unclear. In particular, little attention has paid to the empirical studies on team processes multi-cultural team members use to interact with each other to accomplish the task in different task environments. To investigate the effects of culture and task characteristics on team decision making behavior in multi-cultural contexts, this study compared culturally homogenous and heterogeneous groups in the context of logistics decision making. Results of the study showed that cultural difference and task complexity may affect team performance as well as team interaction process to varying degree.

In this paper, we propose a stress analysis on foot by lifting task attitudes. Maximum force and peak pressure were measured on 8 body regions by Pedar system in order to analysis the stress which is affected by task style and angle on foot when Manual Materials Handling task. As for the peak pressure of the whole foot as to the task height during the lifting task, the height from Knuckle to Shoulder was the least in the peak pressure. Also, as for the maximum force and the peak pressure of the whole foot as to the task angle during the lifting task, it could be seen that the more an angle increases, the stress influencing on a foot jumps. As for the maximum force and the peak pressure by foot region as to the task height in case of the lifting task, the height from Knuckle to Shoulder is indicated the smallest value in the maximum force and the peak pressure, thus there is necessary to attain the work design that considered this. Also, as for the maximum force by foot region as to the task angle in case of the lifting task, 0° tasking is indicated to be least, thus there is necessity to be attained the tasking design in a bid to prevent the existence of an angle. The results of this paper are thought to be helpful to the suitable work design, to the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders related to the lower limbs, and to the design of ergonomic safety shoes.

As national income increases, consumers began to place a great deal of weight on products or quality of their life. They would like to have products which are more convenient to use and could meet their emotional desire in addition to its basic functional requirements. An automobile is one of the transportation system for human beings and the factor such as safety or environmentaly-friendly is regarded as important things resulting from it's popularization. In fact, domestic design technology leaves much to be desired compared with excellent manufacturing techniques. For this reason, some problems, like lowering of usage, could be caused by introducing technological data as it is from overseas. A survey of domestic car users has found that the most preferred condition (step height) is 460~495cm when they get in and out of their car. Men use their visual information and then get in the car, taking motion fit for each condition when automobile condition is changed. In other words, men get in cars actively within the range of conditions used for this study. These results were found from a motion study, when getting in a car, and checking the possibility of getting injury in accordance with the change of condition as well.

This study empirically evaluated performance and preference of Hangul entry methods of five mobile phones through questionnaire and experiments. The questionnaire study revealed that 67% of respondents have been using SMS(short message service) more than six times a day, and that Hangul entry method is the most inconvenient thing when inputting Hangul characters. An experiment was conducted for assessing five Hangul entry methods in view of performance of entry time and errors, and subjective measures of satisfaction and preference. The results showed that Hangul entry method significantly affect objective performances as well as subjective measures at α=0.05 or 0.01. This study, in which real mobile phones were used, presented contrary result in terms of Hangul entry time, compared to the existing studies based on the conceptual models of Fitts' law or Hick-Hyman law.

Macro interface is primarily focused at the organization, while micro interface is primarily focused at the products or services. UI(User Interface) or UX(User Experience) organizations in Korea are institutionalized from 2000 years. Since most of the UI organizations are not institutionalized with the strategic plan, structures of them aren't optimized efficiency. The structure of the organization is conceptualized as having three core dimensions: complexity, formalization, and centralization. The status of the UI organizations in Korea is reviewed with these dimensions. This study issued the key success factors for institutionalization for UI team. Organizational maturity is considered in 5 levels based on a model by CMMI. The UI strategy has to be based the maturity level of the organization.

Technological encroachment provides human operators with flood of information that must be analyzed to understand the environment and make judgments that lead to strategic actions. Further, the environment is not static and therefore uncertain, changing its aspect dynamically. Complexity accompanied with its dynamics imposes substantial difficulty to human operators' task. Criticality of having situational understanding becomes more important than ever. Situationalunderstanding requires the human operators possessing tacit knowledge in order for them to make the sense out of the situation while interacting with information from many heterogeneous sources, the notion of sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the process of developing mental framework to assemble pieces of information representing different aspects of the environment that can be used to develop one's own actionable knowledge to implement their judgments in the uncertain environment. Therefore, judgment process and performance is a key component of sensemaking process. Among many judgment and decision making models, the lens model with its extension can be utilized to partially describe the judgmental aspect of sensemaking. One of the lens model parameters, unmodeled knowledge, can be a corresponding quantitative measure for the tacit knowledge that plays an important role in sensemaking. In this paper, a comprehensive literature for sensemaking is provided to formally define the notion of sensemaking in the military domain. Also, it is proposed that there is a crucial link between the sensemaking and human judgment process and performance from the lens model perspective. Potential implications for experimental framework are also proposed.

Awkward work postures in workshop highly affect on work-related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs). Especially, in automobiles assembly process, these awkward work postures of workers may cause serious injury and illness. This study is to compare the performance among the evaluation tools which can measure the work-loads caused by the awkward work postures in automobiles assemble process. RULA, REBA and TVAL(Toyota Verification of Assembly Line) are used as the evaluation tools. The 85 jobs selected in the automobiles assembly process are applied to the three tools and their performances are analyzed after the evaluation of the work-load in each job. Through various measures of performance such as statistical test, DUNCAN test, regression test etc., the tendencies and characteristics among them are analyzed in detail.

HVIMs consists of simulated driver models implemented with series of mathematical functions and computerized vehicle dynamic models. To effectively model the perception process, as a part of driver models, psychophysical nonlinearity should be considered not only for the single-modal stimulus but for the stimulus of multiple modalities and interactions among them. A series of human factors experiments were conducted using the primary sensory of visual and auditory modalities to find out the effects of auditory cues in visual velocity estimation tasks. The variations of auditory cues were found to enhance/reduce the perceived intensity of velocity as the level changed. These results indicate that the conventional psychophysical power functions could not applied for the perception process of the HVIMs with multi-modal stimuli. 'Ruled surfaces' in a 3-D coordinate system(with the intensities of both kinds of stimuli and the ratio of enhancement, respectively for each coordinate) were suggested to model the realistic perception process of multi-modal HVIMs.

The purpose of this study is to assess the organizational types and the job stress factors that affect the procedure-based job performances in nuclear power plants(NPPs). We derived 24 organizational factors affecting to the job stress in NPPs from the job stress analysis models of NIOSH(1989), Cooper(1990), and Karasek(1990). onsidering the safety characteristic in operating tasks of NPPs, we individuate among the tasks in NPPs through the division of duty and the analysis of cost activity. Through the questionnaire survey, a structured interview with the responsible employees, and expert panels, we assess 70 tasks among 777 tasks managed officially under the procedures. They are the representative tasks to the duties of each division and are directly related to the safety. We utilize the OPTI(organizational personality type indicators) to characterize the personality type of each organization in NPPs.

Main control room(MCR) man-machine interface(MMI) design of advanced nuclear power plants(NPPs) such as APR(advanced power reactor)-1400 can be validated through performance-based tests to determine whether it acceptably supports safe operation of the plant. In this work, plant performance, personnel task, situation awareness, workload, teamwork, and anthropometric/physiological factor are considered as factors for the human performance evaluation. For development of measures in each of the factors, techniques generally used in various industries and empirically proven to be useful are adopted as main measures and some helpful techniques are developed in order to complement the main measures. Also the development of the measures is addressed based on the theoretical background. Finally we discuss the way in which the measures can be effectively integrated and then HUPESS(HUman Performance Evaluation Support System) which is in development based on the integrated way is briefly introduced.

Severities of musculoskeletal diseases (MSDs) have been recognized at the regular work such as manufacturing but incidence of MSDs are increasing also at the atypical work. The examples of those are health medical workers, office workers and service workers etc. Nurses among health medical workers are accomplishing to manage and recover the patients' health in the first place. Therefore, they are exposed to very stressful work conditions during caring the patients. This study was performed to analyze the musculoskeletal burdened work among nurses at a university hospital, in order to grasp the realities of the MSDs, analyze and prevent MSDs. We surveyed risk factors for ward, intensive care unit, delivery room, newborn room, operation room, function test room and central supply room at a university hospital in Seoul. It was executed for 2 months as the field study that was composed of simulation, real measurement, work motion assessment and subjective assessment. And the results were analyzed into ergonomics techniques. Works according to the criteria of musculoskeletal burdened work by the Ministry of Labor were scrub in operation room and heart ultrasonic function test. And a lot of works that need attention and management were also detected. So it should be required the education and systematic managements of MSDs for nurses.

This paper summarizes the ergonomic risk assessment of hotel chef. The cooking operations were observed in order to determine sources of ergonomic stress and make recommendations to reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in Korean, Japanese, and western style cooking. We used interviews, document analysis, video analysis, and risk assessment to identify and quantify ergonomic risk factors. The results indicate that the cooking operations have some ergonomic problems. These findings identified in this study can be used to reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders in food service areas.