Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!prism!rc7
From: rc7@prism.gatech.EDU (Richard Catrambone)
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: Human Factors or also called Ergonomics
Message-ID: <31308@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 13 Jun 91 17:36:13 GMT
References: <1309@sousa.ltn.dec.com>
Organization: Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 28

In article <1309@sousa.ltn.dec.com> smith@sndpit.enet.dec.com (Willie Smith) writes:
>
>OK, how do I go about talking to an Ergonomicist before I've designed the
>user interface for my teleoperated vehicle, and find out how to do it right
>(or closer to right than my WAG) the first time?  Say I had no budget (hey,
>this is a hobby, and hardware costs are eating my lunch), could I talk a
>grad student at a local university into making the user interface his
>thesis, or do I have to goto grad school myself and make it my own thesis? 
>What schools in the Boston area (or New England in general) have good
>programs in Ergonomics? 

You could try to contact faculty in departments such as
psychology, computer science, industrial systems engineering
(be forewarned that these departments sometimes have
different names at different universities; also there may
be other relevant departments depending on the university)
to see if there are grad students interested in human-computer
interaction issues who are searching for a thesis topic and/or
a particular domain in which to apply their ideas.  

I am pretty sure there are people at MIT and Boston University,
just to mention two in the Boston area, that do HCI research.
If you have access, you might want to go to a university's
library and examine journals such as Human-Computer Interaction,
Human Factors, International Journal of Man-Machine Systems
and look at the names of the people publishing in them (as
well as who are on the editorial board) as a way of locating 
relevant people in the Boston area.