Research and the Future of Engineering Psychology

Abstract : The vigor of engineering psychology as an applied discipline in engineering and psychology is dependent upon the robustness of the scientific knowledge that it applies to the design of man-machine systems. As a field, engineering psychology mostly has its practitioners applying knowledge and comparatively few generating new knowledge, with the result that the capability for system innovation is not as strong as it should be. Project Hindsight of the Department of Defense and Project TRACES of the National Science Foundation show that rather long-term basic and applied research is necessary for generating the knowledge that brings impressive innovations in products. The demands of product development have called for too much short-term research and too little long-term research of the kind most effective for producing important innovations in new systems. Several remedial courses of action are considered.