The Unfit Office

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"Office of the 80s: Part 8" (January) could have been more informative in identifying the causes of the problems in today's ergonomic or electronic offices. These problems begin with lack of communication between human-factor engineers and industrial designers during the product-development process of corporations that manufacture such office systems.

Often, the human-factor engineer may spend hours gathering physiological, psychological, and behavioral data without knowing if an identified problem can be solved structurally. An industrial designer may not always know what such data suggests in terms of structure or the manipulation of form. Both practitioners often are at odds with the language of each other's craft. Consequently, their own objectives are often met without sharing a common goal. Retrofitting of objectives, therefore, can be expensive.

These problems, which the consumer ultimately pays for, can be corrected by using a parallel design audit or by using an individual with expertise in both behavioral science and industrial design.