Monday, May 3, 2010

What is a Human Factors Professional?

I recently heard about the possibility to become a Certified Usability Analysts, and it got me thinking about the following question. What is required to call yourself a Human Factors Professional? Do you need a four year degree, a masters, PhD, on-job training, or a certificate. I don't really have an answer, yet, but I am curious what other certificates are out there related to human factors. I know of one other, Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics.

1 comments:

Peter Squire said...

Update: there was a linked-in discussion about this topic. The following certificates were mentioned.

Academic certificates: such as University of Washington (UW) has a 1 year certification in User Experience.

HFI-Certified Usability Analyst:
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/certification.asp

Board of Certification in Professional Ergonomics (BCPE):
http://www.bcpe.org/default.asp


I think the only serious certificate, however, is the BCPE.