Human centred design of equipment: lessons from the mining industry

Human Centred Design (HCD) has been successfully used in the design of road vehicles, medical equipment and consumer products. It is now beginning to be applied in both the mining and the maritime domains. HCD also closely links with the USA Prevention through Design initiative for 'designing out' hazards. This paper will describe an ongoing international collaboration that has the objective of increasing the uptake of HCD in mining. HCD for the mining industry will be defined and key principles, processes and tools outlined. Following this, the benefits of a HCD approach will be outlined, examples of mining HCD successes noted, and barriers towards greater uptake of this approach in mining summarised. Shipping shares many commonalities with mining terms of large, high-risk, expensive and often legacy equipment that may have new systems added in a piecemeal manner. Both industries are currently experiencing a rapid growth in the deployment of smart devices, tele-operation systems and new equipment. It is therefore particularly important that equipment and new technology are designed to be safe, effective, acceptable and usable by focusing on the end user. This paper will describe the key features