John Karlin

By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.

Unless you read the business obituaries lately it is quite likely that you have never heard of John Karlin.  I have to admit that I had never heard of him.  However you see his work virtually every day – and many many times a day if you are like most people.  You see John Karlin was the “father of human factors engineering”.  (I am sure that statement makes it all very clear for now – right?!)

John Karlin worked at Bell Labs as an industrial psychologist.  Basically he designed products for how they would be most effectively used by humans.  That is the essence of what we mean by human factors engineering.  It is a field that is often woefully lacking in Enterprise Risk Management, and as I often argue, a reason that so much risk management in corporations is so ineffective.  If systems (protocols, tools, etc.) are not designed in a way that is easy and intuitive for employees to effectively use, then those same systems (protocols, tools, etc.) will not be used, or if used will only be used grudgingly, or ineffectively.

A very readable book on human factor engineering is called “The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology”, by Kim Vicente www.amazon.com/The-Human-Factor-Revolutionizing-Technology/dp/0415978912/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1360433770&sr=8-5&keywords=the+human+factor

I believe that if human factor engineering (and social factor engineering) was a part of risk management design and implementation, then ERM would be much more effective than it currently is.

By the way, John Karlin determined that the layout of phone numbers, with square numbers laid out as 123 on the first row, was the most efficient and effective way to go from rotary dial phones to push button phones.  Take a look at your phone and know that it is because of Karlin’s analysis in the 1950’s that your phone has the layout it has today.