Our Services / Human Factors & Ergonomics

Ergonomics and Human Factors

Our Ergonomics and Human Factors Consulting service aims to optimize the interaction between people and systems by enhancing safety, performance, and well-being. We work with clients to design workplaces, products, and processes that fit human capabilities and limitations, ensuring a harmonious and efficient environment.

Human Factors Engineering - Optimising the interaction between humans and systems to improve performance and reduce errors

Workplace Ergonomics Assessment - Evaluating workplace setups to identify ergonomic risks and areas for improvement.

Product Ergonomics Design - Ensuring products are designed with the user’s comfort, safety, and efficiency in mind.

What challenges do we solve?

Enhanced Safety and Well-Being: how can we minimise risks and enhance the well-being of our employees by creating safer and more comfortable environments?
Improved Performance and Productivity: how might we optimise human-system interactions to boost efficiency and reduce errors?
Cognitive Load and Mental Fatigue - how can we assess the workload of our staff and design their tasks & their environment better?
User-Centered Solutions: how do we best go about understanding the needs and capabilities of users to create products and environments that are intuitive and effective?
Aging Workforce and Diverse Populations - how do we address the changing needs of our users?

Why work with us?

At the core of our design philosophy are four fundamental human factors: physical, cognitive, emotional, and cultural. Each of these plays a pivotal role in shaping how individuals interact with and perceive their environment.

Physical: By focusing on ergonomics, we ensure that designs are tailored to accommodate diverse body types and physical capabilities, resulting in environments that are comfortable and accessible for all.
Cognitive: We prioritize intuitive interfaces and clear information architecture to facilitate ease of understanding, decision-making, and memory retention, thereby enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.
Emotional: By creating empathetic and aesthetically pleasing designs, we forge deeper connections with users, evoking positive emotions and fostering brand loyalty.
Cultural: Our designs are sensitive to cultural norms and values, ensuring relevance and resonance across different societal groups.

Incorporating these human design factors not only elevates the user experience but also drives innovation and inclusivity. By taking a holistic approach, we craft solutions that are not only functional but also emotionally and culturally engaging, leading to designs that people love to use and live with.

Highlight Case Study – Human Factors & Ergonomics

Liverpool John Lennon Airport

The Airport security screening process is an essential and important guard to safe travel. However, it is recognised that this mandatory checkpoint often creates a low point in customer satisfaction at airports. Liverpool John Lennon Airport saw this as an opportunity to review their existing arrangement and inject some design thinking in a bid to improve the passenger experience. LJLA invited Mima to tackle the design challenge.

People – Human Factors & Ergonomics

Martin Freer
Director

With 30 years of experience in transport, digital human modelling and control systems, Martin is a Mima Director and is Head of Human Factors. He runs our team answering complex human-related problems for our clients.

Lisa Baker
Head of Experience Design & Sustainability

Lisa is a Chartered Ergonomist with 15 years of experience across various industries, including healthcare, transport, culture and heritage. Lisa specialises in bridging human factors and service design to create innovative and sustainable services and experiences, grounded in evidence.

Nicola Hayden-Smith
Principal Human Factors Consultant

Nikki is an ergonomist with seven years of experience providing consultancy to safety critical industries, especially rail. She has worked on projects such as Thameslink and Crossrail. Previous work includes workload and workspace assessments, training needs analyses and system design.

Karen Jackson
Principal Human Factors Consultant

Karen is an experienced Human Factors Consultant who has provided consults across multiple domains and environments, including rail, road & air transportation; medical; and security. She applies her wide experience of multiple HF methods to real world problems to deliver efficient, effective human-centred solutions.

Laura Jones
Senior Human Factors Consultant

Graduate of Loughborough University in MSc Ergonomics (Human Factors) with a background in Psychology. Laura has experience working in healthcare ergonomics and within Mima has been involved in multiple projects including control room design and rail, leading testing and analysis.

Luke Murgatroyd
Senior Human Factors Consultant

Luke graduated from Loughborough University with a BSc Ergonomics & Human Factors Design and is experienced in automotive design and engineering, as well as UX design and research methodologies. Luke has a strong interest in the future of transport, immersive design and applying Human Factors knowledge to solving real-world problems.

Adam Parkes
Principal Human Factors Consultant

Adam has extensive experience providing user centered design insight to complex and challenging design programmes in airports, transport hubs and public buildings. Adam gets to the heart of the user experience and understands how the design can meet their needs to be effective, efficient and inherently intuitive.

Francesca Podmore
Head of Human Factors

Fran is an experienced human factors engineer with a portfolio of projects across rail, aviation, energy and government sectors. She has led a number of major projects including our work on the command centre for the ITER fusion reactor. She brings experience across a range of human factors methods including UX design, risk assessment and user trials organisation.

Dr Eylem Thron
Principal Human Factors Consultant

Eylem is a Chartered Ergonomist with a PhD in Engineering and MSc in Human Factors, who has over 10 years experience across aerospace, defence and rail. Her focus is on user-centred design and accessibility and has worked on such high-profile projects as Crossrail and Thameslink.

See our full team