Best Practices in Product Safety Management
The elements of a program to deal with pre-sale and post-sale safety issues are well-known. But the specifics of what elements should be used and how by a particular manufacturer are often unknown. Therefore, the most important question that must be answered by any company manufacturing finished products or component parts is “What should my company do and how should I do it?”
Up until now there’s been much emphasis on designing to make a product “idiot proof”. This has provided some benefit, but what Usability Engineering is reminding us is that it is the designers who are sometimes viewed as idiots by the users. It is the users who are the experts (in usability).