Dr Claire Williams

Hello, I’m Claire, a Chartered Human Factors Specialist.

Officially, my job is to be a technical expert in Human Factors (also called Ergonomics and sometimes shortened to HF/E).

“HF/E is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data, and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance”

International Ergonomics Association definition

You can read a whole book I co-edited on the subject if this floats your boat!

But that’s all just a fancy way of saying that I work on systems where people and technology meet.

Put another way, I help organisations understand how to design or change their products, equipment, processes or systems – so that they work for the people using them and achieve the goals for which they were designed.

And I use systems thinking tools to help with that.

Here’s my article on systems thinking published in the September 2022 issue of The Ergonomist: Driving ambitions: how systems thinking principles can improve the Safe Systems approach to protecting people on the roads (PDF, 719 KB)

Conceptual work

I often work on projects which are still in the concept stage, bringing together psychology and design principles to shape user-centred products and systems through insightful research and collaboration.

Here are some examples of my work…

• My article for HindSight magazine about future transport systems: The Future of Mobility (PDF, 799 KB)
• My article for HighwaysIndustry.com: Taking a Human Factors Approach to Intelligent Mobility

Improving existing things

I enhance existing systems and processes by applying user insights, optimising design, workflow and interaction to improve efficiency and user satisfaction.

Here are some examples of my work…

• My research report on office set-ups for the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH): Move more: investigating the impact of behaviour change techniques
• I was a panelist on a podcast about road systems and how behavioural sciences can improve customer experience in the highways sector: Transcript of our panel discussion for the National Highways Connecting the Country podcast (PDF, 649 KB)
• A research project to understand and improve the complaints process in the news publishing sector: Mapping the press complaints landscape from the consumer perspective (PDF, 10.4 MB)

Get in touch

I can help if you are currently…

• designing a product, work set-up, process or system which will be used by people
• or already have one which has poor safety statistics, lots of complaints or just isn’t working right…

Dr Claire Williams C.ErgHF FCIEHF

Technical Director, Claire Williams Consultants Ltd.
+44 (0)7414 878250
claire@williamsconsultants.co.uk