Description:
This research poster explores how applying human factors and ergonomics principles can improve Community Centered Entrepreneurial Development Systems (CCEDS). While these systems often focus on economic metrics, this approach emphasizes the human side: how entrepreneurs, community members, and other stakeholders interact with and make sense of these systems. Drawing on lessons from fields like healthcare and aviation, the poster identifies core challenges related to understanding complex information, tracking progress, ensuring usability, and clearly defining roles. Examining real examples, it offers practical strategies to make CCEDS more accessible, resilient, and responsive to the communities they aim to serve.
“Innovative Pathways to Thriving Communities” invites us to explore new ways of fostering local growth. Rather than viewing CCEDS strictly through an economic or structural lens, this poster highlights the everyday human elements that shape these systems. By examining how community members, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders interact with and make sense of these environments, we can better understand why certain problems emerge, why tasks become confusing, and why important information might get overlooked.
This poster doesn’t claim a ready-made solution or a proven new method. Instead, it identifies common stumbling blocks and shows how human factors—cognitive load, clarity of roles, ease of tool use—can influence how systems perform in real-world conditions. By recognizing these underlying issues, communities and practitioners may be better equipped to ask the right questions, gather the right data, and think more critically about what’s working and what isn’t. Over time, this awareness could guide the development of more user-friendly, accessible systems that support vibrant entrepreneurial activity. In this way, the poster adds a needed perspective to the conversation about building thriving communities— not by offering quick fixes but by revealing where we need to look more carefully.
References:
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