I studied psychology as a subsidiary to my politics degree at university. In the mid-1970s, psychology was the media studies of its day — fashionable but usually chosen because it was easy, and most of the stuff we were taught was frictionless. There was not a lot to get to grips with.

One lecture, however, has stayed with me. It was about ergonomics, the science of designing machines, systems and processes that are efficient and comfortable to use. It was the heyday of awful design and I was so taken with the thought of a job in which you could spend your time improving things, I flirted briefly with the idea of becoming an ergonomist.

It did not happen, and I have never knowingly met one. But I get the sense — ergonomists will doubtless send me user-friendly emails to confirm or deny this — that ergonomists are not rock stars of modern industrial enterprise.