The 60s-80s of the last century are characterized by emerging a number of theoretical and methodological works devoted to new understanding of design as a person’s interaction with his objective world. These are the works of designers (Fedorov M.V., Minervin G.B. and others), philosophers (Kantor K.M., Shchedrovitsky G.P., Yudin E.G.) and psychologists (Zinchenko V.P., Munipov V.M., Chainova L.D. and others). Common positions were noted in a variety of interpretations; these positions are interdisciplinarity and project-based design. Intensive development of technical means of labour activity determined the need to have an integral system of ideas about a working person, his labour activity, his relationship with the machine and with the environment, his ergonomics. Thanks to the research and development of prominent Russian philosophers, engineers and psychologists, ergonomics received the status of an interdisciplinary, scientific and design discipline of a new type, based on a systemic methodology and an activity approach. On the basis of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics, founded in 1962, a productive integration of design and ergonomics tools was fulfilled; a direction was formed, which would later be called ergodesign. Special interdisciplinary research, projects and developments were organized where specialists from different fields of knowledge studying the human nature participated. In the process of these events the ideas of various disciplines were synthesized. A significant part of the research in the field of ergodesign in the period of 1960s-1980s was carried out within the framework of a closed problem in the field of space ergonomics and defence technology. Some of the solutions in the field of space ergonomics and defence technology related to the developments conversion in the post-Soviet period are discussed in this article.