08.31.2009
Christina Mendat - Former Staffer /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors /
Usability
Companies go to very great lengths to design and develop the latest and greatest child products such as child safety seats, strollers, and other contraptions. Parents feed this development by wanting to provide their children with the best in safety. Given all of these products, our children are probably the safest they have ever been. It is great that our children are so safe and snug, but what about the parents?
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08.28.2009
Andrew Wirtanen /
Human Factors /
User Research
source: flickr.com/photos/forrer
The new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas has the world’s largest HD screen. It looks amazing. But, there’s one little problem: the $40 million 60×25 yard screen is a giant obstacle for punters. In the 1st preseason game of the season on August 21st, Tennessee Titans punter A.J. Trapasso hit the screen in the 3rd quarter. Trapasso said that NFL punters probably won’t hit the screen every time, but it’s “in the way”. The screen presents “a lot of issues”, said Titans coach Jeff Fisher.
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08.26.2009
Matthew Stevens /
Design Inspiration
Interview Project is a road trip documentary presented by David Lynch and directed by his son Austin.
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08.24.2009
Sogra Nishath /
Usability /
Web & Software
Thanks IE for inspiring this blog entry and no thanks to my frustration!
I recently upgraded to Internet Explorer 8. For the last 2 weeks, every time I clicked on the drop-down arrow in my address bar to access a link that I had visited nothing was happening. The drop-down was still open but the link that I had just clicked on wasn’t being loaded. When nothing happened I looked at the open drop-down to retry but the link wasn’t there anymore. This happened so quickly that I just shrugged it and moved on…
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08.21.2009
Miranda Capra /
Consumer Products /
Usability /
User Research
Last month I bought new shower curtain rings for my bathroom. Actually, not rings, I’m so tired of the plastic rings I’ve been using forever, so difficult to open and snap closed, and half the time one of them breaks when I open it. Instead I decided to buy elegant metal s-shaped shower curtain hooks from Target. What a mistake! Every time I opened or closed my shower curtain, several rings came off the pole, or the curtain came off the hooks, and a few times a hook fell off completely and hit me in the head. They looked so good, where did the design go wrong?
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08.19.2009
Andrew Wirtanen /
Usability /
User Research
When I go to user experience or human factors conferences, there are a lot of presentations on new methods to use when conducting studies with participants. But, what about the information that is already out there? People talk about their likes and dislikes about products every day on the Internet. At HumanCentric, we have a name for the process of collecting and conslidating all that information: web mining.
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08.17.2009
Sogra Nishath /
Usability /
Web & Software
My husband and I are expecting our first child. We are both “legal aliens” who work in the US. To us, creating a baby registry is not the norm. Usually friends and family give a present of their choosing. Sometimes this can be a good surprise and sometimes not…
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08.14.2009
Andrew Wirtanen /
Trends /
Web & Software
The typical reply to the question “are you on Twitter?” is always the same: I don’t care to know what people are watching on TV or eating for dinner. There is a widespread ignorance regarding the power of the social platform, which exploded in 2007 at SXSW, and joined the mainstream this year…
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08.12.2009
Jon Howarth /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors
Source: sidekick.com
I recently had the opportunity to use the Sidekick LX for an extended period of time. The phone has a unique swivel screen that serves as a perfect example of the difference between physical and cognitive affordances in the design of products. A physical affordance helps a person physically perform an action with a product, and a cognitive affordance helps a person think about or know how to use a product. The Sidekick has great physical affordances for opening the screen but poor cognitive affordances to indicate how to open the screen.
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08.10.2009
Corinna Proctor /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors
Yes, it’s true – I’m in love. With… my vacuum.
Ridiculous? Maybe.
True? Totally.
My vacuum is honestly one of the best-designed consumer products that I own. But a vacuum? Really, Corinna? Yep. You’ve got it. To win my heart, it’s the little things that count the most. So let’s start with the basics…
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