Child Safety vs. Parent Safety

Aug 31, 2009 by Christina Mendat - Former Staffer in 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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Dallas Cowboys learn a hard lesson: Test before you implement

Aug 28, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in Human Factors, User Research

Cowboys Stadium

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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Why I Love Interview Project

Aug 26, 2009 by Matthew Stevens in Design Inspiration

Interview Project is a road trip documentary presented by David Lynch and directed by his son Austin.

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Usability flaw in IE8’s address bar

Aug 24, 2009 by Sogra Nishath in 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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Unhooking my shower curtain

Aug 21, 2009 by Miranda Capra in 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?

shower-curtain-hooks

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New Usability Method: Web mining

Aug 19, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in 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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Baby Registry 2.0–Creating a list online is much easier than in stores

Aug 17, 2009 by Sogra Nishath in 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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Twitter: More valuable than you think

Aug 14, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in Trends, Web & Software

Twitter logoThe 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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Physical and cognitive affordances of the Sidekick LX

Aug 12, 2009 by Jon Howarth in Consumer Products, Human Factors

T-Mobile Sidekick LX and Sidekick

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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I’m in love with a vacuum

Aug 10, 2009 by Corinna Proctor in 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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Welcome to the HumanCentric blog. We believe great experiences come from understanding people. Our research-inspired design process helps uncover user needs and results in compelling products that people love.

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