10.24.2009
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
Once we settled on the equipment and the general approach, we then developed the detailed protocol and piloted it in the US and Germany. After this pilot, the study protocol was updated with lessons learned and best practices and provided to the remaining countries.
As mentioned in the Gesture Research – Protocol (Part 1: Equipment) blog, participants were asked to define their own gesture for 28 actions. The 28 actions were:
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10.22.2009
Jon Howarth /
Community Involvement /
Gestural Interfaces /
Human Factors /
User Experience /
User Research
Dr. Dan Mauney and Dr. Miranda Capra gave a presentation at a “works-in-progress” forum on Tuesday, October 20 at 1:30pm at this year’s Annual Conference of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in San Antonio, TX. Dan and Miranda’s talk was titled “Cultural Influence on Gestural Interface Design”. They described a recent study conducted in association with the International Usability Partners in which they collected user-generated gestures from 40 people in 9 countries for 28 common software commands (e.g. zoom, scroll, cut, copy, rotate).
Dan is releasing regular blog posts about the study at http://www.humancentric.com/GestureResearch.
10.21.2009
Jon Howarth /
Usability Lab /
User Research
Do you ever find that you need to create a recording of two camera feeds? We developed a way that uses only free software (if you have Microsoft Windows) and is pretty straightforward. Read more »
10.20.2009
Corinna Proctor /
Human Factors
Our very own Mike Maddox, Senior Scientist at HumanCentric was inducted as a Fellow to HFES at this morning’s opening plenary session. Check out Mike in all of his glory. Mike is flanked by Miranda Capra and Barry Beith who are each presenting at this year’s conference. Congrats, Mike!!
10.16.2009
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
While the concept for the study was simple, this was a challenging study to design and ensure repeatability of the protocol when conducting the study across 9 different countries with 9 different test teams. The equipment played an important role in accomplishing this.
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10.16.2009
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
340 people defined their own touchscreen-based gestures for 28 actions (like scroll, rotate, cut, copy, paste) across 9 countries, totaling over 9,500 gestures. What can we learn from this?
A lot.
Some believe we have entered a new era in interaction design. For many years we’ve been using the mouse, pointstick, touchpad, and of course, the keyboard. A new interaction convention is gaining popularity now that makes use of the whole human body.
This is the first in a series of blogs about gesture research conducted by the International Usability Partners (IUP). As this research is conducted, analyses and conclusions will be posted here as they are completed. The first couple blogs will provide the background, protocol, and data collection methods. Future blogs will contain the analyses and results.
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10.16.2009
Miranda Capra /
Community Involvement /
Consumer Products /
Green Technology /
Local /
User Experience
HumanCentric is creating designs for better recycling containers and recycling systems as part of a design challenge sponsored by TriUPA for World Usability Day. We are collecting information about how you recycle, what you know about recycling, and what you would change, and would love for you to take 5 minutes and fill out our survey. Thanks!
10.13.2009
Corinna Proctor /
Medical
We are hanging out at Medtrade 2009′s semi-annual conference in Atlanta, October 12-15. Come join us!
Brian Chiarizia and Alex Hussain are roaming the floor, attending keynotes and chatting up their friends in the home medical equipment (HME) industry.
Medtrade is celebrating its 30th anniversary and has a large following of HME manufacturers, vendors and suppliers.
10.13.2009
Miranda Capra /
Human Factors
Last month, the FDA issued a public health alert about Potential Medication Errors with Tamiflu Oral Suspension. Doctors in the US typically prescribe dosages for liquid drugs in terms of teaspoons. However, the eye dropper that comes with the medication has doses listed in milliliters. Users that do not realize this difference might under-dose themselves, leading to not being protected from the flu, or over-dosing, which could be potentially fatal, especially for young children. Now that doctors are aware of this problem they can issue dosages in milliliters, assuming that the doctor is able to properly do the conversion math. The best way to solve this would be to have the US using the same measurement system as the rest of the world, but that’s a huge issue all to itself. The next best solution is to have drugs that use the local units, or at least be labeled with both metric and English units…
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10.09.2009
Jon Howarth /
Usability Lab /
User Research /
Web & Software
Usability professionals and other research-focused professions often find the need to record screen video. This blog entry is intended to introduce you to basic approaches to capturing screen video and to explain the tradeoffs associated with these approaches…
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