11.23.2009
Sean Farres /
Creativity /
Design Inspiration /
Graphic Design /
Green Technology /
Human Factors /
Industrial Design /
Medical /
Trends
One medical brand incorporating good design is Help Remedies. The simplicity is genius. The greatest feature of the medicine is no use of excessive fillers. What stands this product out even more is the packaging. Its main message is how it can heal me. What I like even more is that the packaging can go in the compost. Does your Advil do that?
In-Store Display
11.23.2009
Miranda Capra /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors
A few years ago I bought a new can opener that leaves a smooth edge on the lid of the can so that you don’t have to worry about cutting yourself on the lid. The first time I tried to use it, it took me 10 minutes and I completely mangled the lid of the can in the process. Why? Because the new can opener look very similar to my old one, but worked in a completely different fashion. Let me show you some example can openers to explain what happened.
Read more »
11.18.2009
Dan Mauney /
Consumer Products /
Mobile /
Trends
I am a relatively new user to the iPhone, having just purchased one this summer. I bought the iPhone primarily on the promise of 3rd party applications making my life easier. Switching to AT&T from Verizon was difficult because the network coverage of Verizon is so much better where I live and travel, but I was ready to make use of these 3rd party Internet-enabled applications to improve my life.
All-in-all, the iPhone has delivered on that promise. Nothing demonstrated that better than a recent trip to Paris. I have done a bit of international travel, but this was to be my first time to France. France is famous for not wanting to speak English to tourists and I don’t know a lick of French and I was traveling alone, so I did more than my usual preparations for this trip.
Read more »
11.13.2009
Sean Farres /
Community Involvement /
Creativity /
Design Inspiration /
Graphic Design /
Green Technology /
Human Factors /
Industrial Design /
Local /
User Research
What a great meeting at the TriUPA & HFES Carolina World Usability Day event. HumanCentric had the opportunity to present our new recycling solution to this year’s design challenge. It goes without saying we were the clear winners in the design challenge (well… we were the only entry, but let’s not get caught up in the details…). The audience was very receptive and had lots of great questions about our process, information graphic and in-home bin prototype. Click here to view our presentation.
Many audience members wanted our solution implemented across the Triangle to jump-start awareness and increase recycling. HumanCentric is very excited about the community support and would love to have our vision for a better recycling system become a reality. If you would like to join our campaign for a greener Triangle please contact Alexander Hussain at HumanCentric. HumanCentric’s next steps are to connect local government officials to present our improved recycling solution.
-
-
Alex presenting our solution
-
-
Information Graphic
-
-
Sean’s demo
11.12.2009
Corinna Proctor /
Local /
Usability
In honor of World Usability Day, today, November 12, hundreds of usability conferences, design challenges and meet-ups are being sponsored and organized around the globe! Check out events in your local area and around the world.
HumanCentric will be attending North Carolina’s Triangle Usability Professionals’ Association and Carolina Chapter of HFES event at SAS. The event starts at 6 pm.
Staff from HumanCentric will present their solution to this year’s design challenge.
Happy usability!
11.09.2009
Miranda Capra /
Usability /
Web & Software
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street. When I visited their website in a browser that didn’t support Flash, I was greeted by a fantastic error message: F is for Flash! What was so great about this error message? It felt like something Sesame Street would say. It used letters and alliteration, it had a happy Muppet character next to it, and it tried to sneak in a little educational information about Flash. It was also great from a user interface perspective. Much of the rest of the site was still usable; it explained what was happening and why I couldn’t use this part of the website (feedback), and gave me a helpful link to download and install flash so I could use the site (feed forward). I love it!
11.03.2009
Sheila Crosby /
Consumer Products /
Usability /
User Experience
I’m starting to pay more attention to how sound is used in product design. When it’s good, I don’t notice it. When it’s bad, it’s all I focus on. This brings me to my coffee maker.
Coffee is a big deal at my house. When it was time to buy a new coffee maker, I was concerned with two main things: how it looked (as it’s the only appliance, other than my mixer, that sits out on the counter) and an auto-start feature. I loved the idea of prepping the coffee maker the night before and having fresh coffee made and ready when I woke in the morning. Sounds good in theory, right?
Read more »
11.01.2009
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
Once the data was collected, the researchers reviewed all the videos of the gestures and classified them according to a detailed lexicon defined by the research team.
To help maintain consistency across researchers, all unique gestures were catalogued and uploaded to an online gesture glossary. Tables 1 and 2 below show the data collected for each unique gesture in the gesture glossary.
Early researchers uploaded many unique gestures to the online gesture glossary, while later researchers were able to compare the gesture made by their participants to the gesture pictures in the glossary and re-use the same gesture ID and description.
All gestures were reviewed and entered into the results spreadsheet, the structure of which is shown in Table 3. Because most of the detail describing the gesture is contained in the online gesture glossary, the values entered into the results spreadsheet were limited to the minimum number of items to classify the gesture and enable the data analyses.
Read more »
11.01.2009
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
As mentioned in the Gesture Reserach – Protocol (Part 2: Session Flow), participants were asked to perform 28 action. This blog provides a description and the “before” and “after” screens of each action
Here are a few key instructions to all moderators who ran this study:
Read more »
