06.14.2010
Barry Beith /
Design Research /
Ergonomics /
Human Factors /
Industrial Design /
User Experience /
User Research
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is chartered with protecting the public from bad product design and recalls thousands of cribs due to the inability of some parents to follow directions. Now granted, often many designs and instructions for assembly are so bad as to be flagrant violations of all that is “design holy”, still three to four million cribs. And why, because a handful of children are injured, a smaller number die. Please don’t over-react. I understand the anguish of parents who lose a child or who are feeling guilty because their child was harmed or frightened. I get the anger they feel in this day and age over desperately needing to find the right scapegoat. However, the penalty seems to vastly outweigh the crime here and the solution seems to be all wrong.
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05.18.2010
Barry Beith /
Human Factors /
Transportation
According to an article in the May 17, 2010 News & Observer, a young man died on the road between Pinehurst and Sanford near the intersection of US 1 and NC 42. The report indicated that he hit a car head-on in the northbound lane of US 1. The car he hit had no lights on according to witnesses. One witness said the car was stopped. The driver of the dark vehicle was also killed. The young man hit it at speed head-on, suggesting that the “dark” vehicle was heading the wrong way or somehow got turned around in the northbound lanes. The police told his father that “they doubted that he ever saw it.” What a waste. High school aged, football star, coming home from seeing his girlfriend at her home in Pinehurst. Gone in the blink of an eye.
Gone in the blink of an eye that could not see the danger ahead in the road. Even something as large as an automobile. Even though his car lights were working fine. While this blog opens with a tragic story, its point focuses squarely on issues of visibility, conspicuity, and night vision. When our highway speeds outrun our headlights, our vision at night fails to protect us. When an object is dark, our closing rates can preclude our ability to see, think, and react. The end result is often fatal.
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04.15.2010
Barry Beith /
Human Factors
The Massey Upper Big Branch Coal Mine disaster which has dominated the news over the last two weeks raises a disturbing professional notion for me. In the late 1970s I was a student at the California State University of Northridge (CSUN) working with Dr. Mark Sanders trying to attain my Master’s degree in Applied Psychological Research/Human Factors.
My professor offered me a job working with him and his team on a project for the Bureau of Mines (BOM) which existed at that time to conduct health and safety related research in the U.S. mining industry. The team was designing and testing personal safety equipment for “low-seam” coal miners, e.g. helmet, kneepads, gloves. It proved to be a fun, if not thoroughly scary, adventure. It was also something else: it was true to the roots of human factors and ergonomics. It was work that was desperately needed and went to the foundations of human factors and ergonomics because it was intended to improve the quality of work life and safety for people who worked every day in dangerous, harsh conditions that threatened their lives in very real ways.
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03.24.2010
Barry Beith /
Human Factors
David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times contributed an article to the Sunday News & Observer on March 21, 2010. He wrote well of the contrast between individual thinking, person-to-person, perspectives and decision–making and what he called “group think.” He points out that individual thinking is driven by the tendencies of fairness, embarrassment, social propriety, kindness, and an understanding for and defense of the “underdog.” Group think, on the other hand, reflects our tendencies for “us v them” thinking and reflects historical shame fests such as the Jews v Nazis, Tutsis v Hutus, and Shiites v Sunnis. The contrast, is brilliantly mapped onto our current political theatre, and, for many, is a truly scary scenario when taken to its logical extreme outcome.
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06.10.2009
Barry Beith /
Medical
In 1998, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a study of healthcare in America. In their published report of 2000, entitled “To Err is Human,” they reported that at least 98,000 deaths occurred annually in U.S. hospitals primarily due to infections, diseases, and medication errors that resulted in avoidable death. Avoidable death that was caused within the very healthcare system that was “dedicated” to saving lives and restoring health. All of us who read the report and two subsequent reports by the IOM were struck by the critical nature of this finding and the need to immediately address it.
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