07.28.2010
Miranda Capra /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors
Several months ago I bought my first electric toothbrush, and I have to admit that I’m in love. Not only is it a great toothbrush, but it’s a great example of a classic Human Factors design issue: function allocation between humans and machines. This is an issue that dates back to at least 1951 with Fitts Lists, and HABA-MABA lists, such as:
- Humans are best at (HABA) information retrieval using context and associations, machines are best at (MABA) information retrieval based on long lists and structured information.
- Humans are best at creative and adaptive tasks, machines are best at precise and repetitive tasks.
The lists change as machine capabilities change, but they are helpful when assessing a complex system and looking for places where machine automation can help, such as scanning barcodes at the grocery store instead of typing in prices, and where they introduce new problems, such as airplane pilots having difficulty staying awake during long flights because so many tasks have been automated. So how does this apply to my toothbrush?
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06.25.2010
Miranda Capra /
Consumer Products /
Human Factors /
Industrial Design /
Mobile
I’m sad to say that my new iPhone has the same “death grip” problem as everyone else. If I hold it so that my hand bridges two of the three metal bands that encircle the device, the reception bars drop. It’s especially bad if you bridge a gap in the bands at the bottom-left corner of the device, right where it nestles into your palm if you hold it left-handed. What was Apple thinking, building the antenna into an exposed metal band around the edge of the phone?
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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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03.01.2010
Andrew Wirtanen /
Human Factors
When athletes are racing one-by-one instead of next to each other, the closeness of the results are a lot harder to perceive. To illustrate how close some of the results in Vancouver were, the New York Times created cool interactive piece called Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical. Turn your speakers on and try the women’s speedskating 1,000-m. Can you tell a difference between the top two finishers?
Even with both the audio and visual cues, the .02 of a second difference is impossible for me to distinguish. The physical distance separating the two Olympians would be a lot more meaningful to me. The fact that we are much better at distinguishing distance is one reason why you’ll notice that consumer products such as turn-by-turn GPS units will use distance instead of time to inform drivers when they need to turn. Distance is tangible, whereas time is invisible and fleeting.
02.25.2010
Miranda Capra /
Human Factors /
Usability
I ran into the flight status screens below at an airport in New York City on my way home to North Carolina. My husband and I stared at these screens for several minutes, looking for our flight and trying not to panic that it had been canceled. Then an airport employee walked past and pointed out that they were not in service. How did both of us miss the NOT IN SERVICE sign taped prominently between the two screens? The sign was right in front of us, but it wasn’t near our place of focus, the actual TV screen, and the writing in pen was hard to see from a distance.
There are so many things that could have made this better: write with a marker, stick it to the middle of the screen, cover the screens with paper, perhaps even turn off the broken screens, if that’s not too much to ask? When something like this happens at home or in a small office everyone just knows to ignore it, but in a public setting a sign like that has to scream so that even idiots like me will notice it.
01.04.2010
Leigh McClure /
Human Factors /
Transportation /
Usability
While on the phone with one of my friends who is expecting, I learned something that I found very interesting. It turns out that about 90% of car seats are improperly installed by new parents, even when they use the instructions! I was shocked and a little appalled. My first thought was, why is it so hard/confusing to use a car seat? This is a life-saving device and you would think that manufacturers would want to implement a fool proof way to secure the seat in the vehicle.
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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
