Jan 05, 2010 by Andrew Wirtanen in Medical, User Research
A checklist is one of the most useful tools during a usability study. It may seem trivial to check a box every time one starts or stops a video recording, but even the brightest researchers will forget at some point.
NPR’s Morning Edition did a great piece with surgeon and author Atul Gawande. Gawande discussed his own experience where doctors were hesitant to use checklists, probably because of perceptions that it was admitting weakness. After requiring a group of doctors to use checklists, 80% of them said they thought they were useful. When the same group was asked if they would want checklists used if they were having an operation, 94% said yes.
One of the most powerful statements in the interview:
I have not gotten through a week of surgery where the checklist has not caught a problem.
Dec 16, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in Trends, User Experience, User Research, Web & Software
I dread going to the mall during the holiday season (Black Friday to Christmas Eve). But, this past Sunday night I was able to find a parking spot very easily. I went into a store to make an exchange and found that there was no wait. Then, I did a little browsing and went on my way. Surprisingly, my experience actually wasn’t that bad.
But, I think I know why it was so easy…
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Nov 13, 2009 by Sean Farres in 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.
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Alex presenting our solution
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Information Graphic
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Sean’s demo
Oct 22, 2009 by Jon Howarth in 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.
Oct 21, 2009 by Jon Howarth in 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 »
Oct 09, 2009 by Jon Howarth in 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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Sep 29, 2009 by Andy Hamilton in Design Research, Industrial Design, User Research
Thanks to everyone who made it out of bed and to our presentation at 9 am on Saturday! We appreciated the attentive ears, questions and discussion after the early morning presentation. For those of you who maybe had one too many caipirinhas at Luminaire, or couldn’t make the conference altogether, we wanted to share our paper and presentation with you. While this is a pretty mild substitute for the real deal, together they should give you a pretty good indication of what we were about. Enjoy!
Transparent User-Centered Design on a Dime (PDF, 310 KB)
Sep 22, 2009 by Elizabeth Mauer - Former Staffer in Design Research, Human Factors, Industrial Design, Trends, User Research
As a human factors practitioner, I completely and whole-heartedly support talking to users as an integral part of the product design process. I think it’s the best way to make sure a product is useful, usable, and desirable (the holy trinity, in my book).
However, I’m not living under a rock. I know these days companies have tighter budgets and even tighter timelines. The pressure is on more so than ever to produce products that will sell while spending the least amount of money developing them. Product teams are looking at their budgets and trying to trim off anything they can do without. Many times it’s easy and tempting for user research to be left out to save money and time in the development process…
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Aug 28, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in Human Factors, User Research
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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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?
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