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.

Along with cribs, we now see a recall of 3.4 million window shades by IKEA. Why? Because a child almost choked by having the cord wrapped around its neck. The agency says about 500 children have choked to death since the early 1980s. They estimate about one child a month dies. This is horrible, but design cannot replace the watchful eye of parents. Design recalls cannot replace the common sense and even “over-protectiveness” and “hyper-vigilance” parents need to exhibit for their infants and toddlers. There are far more creative ways for an infant or toddler to harm them selves than we think because we survived, probably due to our parents over-protective natures, when we were growing up.

Recalls have severe impacts on all the stakeholders. Manufacturers, distributors, retailers are all hurt, some even destroyed by such recalls. Consumers are often left with poorly designed and dangerous items because the cost of replacing them is beyond their means. e.g., cribs. The confusion, inconvenience, cost, and disruption of lives due to these mass recalls are manifest. Don’t get me wrong, those who knowingly and willingly introduce poor designs for profit sake, e.g., use of lead-based paint or tainted dry-wall from China, deserve retribution, but often recalls are based on oversights and unintended and unexpected consequences rather than intentional bad practices.

It seems to me as a human factor trained professional who works in product design, usability testing, and safety, that the CPSC and other agencies tasked to protect the consumers in this country have options. Quite simply, the CPSC should require hazard analysis, risk-analysis, and usability testing for all products deemed capable of harming a person. For example; chainsaws, power tools and products children and toddlers interact with should be tested.  Such requirements need to be enforced, especially for products made overseas and sold to the U.S. market. There are professionals and methodologies time-tested and true to accomplish that very goal. The fact that there are businesses, which do not use them, doesn’t mean a company should not be required to do so.

As John Wooden, historic coach of the UCLA basketball program, once said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you ever have time to do it over.” These are truly sentiments of wisdom worth recalling.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am not sure whether Apple knew about this issue beforehand or not, but it demonstrates the importance of testing before release. Here’s a great quote I saw this morning on Twitter:

“A usability test is going to happen before or after you launch. The question is whether you want to be there or not.” - tsharon

Source: YouTube via Laughing Squid

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.

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…

One reason for a lack of shoppers is probably the recovering economy, but another reason is because of a large increase in online retail sales. Forrester, the marketing research firm, recently forecasted that online retail sales will continue to grow till at least 2013. Personally, I do about 90% of my shopping online, and use an online wishlist so people can find presents for me  (feel free to comment if you want to buy me something!).

Due to the increase in online retail sales, companies need to heavily consider the online user experience. In particular, the customer service experience. The customer service experience is probably the biggest factor when it comes to maintaining customers. One company that does it right is Bonobos, then Men’s pants online retailer based in New York. They have a very friendly process. You can write notes when you order, which they actually read. They have an any pant, any time, any reason return policy. In fact, they encourage you to order a couple pairs if you are not sure what your size is.  The best part? Free shipping both ways. I’m not exactly sure how they can manage to do this (maybe because they don’t need to pay for the cost of running a brick and mortar store), but people love it. The company claims to have a very high customer return rate and they are not afraid to share their customer service secrets.

Shipping and handling and poorly designed websites are deterrents for ordering online. Zappos, the online shoe retailer recently acquired by Amazon, offers free shipping both ways and is often praised for great customer service. Poorly designed websites can lead users to abandon their purchase, or purchase elsewhere. A well-designed site will also instill trust and lighten the load of the customer service staff by making content easier to find.

Of course, actually talking to customers is another key component to customer service. Beyond phone calls and emails, Twitter can be used by companies to ask and answer questions of customers. Bonobos is a heavy user of Twitter and will often poll for feedback on garment design options. Web mining is also a great tool for gathering feedback.

The bottom line is that retailers cannot afford to treat their online business the same as a mail-order catalog, especially this holiday season.

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.

Dan is releasing regular blog posts about the study at http://www.humancentric.com/GestureResearch.

There are plenty of ways to record two camera feeds. One way is to use a hardware mixer to create a Picture-in-Picture (PIP) view of the two feeds. The downsides to this approach are that quality mixers can be expensive and that they are most appropriate for fixed labs (i.e. they are often too bulky to carry off-site). Another way is to use a commercial software package such as Techsmith’s Morae. The downsides to this approach are that Morae can be relatively costly for some users (such as students) and that Morae requires some post-processing to generate videos from Morae recordings.

The basic idea for our approach is to display both videos on the screen (sized and positioned in whatever way you want) and then record the screen. For our approach, you’ll need to install Windows Media Encoder and software for viewing camera feeds, such as VLC Media Player. You’ll also need two cameras that you can connect to your PC, such as two webcams.

Here are the basic steps:

1. Open up two instances of your software for viewing camera feeds. View one camera feed in each instance. Size and position the camera feeds in whatever way is most appopriate for your needs. For example, you might have the camera feeds positioned side by side or you may have one feed scaled down and positioned in a corner, much like a traditional PIP view (as is shown in the image below). You may also want to consider turning off the window borders (as is shown for the small PIP in the image below).
2. Open Windows Media Encoder and choose the “Capture screen” option. Choose “Region of the screen”. Click the selection button and drag a rectangle around the windows that are displaying your camera feeds. Do not include the title bars on the windows or the Windows start menu/taskbar/notification area. The red rectangle in the image below illustrates the selected region of the screen. Note: Make sure that the values in the “Width x height:” boxes are even numbers; Windows Media Encoder may not work properly if either the width or the height value is an odd number.
3. When you are finished with the Windows Media Encoder setup wizard, click the “Properties” button in the toolbar and choose the “Compression” tab. Click the “Edit” button and change the video codec to “Windows Media Video 9″; this codec works better for capturing camera feeds than the “Windows Media Video 9 Screen” codec that is selected by default. Next, click on the other tab and change the frame rate to 29.97 frames per second.
4. Click the “OK” button and then the “Apply” button. You are now set up. When you click the “Start Encoding” button in the toolbar, Windows Media Recorder will record the area that you specified and save it as a .wmv video. Because of the way that you specified the region of the screen, your video will look as if it was created via a mixer or commercial software.

>> Read other Usability Lab blog entries

There are four different approaches to capturing screen video. The approaches differ in terms of cost, time required to generate a video, and quality. In the following approaches, I use the term target machine to refer to the machine that is generating the screen video that you want to capture.

Approach #1: Record the screen with a video camera

This is the most basic approach – simply point a video camera at the screen of the target machine.

• Pros:
  • This is a very simple approach that can be set up quickly.
• Cons:
  • To capture a screen in this manner, it is often necessary to set up a camera at a slight angle over a participant’s shoulder. If the camera is positioned close to the participant, such as on a tripod behind the participant, it can be particularly obtrusive. Additionally, because the camera is positioned at a slight angle to the screen, the view of the screen appears slightly distorted.
  • Many cameras create video files that require special codecs to watch. If the files are intended to be distributed or shared, it will be necessary to convert the files produced by the camera into a format that can be easily viewed by most people, such as .wmv or .mov. The conversion process can be very time consuming.
  • The quality is typically very low. A standard camera has a resolution of around 640 x 480 pixels, but monitors have resolutions that are potentially many times greater. As a result, video camera recordings of screens appear blurry. Using a HD camera will help reduce blurriness, but quality HD cameras are still somewhat expensive and HD cameras can produce very large files.

Approach #2: Recording software on the target machine

This approach involves installing recording software on the target machine that runs in the background and records the target machine’s screen.

• Pros:
  • There are a variety of free software applications, such as Camstudio, for recording screen video.
  • A number of professional products, such as Camtasia Studio and Morae, include editing features that make it easy to create professional looking videos.
• Cons:
  • Typically recording software is written to run on a major operating system, such as Windows. If you are trying to capture the display of a device that does not run a major operating system, you may not be able to use this approach.
  • The recording software can noticeably slow down a machine. In fact, it is not even possible to use the software on most UMPCs and netbooks.
  • You have to be able to access the target machine to start and stop the recordings. As a result, this software is not practical for remote setups.
  • Some of these software packages require post processing to generate videos. Depending on the output format, post processing may take a time equal to or greater than the length of the video.

Approach #3: Screen sharing

This approach involves recording a shared view of the target machine’s screen. For example, you may connect to the target machine using Windows Remote Desktop and then use recording software on your machine to record the shared view of the target machine.

• Pros:
  • This approach allows for remote setups.
  • Some tools, such UserVue have recording features built in (Note: TechSmith is phasing out UserVue).
• Cons:
  • Some tools for screen sharing, such as Webex, charge by the session or have monthly rates.
  • The quality of screen sharing video may be very low.
  • In many screen sharing setups, audio is handled via a phone connection. Unless you have special equipment for recording phone audio, the quality of the audio capture may be poor. Additionally, the video and audio will probably be out of sync because they are being delivered by two different systems that have different latencies.

Approach #4: Video signal capture

This approach involves using hardware to turn a VGA or DVI signal into a form that can be recorded by a recording application. For example, Epiphan manufacturers a variety of products that have a VGA or DVI input and a USB 2.0 output. The following is one possible setup:

1. Clone the display of the target machine. This is the basic process that you go through to set up a machine like a laptop for a projector.

2.  Connect the VGA cable from the target machine to an Epiphan device and connect the USB output from the Epiphan device to the machine that you’ll use to make the recording.

3.  Use recording software, such as Windows Media Encoder, that recognizes the Epiphan device.

The following are the pros and cons associated with this approach:

• Pros:
  • It is possible to create real time recordings that are very high quality.
  • The recording is done on a machine other than the target machine, so there is no recording software running on the target machine slowing it down.
  • You can record any device that can clone its display. This approach works well for UMPCs, netbooks, and some smartphones.
• Cons:
  • Creating high quality recordings in real time for high resolution target machines requires a good deal of processing power.
  • Hardware devices for converting VGA or DVI inputs for use with a recording machine can be expensive. Devices that support resolutions above 1024×768 and frame rates about 10 fps are particularly expensive.

>> Read other Usability Lab blog entries

Transparent User-Centered Design on a Dime (PDF, 310 KB)

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…

The great news is that just because a budget is tight and times are tough doesn’t mean there aren’t inexpensive and effective ways to peek into the world of your users. I’ve listed a couple that I like below. It’s by no means inclusive — just some food for thought!

I don’t mean to imply that I recommend doing ONLY these activities in place of traditional user research like field interviews and usability testing. Traditional methodologies will always be superior to me in terms of getting a full understanding of users and their needs. My point is simply that we can’t ignore the fact that our clients’ constraints and situations have changed and we need to adapt to that while still supporting a user-centered design process — namely, getting to know your user!

YouTube: Do you know how many people post videos of themselves using products? I sure didn’t. But I have found countless videos of people using products I am interested in, complete with a running commentary of what they like and what they didn’t like. It’s like a gold mine — an interview that you and your client don’t even have to pay for. Once I was tasked with coming up with a design for an insulin pump. Right on Youtube I found tons of videos of people who have insulin pumps showing exactly how their pumps worked. Strange, I know — but hey, I immediately had 5-10 high-quality “interviews” right at my fingertips!

Twitter: Another gold mine, although not as great as Youtube because you are only allowed a short snippet of characters. People post all the time when they love something or hate something. Either way, it’s excellent feedback if you look for it. A friend recently told me he was so upset with his cable provider that he tweeted about it. That same day, a representative from that cable provider had contacted him via Twitter to ask him what he could do to resolve the problem. Twitter is a great tool to “eavesdrop” on what users are saying about your product, and you don’t even have to leave your desk!

User Forums: Yet another place where people sound off. I recently purchased a Honda Fit and went online to the forums at www.fitfreak.net to look for accessories. Lo and behold, I ran into a huge amount of people talking about their Fits and what they like and don’t like. I sure hope Honda is looking in there! And I hope RIM is looking at www.crackberry.com. It’s free information just waiting to be used. All from the comfort of your desk, of course, with bare minimum of expense.

Wikipedia: Don’t laugh. Yes, I know Wikipedia can be considered less than reliable for information. But isn’t that true for most stuff on the Internet? My philosophy is where there is smoke, there’s fire. So I like to look up things on Wikipedia and see what the entry says. Most times it will link to other sources of information on the Internet. If you find something worthwhile, just make sure you get more of than one data point before relying on it. At least Wikipedia can help you get a feel for something. I used it recently to read about how a piece of large agricultural machinery works. From there I was able to launch myself into a better, more targeted Internet search since I knew more keywords to look for.

If you find this topic interesting and want to learn more, come check out our presentation at Project Infusion, IDSA’s 2009 conference in Miami FL. We’ll be discussing low-cost ways to implement a user-centered design process. It’s going to be fun!