08.13.2010
Miranda Capra /
Usability /
Web & Software
I shipped a package today via FedEx. No, correction, I tried to. I scheduled pickup for today via the website, it even let me pick a time window, I printed the shipping label, got a confirmation email for my pickup appointment, all set, but no one came. By chatting with a sales rep and actually reading my email confirmation, I found out that you can’t schedule a ground pickup in my area for the same day, but I had a pick-up scheduled for Monday, as stated in my confirmation email. How did this happen, and how did I miss these dates?
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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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07.21.2010
Miranda Capra /
Usability /
Web & Software
With the release of Firefox Beta 4, Firefox joins Internet Explorer and Chrome in placing tabs at the top of the browser application window, above navigation controls, instead of between the navigation controls and the page content. Application-level functions like settings are now collected into a “Firefox” menu at the top. Buttons that affect the current web page, like back and mark as a favorite, are now lower, closer to the web page. Alex Faaborg, a user experience designer at Mozilla, has posted a video to his blog that explains the new features and the design advantages, but central to the design changes are classic interface design principles: proximity, error prevention, simplicity, context and grouping.
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07.14.2010
Andrew Wirtanen /
Mobile /
New Technology /
Usability /
User Experience
I’d like to first say that I dislike Apple’s new ads that showcase their FaceTime feature. They feel cheap and are as painful to watch as a sitcom with poor acting. At the same time, I also think that they are brilliant.
FaceTime is one of Apple’s new features for iPhone 4 that supports video chatting with other iPhone 4 users (if you’re both using a Wi-Fi connection). The iPhone 4 has a new camera in the front so you can see who you are talking to (and they can see you). Get a tissue box ready and watch one of the ads:
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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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05.28.2010
Sean Farres /
Creativity /
Graphic Design /
News /
Transportation
The environmental catastrophe happening in the Gulf is horrific. No one really understands the ecological consequences from this mistake yet. In a CBS survey, 70 percent disapproved of BP’s response. Designers agree too and are using their voice to express their disapproval. Greenpeace is asking for a redesign of BP’s logo.
View Logo Gallery
Enter the Greenpeace BP logo redesign competition
Learn more about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
05.26.2010
Miranda Capra /
Usability /
Web & Software
That’s an error message I saw on coffecupnews.org recently, I’m not kidding. I love it!
It has several elements of a great website error message
- It does NOT blame the user
- It has a sense of humor
- It provides some suggestions for what to do next
- It wraps the error message in all of the standard parts of the website – logo, search box, links to the most popular articles, etc.
It could use a little improvement, but not much
- Explain what happened – most people don’t know what a 404 error message is, and “lost at sea” is a little vague, although most people will probably guess that the page doesn’t exist
- Point out in the text of the error message that the site has a search box, although again most people will probably find that on their own.
My favorite error message is still the one I saw on Sesame Street’s website [blog], although the iPhone lolcats app gets the most points for style [blog].
05.20.2010
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
As mentioned in Protocol – Part 1: Equipment, we used 40 participants, 20 of which were novices to touchscreen interfaces and did not own a touchscreen device and 20 of which were experts and did own a touchscreen handheld device. To analyze whether there were differences between the novices and the experts, we calculated Jacaard two-way agreement scores for each Action for both Novices and Experts.
A Jacaard two-way agreement score is a measure of the similarity or differences within a set of data. It ranges from 0 to 1. If all the items within a dataset differ, the score will be a 0. If all the items within a dataset are exactly the same, the score will be a 1. Thus, higher scores indicated greater similarity of items in the dataset, and thus higher agreement.
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05.20.2010
Dan Mauney /
Gesture Research
The next question is: were there cultural differences in the participant created gestures? We ran a number of different analyses to help us answer this question.
The first analysis we ran is: did one country use certain gestures more than any other country? To answer this question, we analyzed the top 38 gestures (gestures that had more than 40 people use them) and ran a chi-squared analysis to identify if one country used that gesture more than another. There were no significant differences found in that analysis. Thus, this analysis did not identify any significant differences between countries in their use of the top gestures.
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