Human-Technology Interactions in Health

By on May 20, 2013 in automation, health/healthcare, potpourri, technology

multisense

Coincidentally, the topic of social/human-technology interaction is in the news quite a bit today.  I’m pleased that the topic of the human factors implications of the social interaction with technology is getting more focus.

First, Dr. Wendy Rogers of Georgia Tech gets interviewed in the New York Times about her work on older adults and in-home helper robots:

Dr. Rogers has been experimenting with a large robot called the PR2, made by Willow Garage, a robotics company in Palo Alto, Calif., which can fetch and administer medicine, a seemingly simple act that demands a great deal of trust between man and machine.

“We are social beings, and we do develop social types of relationships with lots of things,” she said. “Think about the GPS in your car, you talk to it and it talks to you.” Dr. Rogers noted that people developed connections with their Roomba, the vacuum robot, by giving the machines names and buying costumes for them. “This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just what we do,” she said.

In a more ambitious use of technology, NPR is reporting that researchers are using computer-generated avatars as interviewers to detect soldiers who are susceptible to suicide. Simultaneously, facial movement patterns of the interviewee are recorded:

“For each indicator,” Morency explains, “we will display three things.” First, the report will show the physical behavior of the person Ellie just interviewed, tallying how many times he or she smiled, for instance, and for how long. Then the report will show how much depressed people typically smile, and finally how much healthy people typically smile. Essentially it’s a visualization of the person’s behavior compared to a population of depressed and non-depressed people.

While this sounds like an interesting application, I have to agree with with one of its critics that:

“It strikes me as unlikely that face or voice will provide that information with such certainty,” he says.

At worst, it will flood the real therapist with a “big data”-type situation where there may be “signal” but way too much noise (see this article).

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Comments { 0 }

Recent developments in in-vehicle distractions: Voice input no better than manual input

By on April 26, 2013 in automobiles, cognition/memory, mobile, multi-tasking, safety

A man uses a cell phone while driving in Burbank, California June 25, 2008. Credit: Reuters/Fred Prouser
Earlier this week the United States Department of Transportation released  guidelines for automakers designed to reduce the distractibility of in-vehicle technologies (e.g., navigation systems). :

The guidelines include recommendations to limit the time a driver must take his eyes off the road to perform any task to two seconds at a time and twelve seconds total.

…

The recommendations outlined in the guidelines are consistent with the findings of a new NHTSA naturalistic driving study, The Impact of Hand-Held and Hands-Free Cell Phone Use on Driving Performance and Safety Critical Event Risk. The study showed that visual-manual tasks associated with hand-held phones and other portable devices increased the risk of getting into a crash by three times. [emphasis added]

But a new study (I have not read the paper yet) seems to show that even when you take away the “manual” aspect through voice input, the danger is not mitigated:

The study by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University was the first to compare voice-to-text and traditional texting on a handheld device in an actual driving environment.

“In each case, drivers took about twice as long to react as they did when they weren’t texting,” Christine Yager, who headed the study, told Reuters. “Eye contact to the roadway also decreased, no matter which texting method was used.”

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Comments { 1 }

Potpourri

By on April 11, 2013 in design, potpourri, usability

Another edition of potpourri where I surface some of the more interesting HF/usability links that have crossed my path.

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Usability of a Glass Dashboard?

By on April 4, 2013 in input device, technology, transportation, usability

0-IlNLQ5pqXUI5Emfk

I had heard that the Tesla Model S (the luxury electric car) had a giant touch screen as one of the main interfaces for secondary car functions and always wondered what that might be like from a human factors/usability perspective. Physical knobs and switches, unlike interface widgets, give a tactile sensation and do not change location on the dashboard.

This post is an interesting examination of the unique dashboard:

Think about a car’s dashboard for a second. It’s populated with analog controls: dials, knobs, and levers, all of which control some car subsystem such as temperature, audio, or navigation. These analog dials, while old, have two features: tactility and physical analogy. Respectively, this means you can feel for a control, and you have an intuition for how the control’s mechanical action affects your car (eg: counterclockwise on AC increases temperature). These small functions provide a very, very important feature: they allow the driver to keep his or her eyes on the road.

Except for a the privileged few that have extraordinary kinesthetic sense of where our hands are, the Model S’s control scheme is an accident waiting to happen. Hell, most of us can barely type with two hands on an iPhone. Now a Model S driver has to manage all car subsystems on a touchscreen with one hand while driving.

The solution, however, is may not be heads-up displays or augmented reality, as the author suggests (citing the HUD in the BMW).

0-nbDjWV_lIC2DOUnC

While those displays allow the eye to remain on the road it’s always in the way–a persistent distraction. Also, paying attention to the HUD means your attention will not be on the road–and what doesn’t get paid attention to doesn’t exist:


Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Programming note: Please update your feedreaders

By on March 21, 2013 in misc

You may have heard the news that Google Reader, probably the most popular RSS reader on the web, is shutting down in a few months. Feedburner, also run by Google, is the service we’ve been using to distribute our RSS feed for readers who use Google Reader or who prefer email subscriptions to our blog. Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that Feedburner will shut down soon as well.

No fear! You can still get email subscriptions to our blog by entering your email in the right-hand column textfield. If you use a feedreader, you may also want to update your link to us (also on the right side). The redirection should be automatic but you never know with automation!

The new feed link is: http://humanfactorsblog.org/feed/

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Continuing Adventures of an Academic’s Use of the iPad (mini)

By on February 13, 2013 in academia, misc, mobile

My previous posts on using the iPad have become some of the most popular posts on this blog. So I thought I would give you an update on my evolving use of the iPad.

My history of use of the iPad started with great skepticism, moved into curious and active experimentation, and has settled into routine usage. Now, it’s an integrated part of my work and play. I’ve even done what was once unthinkable: nearly wrote a entire manuscript on the iPad without a hardware keyboard! (read on).

With great skepticism I got the original iPad a few months after it was released in 2010. While I could see the theoretical benefits of such a lightweight device, there was not yet much software that was specialized to do any work. In terms of usage, there were probably days that I did not use the iPad. It was primarily relegated to recreational web surfing or curious novelty.

After the release of the iPad 2, however, my usage increased dramatically. The reduction in weight and size, as well as the release of high quality productivity software meant that I not only carried it along with my then-laptop (Fujitsu P1620 ultraportable tablet), I could start to envision how I might start replacing my laptop. Usage was probably split 20 (iPad)/80 (laptop) in terms of mobile computing. It also helped that it was at this time that I switched my desktop computer and laptop to Mac. This made it much more seamless to use Keynote and Pages as replacements for Powerpoint and Word. I’ve kicked Powerpoint but I can’t yet kick Word to the curb.

The iPad 3 again increased usage mainly because of the high resolution display and dramatic speed increase made everything better, especially reading PDFs.

Now, I have an iPad mini and all the software that I’ve mentioned in previous posts are still usable but the form factor has now truly made it even more my primary mobile device of choice over the laptop. The effects of an always-on, super-ultra lightweight device seems to encourage frequent use in places where even a laptop is clunky (e.g., in bed, passenger in a car). I’m currently working on a manuscript and I would estimate that I’ve written more than 50% of it on the iPad mini (using the software keyboard and Pages). Probably another 10% on the iPhone (reading what I wrote, light editing) and the rest on the desktop or laptop computer.

Keynote is an especially capable presentation app. I’ve worked on full presentations created on the iPad (but presented on a laptop). They are whisked silently through the cloud and are on my laptop/desktop waiting for me.

But there are other things that are making the iPad work especially well for me. One feature that isn’t discussed a great deal in reviews is iCloud. iCloud, in contrast to Dropbox, invisibly keeps my Keynote (class lectures, professional presentations) and Pages (manuscripts) in sync on all my devices (desktop, laptop, iPad mini, and iPhone). I still use Dropbox but iCloud is simpler model with less thinking about spatial file organization (the file is just in the app). I still use Dropbox but treat it like an archive; a folder with many levels of folders. While I treat iCloud as an active area for current work, a work space. iCloud = short term memory, dropbox = long term memory. This setup works quite well for me.

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/ipad-and-tablets/apple-ipad-mini-review-50008594/

Uses will be different for different people but for me (someone who values portability above all else and is a tinkerer) the Mini is a winner (it replaced my iPad 3). I also did not set unrealistic expectations of the device which may be why I’m so surprised how much of my daily computing can be addressed with such a relatively low-powered device. The size/weight of the Mini simply overwhelms any other benefit of the larger iPads. When I travel, I am now more likely to be carrying just the iPad (with no laptop unless I know i’ll need to program or do statistical analysis). In the end, it allows me to do a small amount of things in more places than at my desk.

To conclude, my most frequently used apps lately are:

  • Keynote (lecture and presentation creation & editing)
  • Papers (reading PDFs, literature searching)
  • Pages (manuscript creation and editing)
  • Email (built-in client)
  • LogMeIn Ignition (for connecting to my desktop computer remotely)

Keynote and Papers are truly exceptional apps that have nearly the full functionality of their desktop counterparts without replicating the same interaction style (i.e., they are optimized for tablets). I actually prefer doing lit searches in the iOS version of papers than using the desktop version!

This list is short because everything else is for fun!

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

The Other Father of Human Factors: John E. Karlin

By on February 12, 2013 in design, ergonomics, history

Paul M. Fitts is widely regarded as the father of human factors.  He gets mentioned a lot in HF texts because of his (still influential) law.  In more modern times, Donald Norman gets a lot of recognition as the author of the Design of Everyday Things (mentioned in my post below) which introduced the idea of psychology and human factors to a more mainstream audience.  However, someone who never gets mentioned (in my 12 years of education i’ve seen him mentioned once) was John E. Karlin who recently passed away.

By all accounts a modest man despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to the general public.

He is still relatively unknown to HF only because he rarely published his results; instead, he worked to solve problems in industry using the scientific method that all psychologists use.

“He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,” Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr. Karlin at Bell Labs in the 1970s, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

The NYT recently posted an obit detailing his contributions including such fundamental ones such as the telephone numeric layout (different from calculator layout):

Putting “1-2-3” on the pad’s top row instead of the bottom (the configuration used, then as now, on adding machines and calculators) was also born of Mr. Karlin’s group: they found it made for more accurate dialing.

The piece is very well written and I’m a little surprised that the author actually seems to understand HF and how it’s unique from other things (emphasis added):

It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by midcentury Americans.

(NYT: great article but you hyphenated human factors in the 10th paragraph)

Go read it!

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

How Do You Teach Human Factors?

By on February 1, 2013 in misc

Reader Mark C. asked the question:

“I plan to offer a class on Human Factor’s Psychology in my school. I’ve looked around to internet for resources…there really isn’t much out there….”

How did you start teaching human factors?  If you had to teach a semester-long course, what would be your resource?  Please chime in!

My undergraduate course is a fusion of material from the required text (Introduction to Human Factors), some chapters from the Design of Everyday Things (which I don’t require to read but may take inspiration from), and Casey’s classic Set Phasers on Stun.  And plenty of examples of human factors from the web to make the material more timely.

A major component is the group project where students pick a system and conduct a human factors evaluation as an end-of-the-semester presentation.

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Anne & Rich Interviewed about Human Factors

By on January 31, 2013 in aging, automation, ergonomics, technology, training

Anne and I are big proponents of making sure the world knows what human factors is all about (hence the blog).  Both of us were recently interviewed separately about human factors in general as well as our research areas.

The tone is very general and may give lay people a good sense of the breadth of human factors.  Plus, you can hear how we sound!

First, Anne was just interviewed for the radio show “Radio In Vivo“.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Late last year, I was interviewed about human factors and my research on the local public radio program Your Day:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.


Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Begging robots, overly familiar websites, and the power of the unconscious?

By on January 28, 2013 in automation, design, potpourri, safety, usability

Hello readers, and sorry for the unintentional hiatus on the blog. Anne and I have been recovering from the just-completed semester only to be thrown back into another busy semester.  As we adjust, feast on this potpourri post of interesting HF-related items from the past week.

In todays HF potpourri we have three very interesting and loosely related stories:

  • There seems to be a bit of a resurgence in the study of anthropomorphism in HF/computer science primarily because…ROBOTS.  It’s a topic I’ve written about [PDF] in the context of human-automation interaction.  The topic has reached mainstream awareness because NPR just released a story on the topic. 
  • The BBC looks at the rise of websites that seem to talk to us in a very informal, casual way.  Clearly, the effect on the user is not what was intended:

The difference is the use of my name. I also have a problem with people excessively using my name. I feel it gives them some power over me and overuse implies disingenuousness. Like when you ring a call centre where they seem obsessed with saying your name.

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Paper prototyping made easier

By on November 19, 2012 in design, usability

Paper prototyping is a common usability technique to quickly test out an interaction before expending too much effort on programming or designing.  The value in paper prototyping is that with extremely low effort, you can test the interaction rather than the appearance of an interface.

I just came across a great iOS app that lets you add some real interactivity to your paper prototypes:  POP Prototyping on Paper.  You simply sketch out your screen, take a picture using your iPhone camera, and then add interactivity.  It’s a brilliantly simple idea.

 

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Effective visualization of an ongoing process

By on November 17, 2012 in design, infovis, technology

What does pop music visualization and neural imaging techniques have in common?  Keep reading…You may have already seen this (i’m a little late) but have you ever wanted your favorite song to last forever?  Enter “The Infinite Jukebox“.

You upload your favorite MP3 (or select among recent uploads) and the site will analyze and parse the beats.  When you hit play it will smoothly jump to another part of the song that sounds similar so there is no end.  That alone is cool, but the visualization of the process of playing and more importantly jumping to another section is surprisingly effective.  When a possible beat intersection is reached, an arc spans the circle and (randomly) jumps or stays.

The effect works best for some songs and not others.  You can get a nice at-a-glance view of the global organization of the song (highly locally repetitive like Daft Punk) or more globally repetitive (like a typical highly structured pop song):

It is probably by design that these diagrams look just like connectomes that map the neural pathways in the brain:

More on the circular diagrams of connectomes and the software used to make them (Circos).

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

HF/Usability Potpourri

By on November 6, 2012 in potpourri, technology

It’s the return of HF/Potpourri:

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Principles of Animation in UI Design

By on October 30, 2012 in design, usability

Smashing Magazine posts a great article on some principles for including animation in mobile UIs.  I think the use of animation is under-estimated by some HF people because it’s hard to quanitfy the “performance benefit” (e.g., they may not increase the speed at which a user completes a task).

Some notable examples of animation are the infamous Apple’s page bounce-back, the page-curl in e-book apps or the bouncing icons on a Mac (or expanding/minimizing windows on Mac/PC).  Difficulty in quantifying objective benefits may lead some to dismiss animations as superfluous and unneccessarily ornate.  I wholeheartedly disagree.  Animations provide a fluidity that makes interfaces feel responsive even delightful.

The article provides a lot of reasons for the benefits and most appropriate use of animation. It’s typical Smashing Magazine (i.e., LOOONG) so save it to read later!

(post image from the article)

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Goodbye Mouse?

By on October 8, 2012 in accessibility, input device, technology, usability

Story in the Washington Post about the impending demise of the computer mouse in favor of touch screens:

“Most children here have never seen a computer mouse,” said Hannah Tenpas, 24, a kindergarten teacher at San Antonio.

…

“The popularity of iPads and other tablets is changing how society interacts with information,” said Aniket Kittur, an assistant professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. “. . . Direct manipulation with our fingers, rather than mediated through a keyboard/mouse, is intuitive and easy for children to grasp.”

I realize the media needs a strong narrative to make an interesting story but the mouse is nowhere near dead.  The story is more complicated and completely depends on the task.  There are certain applications where the precise pointing afforded by mice are just too cumbersome with touch screens.

The article also has a great graphic describing how touch screens work and a short retrospective of input devices.

(post image from flickr user aperturismo)

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

What Apple Maps “PR Disaster” Says about Human-Automation Interaction

By on September 28, 2012 in automation, design, transportation

With the release of Apple’s in-house developed mapping solution for the new iPhone 5 (and all iOS 6 devices) there has been a major outcry among some users bordering on ridiculous, frothing, outrage1.  

Personally, the maps for my area are pretty good and the route guidance worked well even with no network signal.

However, some of the public reaction to the new mapping program is an excellent example of too much reliance on automation that is usually very reliable but falible (we’ve written about here, and here.).

It is very hard to discern what too much reliance looks like until the automation fails.  Too much reliance means that you do not double-check the route guidance information, or you ignore other external information (e.g., the bridge is out).

I’ve had my own too-much-reliance experience with mobile Google Maps (documented on the blog).  My reaction after failure was to be less trusting which led to decreased reliance (and increased “double checking”).  Apple’s “PR disaster” is a good wake up call about users unreasonably high trust in very reliable automation that can (and will) fail.  Unfortunately, I don’t think it will impact user’s perception that all technology, while seemingly reliable, should not be blindly trusted.

Some human factors lessons here (and interesting research questions for the future) are:

  • How do we tell the user that they need to double check? (aside from a warning)
  • How should the system convey it’s confidence?  (if it is unsure, how do you tell the user so they adjust their unreasonably high expectations)

[NPR]

1I say “outrage” because those users who most needed phone-based voice navigation probably had to own third party apps for it (I used the Garmin app).  The old Google Maps for iPhone never had that functionality.  So the scale of the outrage seems partially media-generated.

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Product Confusability: Tide Pods

By on September 17, 2012 in design, errors, safety

Kim Wolfinbarger sends along a new case of dangerous things being confused for food (the story is the same but the actors different, see previous examples).  Before you reflexively say, “only an idiot would confuse the two,” remember that 5-year olds don’t know the difference.  First rule of HF-club: you are not the user (or victim):

In California alone, 307 cases of accidentally ingestion of laundry packs by young children have been reported this year. And the cases in California, and nationwide, aren’t just limited to toddlers snarfing Tide Pods. When the product was released, Tide rivals such as All and Purex launched their own single-dose detergent capsules as well. Earlier this summer, Tide reconfigured the packaging of the product, adding a double-latched lid to the plastic tubs containing the Pods to make it more difficult for children to tamper with. Still, the number of reported incidents continues to climb along with news stories warning parents to take caution.

Just yesterday, Consumer Reports reported on a wave of Tide Pod-related poisonings in Glasgow, Scotland while the New York Daily News published a quick article stating that in New York City alone, 40 children have been hospitalized after eating the packs since April. TODAY also just published a piece on the alarming trend in which Ken Wahl, medical director for the Illinois Poison Center states: “I’ve never seen a consumer product that had that degree of injury in a child.”
Dishwashing detergent also comes in pod-like single serving doses but I am not aware of similar cases of ingestion.  Maybe it’s the coloring (they tend to be blue/green) or size (they are a bit larger I think)?
Similar Posts (auto-generated):

App Usability Evaluations for the Mental Health Field

By on September 5, 2012 in academia, automation, design, hci, mobile, trust, usability

We’ve posted before on usability evaluations of iPads and apps for academics (e.g.,here, and here), but today I’d like to point to a blog dedicated to evaluating apps for mental health professionals.

In the newest post, Dr. Jeff Lawley discusses the usability of a DSM Reference app from Kitty CAT Psych. For those who didn’t take intro psych in college, the DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which classifies symptoms into disorders. It’s interesting to read an expert take on this app – he considers attributes I would not have thought of, such as whether the app retains information (privacy issues).

As Dr. Lawley notes on his “about” page, there are few apps designed for mental health professionals and even fewer evaluations of these apps. Hopefully his blog can fill that niche and inspire designers to create more mobile tools for these professionals.

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

%d bloggers like this: