May 2008

High-Tech Devices Keep Elderly Safe From Afar – NYTimes.com

May 25, 2008

First thing every morning, Lynn Pitet, of Cody, Wyo., checks her computer to see whether her mother, Helen Trost, has gotten out of bed, taken her medication and whether she is moving around inside her house hundreds of miles away in Minnesota. High-Tech Devices Keep Elderly Safe From Afar – NYTimes.com

Read the full article →

Memory Loss – Aging – Alzheimers Disease – Aging Brains Take In More Information, Studies Show – Health – New York Times

May 21, 2008

This short article nicely talks about a well known pattern of age-related cognition (that with age comes “wisdom” or knowledge).  The challenge in Human Factors is using this information in design. “These findings are all very consistent with the context we’re building for what wisdom is,” she said. “If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and [...]

Read the full article →

Processing negatives

May 21, 2008

Following signs to the Raleigh SPCA, we took a wrong turn. From the looks of things, we were not the first to do so. Of course, you only see these signs once you are on the wrong property. They might have avoided all troubles by putting a sign along the way that pointed to the SPCA.

Read the full article →

Court Says Dollar Design Discriminates Against Blind : NPR

May 21, 2008

A U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled the Treasury Department is discriminating against the blind by printing money that is all the same size, with no tactile features that would make it possible to distinguish, say, a $10 bill from a $20. The decision could force the Treasury Department to redesign U.S. bills. Court Says Dollar Design Discriminates Against Blind [...]

Read the full article →

On Reality TV, Less Sleep Means More Drama : NPR

May 14, 2008

Research shows that sleep deprivation makes people emotionally volatile and temperamental — a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of some reality TV producers. In fact, though it’s not always obvious to the audience, many reality shows feature contestants who could use a little more sleep. This is not so different from what actual sleep researchers observe in the lab. [...]

Read the full article →

Nagging via text messages to help teens remember meds

May 13, 2008

I‘ve heard of text messages being used to remind older adults, but this is an interesting take on that…I guess it addresses the same underlying problem in both age groups: prospective memory failures. WASHINGTON – 4gt yr meds? Getting kids to remember their medicine may be a text message away. Cincinnati doctors are experimenting with texting to tackle a big [...]

Read the full article →

Overcoming the big downside of tagging

May 6, 2008

“A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (a picture, a geographic map, a blog entry, a video clip etc.), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.” [Wikipedia] Tagging is the process of assigning keywords or phrases to items. To be more concrete, many of us [...]

Read the full article →