June 2008

Human Factors Journal Celebrates 50 Years With Special Issue Highlighting Pivotal Research and Applications

June 30, 2008

The journal, Human Factors, is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a retrospective of some pivotal research and areas. To celebrate, the entire issue is available online for free. Some highlights: The Split Keyboard: An Ergonomics Success Story The Role of Expertise Research and Human Factors in Capturing, Explaining, and Producing Superior Performance Multiple Resources and Mental Workload Putting the Brain [...]

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Filed under: I can’t believe there needs to be a warning for this…

June 24, 2008

Found in the bathroom:

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Scenes Of Nature Trump Technology In Reducing Low-level Stress

June 17, 2008

Technology can send a man to the moon, help unlock the secrets of DNA and let people around the world easily communicate through the Internet. But can it substitute for nature?  Apparently not, according to a new study that measured individuals’ heart recovery rate from minor stress when exposed to a natural scene through a window, the same scene shown [...]

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Primary Sources for Safety

June 16, 2008

Freakanomics posted an interesting discussion with several construction workers, asking them what they thought the biggest safety concerns were in their area. The plural of anecdote may not be data, but this is a good start if anyone wants to look at whether regulation (via unions) contributes to safety, what safety rules are ‘annoying’, and construction worker locus of control. [...]

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Human Factors Special Issue

June 10, 2008

Just a quick note that Computers in Human Behavior released a special issue on human factors in networked computing. There are some interesting articles in it, including: Thinking style impacts on Web search strategies Gloria Yi-Ming Kao, Pei-Lan Lei and Chuen-Tsai Sun “Web searches entail complex cognitive processes influenced by individual differences, and users with similar cognitive or skill factors [...]

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Facebook for grandma?

June 10, 2008

“The Jive was created by Ben Arent, a college student, over a six-month period as part of his product design degree. The concept was designed to get elderly technophobes connected to their friends and family without feeling overwhelmed of learning how to use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. It would essentially be their own type of [...]

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Some progress in ATM interface design

June 9, 2008

Wells Fargo hired Pentagram in the fall of 2005 to begin work on a new user interface for their ATMs. Wells Fargo was in the process of upgrading their ATMs with touchscreen monitors. This was a relatively slow process, since there are about 7,000 ATMs in the field, and any upgrades are expensive. But with the vast majority to be [...]

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Instant Messaging Proves Useful In Reducing Workplace Interruption

June 6, 2008

I think the basis for the widespread belief that IM is disruptive is that we don’t have co-workers on our IM, we have our friends The study challenges the widespread belief that instant messaging leads to an increase in disruption. Some researchers have speculated that workers would use instant messaging in addition to the phone and e-mail, leading to increased [...]

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