December 2008

Who Watches the Watchers? (2): Self-cleaning Ovens

December 12, 2008

Consumer Reports posted the second volume of their own blunders. Most of them aren’t strictly human factors (though still worth a read), but one stands out: But can he bake a cherry pie? One of our engineers told us that he received a call from his wife to clean the oven while she was out running errands. He relayed the [...]

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The Mouse turns 40

December 10, 2008

A tip from reader Peter Squire: The Mouse turns 40 years old today. Forty years of a awesome device that has seen several changes because of HF. Here is Douglas Engelbart demonstrating the mouse 40 years ago:

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Podcast: Design for the Real World (Studio 360)

December 8, 2008

Studio 360 is a great public radio show hosted by Kurt Anderson about “what’s happening in pop culture and the arts.” Don’t let that description fool you, it’s not “Entertainment Tonight.” Instead, the show focuses on interesting stories and interviews about a variety of topics. Every few weeks, they have a segment called “Design for the Real World” where a [...]

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Patient photos aid docs reading faceless CT scans – Yahoo! News

December 2, 2008

Here is a really neat study that found that adding a picture of a patient’s face on a CT scan caused doctors to be more careful when examining the images.  The researchers proposed mechanism for the effect is that the faces induced doctors to have more empathy for the patient which led them to more carefully analyze the images.  Whatever [...]

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