May 2009

Book: Designing for Older Adults, 2nd edition

May 22, 2009

Things are quiet on the blog because Anne and I are recovering from the end of the Spring semester and we are furiously finishing our book (tentatively titled, “Designing Displays for Older Adults‘).  It will be one in a series of books in the Human Factors & Aging Series from CRC Press that will be “primers on designing for older [...]

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Acoustic Information from Basketball Courts

May 14, 2009

I came across an article on ANSI standards that had an interesting human factors anecdote. Thought I would share: It seems that a critical part any basketball game is the wood flooring, something which the fans generally take for granted, but not so the players. Basketball floors are highly engineered surfaces, made of three-quarter inch thick tongue-and-groove northern hard maple, [...]

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Accidental Activation Activates Fighter Jet Escort

May 12, 2009

Apparently there is a particular communication channel airlines use when they have been hijacked. This afternoon, an American Airlines flight was escorted by fighter jets to Miami when the channel was set on a flight from Puerto Rico. This interface error sounds expensive. Can we assume the flight crew did not know they were using this frequency?

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Map Information Visualizations = HOT!

May 1, 2009
Thumbnail image for Map Information Visualizations = HOT!

I‘ve noticed a trend in the newsworld/blogworld recently. Everyone wants to represent everything on a map. Some of these are genius, others make me wonder “why bother?” I collected some of each for this post… but I warn you, once you notice this pattern you’ll start seeing it multiple times per day. Job loss from Slate.com: (Usability note: good luck [...]

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