From the monthly archives:

November 2009

Dangers of Automatic Windows

by Anne McLaughlin
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Recently I posted on some potential human factors problems caused by Toyota’s design of their floor mats. For this post, I would like to compliment Toyota on their automatic power windows. The windows can be lowered fully and automatically by one quick press on the button. However, to be raised, the lever on the button must be continuously raised [...]

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Let’s get social…

by Richard Pak

We are slowly rolling out new features to make interaction with this blog easier and more transparent. One way to interact with the blog is by recommending posts to other readers. The first thing you may notice is the new sidebar widget titled “Get social” (below).
When you click “Join this site” you can login using your existing Google, [...]

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Solving Beer Estimation Difficulties

by Anne McLaughlin
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The subtle change in the diameter of a glass can hide large changes in volume. Unfortunately for us, we’re terrible at estimating this, even when we logically know it to be true. For example, a few millimeters at the top of a pint glass equals an ounce of liquid, while the same height measure at the bottom of the [...]

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Graph extravaganza: Who are our “users”?

by Richard Pak
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It’s Friday, so here are some interesting visitor statistics of the blog (based on the last 1580 visitors).  I meant to do this on our two year anniversary (two months ago) but better late than never.
First, where are our visitors coming from?  Primarily in the U.S. and Europe with some visits from China.
Zooming in on the U.S. and Europe:
Next, what [...]

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HFES Conference Part 6: Health & Human Factors

by Richard Pak

The medical domain is an area where human factors research is very active. Here are some highlights from the conference.
Health Records
The following two presentations/proceedings papers examined Personal Health Records (user-maintained medical records):
Improving the user interface and adoption of online personal health records. (2009).  Peters, K. A., Green, T. F., & Shumacher, R. M.
This paper was a usability evaluation of [...]

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Human Factors vs. Bugs – Somebody stop my Toyota!

by Anne McLaughlin
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In one of my courses this year I had students talk about the kinds of human factors problems they had run across when using computers. There were a number of great anecdotes, but one thing that interested me was the difficulty they had discerning the difference between a software bug and a human factors problem. For example, one student complained [...]

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HFES Conference Part 5: Automation & Trust & Google Maps

by Richard Pak

During the conference I had a very personal experience with the effects of automation reliability on trust and subsequent behaviors.  First, a bit of background.  There is a large body of research examining how humans interact with automated systems (Global positioning systems, for example).  Human-automation interaction is quite complex; being affected by many factors.
Julian Sanchez (of MITRE) presented a poster [...]

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HFES Conference in San Antonio, Part 4 – Hearing and Understanding

by Anne McLaughlin

The paper described in this post was part of the Aging Technical Group sessions at HFES.
Hearing Levels Affect Higher-Order Cognitive Performance – Carryl L. Baldwin, George Mason University
Perhaps I was excited by this talk because I could see how the information could be used in the book Rich and I are working on. This presentation was a fascinating exploration of [...]

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