From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Keyless Ignition in Emergencies: Do you know what to do?

by Richard Pak
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This story in the LA Times illustrates several important HF/usability issues.  First, the  importance of knowing what the user knows before introducing new, seemingly “simple” technology, or changing the way they currently do things (in this case, what people know about ignition systems and how they start their cars).  Second, like the story about the alarms, it also clearly illustrates [...]

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HF Graduate Programs: Clemson University

by Richard Pak
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This is the first post in our 2-part look at some HF programs. Anne’s post about North Carolina State University’s program can be found here.
Did you know that Human Factors is not only a fun blog, but something you could get a graduate degree in?  The field is known by many names but they are the same, more or [...]

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Design & HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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Comparison of text entry input speeds.
Steve Krug (of “Don’t make me think“) has a new book on usability titled Rocket Surgery Made Easy.  See the first few chapters.  [via Photoshopblog]
Smashing Magazine has a list of how various websites portray progress in multi-step tasks.
A piece on complicated and overwrought design from the NYT.  Choice quote:
Sadly, more and more products seem set [...]

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3D is better than 2D, right?

by Richard Pak
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It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to [...]

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Environmental Controls: Spotlight on Volvo

by Anne McLaughlin
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I rode in a colleague’s new Volvo the other day and I love the environmental controls. The button lights up when active, showing where the airflow is going. Notice how the fan speed control is integrated into air direction display so they each add information to the other.
Compare to the older Volvo buttons, which had a similar theme but not [...]

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Ahem…your heart has stopped

by Richard Pak
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Darin Ellis sends along this radio story about a woman’s robotic heart that has a malfunction warning system that literally breaks the textbook HF rules of alarm design.  I’ll let Darin explain the unfortunate issue:
This woman, who is living thanks to a robotic heart, related a story of the “heart” malfunctioning.  Apparently, although not prone to malfunction, there is a [...]

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Tabs, tabs, and more tabs…

by Richard Pak
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This post on Smashing Magazine about vertical navigation had me thinking about the book Anne and I are writing (manuscript due this Friday; panicking…I’m a 10 on the Wong-Baker scale).  In one of the chapters I discuss tab navigation.  When I was looking for a particularly bad example of the use of tabs I remembered Amazon’s website circa 2000.  Fortunately, [...]

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Pain Scale Emoticons

by Richard Pak
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I don’t visit the doctor frequently (less than once a year) but last year I went to the doctor and as part of the paperwork, I encountered a question about how much pain I felt (shown above).
This is the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale (which seems to be available online).  I thought this was a great way to ask about [...]

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Publically Available Databases for Research

by Richard Pak
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This is just a placeholder post to collect Anne’s collection of publicly available safety data:

Data visualization tools
Occupational safety
Aviation safety
Mining safety

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HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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James Rubinstein sends along a this post about a 32 inch LCD TV presumably designed for older users.  It has features such as a dramatically simplified remote control, fewer wires, and a shut-off timer.  [Engadget]
Designing Devices is a relatively new blog devoted to “how and why to create devices” from Dan Saffer (author of Designing for Interaction).  I’m loving the [...]

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Blog is 99% recovered

by Richard Pak

What started out as a small database glitch escalated into a problem where we lost almost all of our December posts.  We’ve recovered most of them (except the newest one) thanks to Google and Bing caches.  Unfortunately, we’ve lost some of your comments on those posts.  Please feel free to re-comment!  Meanwhile, we’ll be tweaking some things behind the scenes.  [...]

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Database failure–we’ll be back shortly

by Richard Pak
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We had a database failure and it turns out our daily backups are junk–thanks Wordpress Database Backup Plugin!  Our December posts are missing but should return in the next few days.

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Distracted Driving: The Experience

by Anne McLaughlin
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We’ve posted quite a bit on driving before, but these new links are too good to be missed.
This first video from the NYT goes over the dangers of multi-tasking while driving (including on-the-street interviews of what American’s might think) and ends with an interview with David Strayer of the University of Utah, including a video of his lab simulator in [...]

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