June 2010

Update on an Academic’s Use of the iPad

June 29, 2010
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There seems to be a huge amount of interest in the use of iPads in academia as evidenced by the popularity of my last post on the iPad. This is just a follow-up post with some more app recommendations and more thoughts on how well it substitutes for my laptop after over a month of use. I recently went on [...]

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Don Norman’s 10 Rules for Successful Products

June 28, 2010

The embedded video below is a one-hour talk given by usability guru and cognitive psychologist Don Norman.  He discusses his 10 Rules for Successful Products.  Factoid: Did you know that his landmark book, “The Design of Everyday Things” was originally called, “The Psychology of Everyday Things“?  I guess psychology was a dirty word back then. [Link]

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Glass Shower Doors

June 28, 2010
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I found this story about shattering shower doors first on The Consumerist blog and then the original by the author, Bob Sullivan at MSNBC (quoted below). I had just finished showering and turned off the water. Soaking wet, I did what millions of Americans do every day — I reached for my snazzy sliding glass shower door. Seconds later, glass was raining [...]

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The Human Factors of Rock Climbing – A matter of life and death

June 25, 2010
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A tragedy occurred last week in West Virginia where a rock climber died apparently due to a human factors issue with her gear. This text comes from a commenter on Rockclimbing.com: The climber was Karen Feher from Midlothian Va. She climbed to the anchor of Rico Suave and clipped in direct. Her setup: She had two thin dyneema slings girth [...]

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Usability Potpourri

June 23, 2010

First, some thoughts on mobile usability from Google user experience designer Leland Rechis. Next, decisions, decisions, decisions…when did buying gas become so difficult? As Travis says, At this point, why not let me use a slider to create my own mix? That’s a keyboard, touchscreen and 5 grades of gasoline. From somewhere in Florida on I-75″ (Thanks Travis Bowles). Finally, [...]

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Summer-itis!

June 22, 2010

We admit it.  Here at the Human Factors Blog we’ve been slacking in our posts since summer started. However, some of our colleagues have been exceptionally prolific and posted a number of well- thought out posts on usability! Go check out this series from uselog.com — it contains a number of posts from Analyze the consequences of usability for your company to [...]

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Contact lens solution safety can be a complex if-then task

June 9, 2010
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We’ve posted before on confusing bottles, even those with labels. This latest problem comes from a type of contact lens solution that burns your eyes if you use it immediately, but does not if you’ve let your contacts sit in it for a long period of time. Excerpts from the write up at Consumer Reports: It is a hydrogen peroxide solution [...]

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