August 2010

Blogging APA Division 21: The Cost of Automation Failure

August 27, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: The Cost of Automation Failure

Arathi Sethumadhavan, currently of Medtronic and recently of Texas Tech, was this year’s winner of the George E. Briggs dissertation award, for the best dissertation this year in the field of applied experimental psychology. Her advisor was Frank Durso. Her work was inspired by our need to increase automation in aviation, due to increases in air traffic. However, automation does [...]

Read the full article →

Too standardized? – The problem of tube identification in hospitals

August 25, 2010
Thumbnail image for Too standardized? – The problem of tube identification in hospitals

When it comes to efficiency, creating standard sizes and connections saves money, production efforts, and makes for easy substitution when one runs out of an object. For example, I was delighted that lid for one brand of pot perfectly fit my new frying pan. Unfortunately, there are times when we do not want parts of one object to fit another [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21: You’re Looking Harmless Today

August 23, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: You’re Looking Harmless Today

I‘m on a plane writing this post and I look harmless, or at least not threatening. According to work presented by Poornima Madhavan from Old Dominion University, being a female in the screening line means I am less likely to be hassled by a false alarm of a screener seeing a threat in my bag.* In work done with her [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21: Maximizing Stimulus-Response Compatibility

August 19, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: Maximizing Stimulus-Response Compatibility

Kim-Phuong L. Vu was this year’s winner of the Earl A. Allusi Award for early career achievement. Her presentation covered maximizing stimulus-response compatibility to optimize human performance. Vu reported on her studies of people’s performance under different levels of stimulus-response compatibility. For example, high stimulus response compatibility occurs when a blinking button needs to be pressed. The blinking is the stimulus [...]

Read the full article →

Designing Displays for Older Adults: Chapter 1 (excerpt)

August 18, 2010

Below is the preface and excerpt of Chapter 1 from our forthcoming book.  The book is available where fine books are sold or directly from our publisher CRC Press.  Until January 31, 2011, you can get 20% off the cover price when you purchase directly from CRC Press using this link and this code: 810DE. Preface This book is focused on the [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21: “Who are we?” (how did we get here, and who do we want to be?)

August 16, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: “Who are we?” (how did we get here, and who do we want to be?)

According to Peter Hancock, we are our tools.  His 2010 presidential address “Mind, Machine, and Morality,” was as entertaining and wide-ranging as is typical of a Dr. Hancock talk. Two of his philosophical takes on our field are well suited to discussion, and I present them to invite comment. Part I: Self-symbiosis – Uniquely human? Self-symbiosis refers to our propensity [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21

August 15, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21

I‘m just returning from APA 2010, where the Division of Applied Experimental & Engineering Psychology presented a number of cutting-edge human factors projects. I’m writing individual posts on many of these, so stay tuned! Here is a teaser: “How important is your HF work to the human race?” “Get ready for the pat-down, males!” “Too much help is a dangerous [...]

Read the full article →

Code Chartreuse – “Too many codes”

August 9, 2010
Thumbnail image for Code Chartreuse – “Too many codes”

Enjoy memorizing this hospital sign! How about just announcing the issue rather than matching it first with a color? For example: “Attention, tornado!” seems like it would be effective. Elopement, by the way, means a patient with Alzheimer’s needs to be located. That makes “purple” a code within a code (and makes me want to watch Inception again). This is [...]

Read the full article →

The Zero-Fatality Car

August 6, 2010
Thumbnail image for The Zero-Fatality Car

I ran across this fascinating article from ComputerWorld on Volvo’s goal of creating a zero fatality car by 2020. As I read it, a number of human factors issues jumped out at me, but the focus is almost entirely on engineering issues. This does not mean Volvo will ignore the human factor. After all, I’ve previously posted on their well-done [...]

Read the full article →

Ergonomic Advice from Star Trek

August 5, 2010

From xadamx via Gizmodo.

Read the full article →

Human Factors and Ergonomics Madness

August 2, 2010

Are you going to the annual Human Factors and Ergonomics conference this fall?  If you are conference presenter or just browsing, make sure to stop by the Madness sessions.  The purpose is to get a fun 25-second preview of the talks happening that day.  It’s early in the morning but hopefully well worth it. We’ll host a concurrent website and [...]

Read the full article →