February 2011

Automakers: Don’t skimp on the interface!

February 27, 2011
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A very angry but insightful comment about the vehicle electronic interface of the 2011 Buick Regal from an automotive journalist: Non touchscreen touchscreen: The GM navigation system and the graphics for it are designed with a touchscreen in mind — when entering in a destination, there is a recreation of a keyboard that allows you to punch in your letters and [...]

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Apple, UCD, and Innovation – A Guest Post by Travis Bowles

February 25, 2011
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This guest post is in response to the article User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs: Just ask Apple and IKEA at fastcodesign.com From the article: One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and [...]

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Automation Issues Hit the Big Time on NPR

February 22, 2011

NPR brings home the safety issues of too much cockpit automation. From the NPR story: “It was a fairly busy time of the day. A lot of other airliners were arriving at the same time, which means that air traffic control needed each of us on very specific routes at specific altitudes, very specific air speeds, in order to maintain [...]

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Unintended Consequences of Design: Keyless Ignition Revisited

February 21, 2011
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Peter Hancock, writing in the January issue of The Ergonomist, writes about the hidden dangers imposed by rapidly advancing automotive technology (noise, vibration suppression, keyless ignition).  Noise, vibration, sound, and the mechanical key provides useful information that the car is still on.  Removing these cues could result in mode errors: In previous generations of vehicles, leaving the car ‘on’ as you [...]

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False Alarms in the Hospital

February 16, 2011
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NPR pointed me to a two-series in the Boston Globe examining the incessant din of patient alarms. The monitor repeatedly sounded an alarm — a low-pitched beep. But on that January night two years ago, the nurses at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton didn’t hear the alarm, they later said. They didn’t discover the patient had stopped breathing until [...]

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Honesty Hurts (especially when design is poor)

February 15, 2011
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I enjoy the mix of economics and psychology, which is why I am a faithful reader of the Freakanomics blog. Their recent podcast on “pain” started off with a good human-factors-related tale of the problematic design of a subway alarm system. I have included a link below to the podcast, but the quick overview is that there is an ear [...]

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“It’s better for real”…not really [3D phones]

February 14, 2011

This has to be one of the silliest use-cases for including 3D in a mobile phone. I guess when there really isn’t a reason to include 3D, you have to make one up.

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Designer of movie UIs to design real UIs

February 11, 2011
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We’ve discussed Mark Coleran before with his fantastical work with those fake user interfaces you see in movies (see movie below).   According to this Fast Company blog post he will have a hand in designing real interfaces. But Coleran doesn’t just throw out the rule books on user experience and “human interface guidelines.” In fact, because many of his clients know [...]

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Trashcan Affordances

February 8, 2011
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The picture above shows the front and back of a trashcan designed to be lifted by machinery. This past weekend I helped my parents start to clear their home for an upcoming move and filled this trashcan to capacity. I didn’t want my mother to have to haul it to the street, so I went to go do that before [...]

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Kitchen Taskonomy Part 2: Paying Bills (A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger)

February 7, 2011
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In my previous post, I talked about applying taskonomy to kitchen organization. Instead of organizing objects by their name or physical similarity–taxonomy—a taskonomic approach organizes objects by the way they are used. Today I’m discussing how I used taskonomy to revamp my overly precise but neglected system for paying bills. Paying bills used to be a real chore.  (Yes, I [...]

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“Magic” Apple Mouse

February 2, 2011

Check out this post on www.uselog.com about the Apple Magic Mouse.* The post covers it from design, to instructions, to packaging! *I thought Mickey was the magic mouse?

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