July 2011

Verdict Reached for Air France Rio Crash

July 29, 2011
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The BBC has reported the incident analysis of the Air France crash that killed 228 people was due to lack of pilot skill in dealing with a high altitude stall. Here is a link to the BEA Report from the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses. It’s a frightening read, as they give a moment by moment analysis of the last minutes in the cockpit. No emergency [...]

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Are we too trusting of GPS automation?

July 26, 2011
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A GPS certainly makes life easier — and although I think many of us might consider what would happen if we were without it or it was unable to identify where we were, it is less often we consider how it may lead us astray. One of our early postings on the Human Factors Blog was about a bus driver [...]

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HFES Madness 2011

July 21, 2011

Will you be at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Annual Meeting in September?  If so, and you are presenting, consider doing a 25-second madness presentation.  The theme of “madness” is very appropriate for the conference locale:  Las Vegas! This year the madness presentations will be right before the opening plenary so you’ll have a huge audience. The purpose of madness [...]

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Coming to APA in August: Information Foraging in the Social Web

July 21, 2011
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Peter Pirolli (currently a Research Fellow at Xerox/PARC) will be presenting on Information Foraging Theory. See below for an abstract of his upcoming talk. Information Foraging Theory is a theory of human-information interaction that aims to explain and predict how people will best shape themselves to their information environments, and how information environments can best be shaped to people.  The approach involves [...]

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Resources: Human Factors Design Considerations in Home Health Technology

July 19, 2011

The National Academies of Science and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have just released two publications. The first, Health Care Comes Home, is a 200 page report: Health Care Comes Home reviews the state of current knowledge and practice about many aspects of health care in residential settings and explores the short- and long-term effects of emerging trends and technologies. [...]

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Hope to see you at APA 2011!

July 17, 2011
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There will be an extensive program for the Applied Experimental Division of the American Psychological Association at their conference in D.C. from August 4-7, and I invite all to come! We’ve collected a who’s-who from established to up-and-coming researchers to bring you cutting edge work in human factors, ergonomics, automation, human machine systems, aviation, video gaming, and much more! Below [...]

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“The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped”

July 5, 2011

I completely agree: A capacitive button has no place on a phone, and the people who are pushing it into the marketplace are over-fetishizing visual design to the detriment of the overall experience. Which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Nokia seems to think otherwise. Design Dare via Daring Fireball

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