Richard Pak

Influence of Environment on Behavior

January 4, 2012

Two articles came up that both touched upon the topic of how behavior is shaped and influenced by the environment and how we shape our immediate environment to suit particular behaviors.  The topic of how behavior is constrained by the physical environment is a long discussed topic in psychology and human factors (e.g., affordances, ecological psychology, situated cognition, “cognition in [...]

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Paper isn’t so bad…

December 15, 2011

One thing that annoys me is the silly argument that paper is bad or paper kills. Such hollow arguments are used to encourage technology adoption in airplane cockpits, the class room, and hospitals. Usually they are associated with silly statistics about how much paper is saved or how much less weight is carried, or how much easier it will be [...]

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Virtual Assistants (automation) and Etiquette

December 6, 2011

This NYT article discusses the “new” scourge of rude people interacting with their phones in public via voice thanks in large part to Siri, Apple’s new virtual assistant. This article reminded me of something slightly different about human interaction with virtual assistants or automation. In a 2004 paper, researchers Parasuraman and Miller wondered if automation that possessed human-like qualities would [...]

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Little Printer Concept

November 29, 2011

In the “why didn’t I think of this!” department, we have the Little Printer Concept by Berg.  It basically seems like a cash register thermal printer (in much nicer packaging) that sits in your home and prints messages, puzzles, etc.   I could see this being very useful for older consumers who are resistant to technology.  Imagine printing medication instructions [...]

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Speedometer Design

November 2, 2011

This page contains an interesting inventory of past speedometer designs from Chevrolet.  Quite a variety!  Is usability getting better or worse? I like it when the design works such that the prevailing speed limit (e.g., 60 MPH) lets the needle be oriented in a cardinal direction (pointed up or left) like the one below: (via Kottke)

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Winner of HFES Morning Madness

October 1, 2011

Congratualations to Stephanie Whetsel (of Clemson University) for winning the straw poll for morning madness. Her talk, entitled, “Pedestrians’ Estimates of Their Own Visibi- lity at Night Are Not Reduced When Head- lights Are Severely Weakened” made entertaining use of video clips and was an audience favorite according to the poll. A big thanks to everyone who participated with hilarious [...]

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NYT: So Many Gadgets, So Many Aches

September 11, 2011

A nice but short article in the New York Times about the ergonomic challenges with new electronic devices.  I’m pleasantly surprised that the article mentioned both physical and cognitive issues.  When most people hear or think of “ergonomics” they think of physical issues only. Most of the content will not be new to HFB readers but it’s nice that the [...]

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Don Norman Chimes in on Scrolling Direction

September 5, 2011

Touch Usability points to a nice Don Norman post about new gesture scrolling differences primarily instigated by Apple.  As a side note, i’ve fully converted to the “content moves” model (at home, work, laptop) and did not find the transition unusual at all.  As Norman notes, it just required a subtle mental shift in my model: Both models are correct in [...]

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Calibrating User’s Perception of Automation

August 11, 2011

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting in a symposium on automation in safety critical domains arranged by Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan at the American Psychological Association annual meeting.  My fellow participants were: Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD (Medtronic) Poornima Madhavan, PhD (Old Dominion University) Julian Sanchez, PhD (Medtronic) Ericka Rovira, PhD (United States Military Academy) Everyone presented on issues related to human-automation interaction.  I [...]

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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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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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“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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Mobile Phone Design Constraints

June 14, 2011
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Harnessing your digital breadcrumbs

May 31, 2011
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This story in the Wall Street Journal discusses the wide-ranging research implications of collecting millions of data points from cell phone users. Most people carry smartphones. In addition to holding your contacts, your emails, and text messages, even the cheapest of todays smartphones are equipped with advanced sensor technology like accelerometers, GPS, magnetometers, etc.  It knows where you are even [...]

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Miller Column Inception (or the geekiest movie you’ll see today)

May 11, 2011

Miller Columns are the browsing/visualization technique used in the Mac OSX Finder. It was inherited from the NeXT operating system (one of my favorites). I personally prefer this to the tree view that’s common in Windows Explorer. The embedded video below summarizes the essential action of the movie Inception (spoiler alert!): INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo. (via Kottke)

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Driven to Distraction

April 19, 2011
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This editorial from MSN Autos nicely summarizes a topic we’ve covered many times:  in-car technology interfering with driving.  The central problem appears to be that in-car interfaces are designed in isolation–devoid of the context in which they will actually be used (while driving).  So the designs demand a high amount of attention and concentration. Expert on human-automation interaction Dr. John D. [...]

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