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Richard Pak

Doctors Visits Decrease With Electronic Health Records/E-mail

by Richard Pak
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A study that show that the use of electronic health records (with built-in secure messaging capabilities) can reduce the number of office visits for patients that do not need them.  Office visits are the most expensive form of health care delivery (as noted by the NYT).  No mention of any usability issues, however.
Information about KP HealthConnect (the EHR examined in [...]

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Complex Clickers in Class

by Richard Pak
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I will be teaching general psychology to a large undergraduate class this Fall.  I had planned on using the “Clicker” to encourage interaction with students (link to company that makes them, wikipedia page that describes them).  They are essentially remote controls that allow the instructor to record votes from students.  For example, I could present a multiple choice question to [...]

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HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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Touch Usability’s Kevin Arthur is soliciting input for a presentation he’s doing at UPA
Designing for Human’s Rob Tannen posts an online video of a presentation (ergonomics for interaction designers) he gave at the School of Visual Arts in New York
Edward Tufte will help us understand and track where stimulus funds are going (via Slashdot)
The Internet does not replace health professionals.  [...]

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Human Factors Blog @ SXSW

by Richard Pak
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Anne was invited to be a panelist at SXSW on Friday, March 12 at 05:00 PM.  SXSW is a yearly music, movie, and interactive media festival held in Austin, TX.  The title of the interactive panel is With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Future of Video Games. Here is a description:
Video games are more popular than ever, and [...]

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HF and Medical Device Workshop (again) in April 2010

by Richard Pak

John Gosbee sends along this announcement of an upcoming workshop on medical human factors:
Those readers who want to know more about the practical and regulatory aspects of  human factors and device design might be interested in our workshop (or the approach we use). Our writings and this workshop continue a decades long effort to bring the HF and healthcare worlds [...]

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UXURLS: A usability news aggregator

by Richard Pak

Harry Brignull has created a convenient news aggregator for user experience and usability news from around the web.  A nice one-stop shop.

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Careers in Human Factors & Aging

by Richard Pak

A graduate student contacted me with questions about career paths for those of us in HF with an aging background.  This sounded like a great opportunity for discussion so I’m posting it here.  If you can contribute responses to any or all of these questions, please leave a comment!
I am giving a presentation on the Aging Technical Group [of the [...]

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Redesigning Toyota’s Keyless Ignition System

by Richard Pak
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The LA Times reporters Ken Bensinger and Ralph Vartabedian recently wrote a story about keyless ignition systems and the associated HF issues (we blogged about it here).  In a follow-up story, they report that Toyota is considering redesigning the system so that instead of requiring a single 3-second press to shut off the engine, it now requires 3 consecutive [...]

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Dissecting the iPad’s User Interface

by Richard Pak
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This Flickr image set does a nice job of pointing out the unique UI elements of the iPad.  Much of the interface is adapted from Apple’s extensive work on the iPhone but there are several unique elements.
Say what you will about Apple (positive or negative) but their tight reign on software and hardware and extreme focus on details really shows.
On [...]

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This does not bode well for the on-device user experience…

by Richard Pak
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Gizmodo reviewed the Nook e-book reader from Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately (for B&N), the process of opening the package was so cumbersome, most of the review dwells on that aspect:
In other words, the Nook packaging actually necessitates these lengthy instructions, as ridiculous as they are in their own right. Somehow, Barnes & Noble invented a box that’s [...]

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Keyless Ignition in Emergencies: Do you know what to do?

by Richard Pak
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This story in the LA Times illustrates several important HF/usability issues.  First, the  importance of knowing what the user knows before introducing new, seemingly “simple” technology, or changing the way they currently do things (in this case, what people know about ignition systems and how they start their cars).  Second, like the story about the alarms, it also clearly illustrates [...]

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HF Graduate Programs: Clemson University

by Richard Pak
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This is the first post in our 2-part look at some HF programs. Anne’s post about North Carolina State University’s program can be found here.
Did you know that Human Factors is not only a fun blog, but something you could get a graduate degree in?  The field is known by many names but they are the same, more or [...]

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Design & HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
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Comparison of text entry input speeds.
Steve Krug (of “Don’t make me think“) has a new book on usability titled Rocket Surgery Made Easy.  See the first few chapters.  [via Photoshopblog]
Smashing Magazine has a list of how various websites portray progress in multi-step tasks.
A piece on complicated and overwrought design from the NYT.  Choice quote:
Sadly, more and more products seem set [...]

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3D is better than 2D, right?

by Richard Pak
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It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to [...]

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Ahem…your heart has stopped

by Richard Pak
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Darin Ellis sends along this radio story about a woman’s robotic heart that has a malfunction warning system that literally breaks the textbook HF rules of alarm design.  I’ll let Darin explain the unfortunate issue:
This woman, who is living thanks to a robotic heart, related a story of the “heart” malfunctioning.  Apparently, although not prone to malfunction, there is a [...]

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Tabs, tabs, and more tabs…

by Richard Pak
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This post on Smashing Magazine about vertical navigation had me thinking about the book Anne and I are writing (manuscript due this Friday; panicking…I’m a 10 on the Wong-Baker scale).  In one of the chapters I discuss tab navigation.  When I was looking for a particularly bad example of the use of tabs I remembered Amazon’s website circa 2000.  Fortunately, [...]

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