Richard Pak

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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Crowdsourced Usability III: Skype

April 1, 2011

The new Skype client for Mac has received some very loud complaints about the redesign mostly centered on usability.  Skype has heard the cries: We want you to create the chat style for an upcoming version of Skype for Mac that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the world. We’ve put a template together containing everything that you’ll [...]

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New Magazine-like Layout for iPad Users

March 24, 2011

Just a small programming note:  we’ve installed the new OnSwipe plugin for WordPress that shows a specially formatted version to our iPad users.  The experience is very similar to what you might get from Flipboard (an iPad RSS app) complete with page turning animations. Let us know what you think!  Don’t forget to try swiping.

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I see a very smudgey future…

March 15, 2011

As the YouTube commenter in the video noted: BUY STOCK IN WINDEX NOW!!! These concept videos are meant to show how technologies that do not yet exist could be used. Just like concept cars, they show what is possible now but hint at the not-to-distant-future (at least for the company who made the videos). Here are some more: Knowledge Navigator [...]

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The Human Factors Prize

March 4, 2011

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is announcing the Human Factors Prize, a $10,000 prize recognizing excellent human factors research.  The winner will be presented at the annual meeting in Las Vegas this fall. The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is proud to announce the Human Factors Prize, established in 2010 by Editor-in-Chief William S. Marras. The prize, which will be [...]

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Scroll direction, touch screens, trackpads

March 2, 2011
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When we interact with a touch screen, we expect a certain “directness”; that is, if I grab something and push up, I expect that thing to move up.  Like dragging a web page up or down.  However, did you ever notice that on a track pad (like on a laptop), the direction is reversed? Trackpad:  fingers move DOWN, position indicator goes [...]

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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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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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