Richard Pak

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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“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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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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Book Giveaway Winners

January 18, 2011
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Congrats to twitterers @inogrady and @andrea_dwyer. You were selected at random to receive a free copy of our book. Please contact us with your mailing address.

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Designing Displays for Older Adults: Chapter 4 Cognition (excerpt)

January 10, 2011

Below is an excerpt of Chapter 4 from our book.  The book is available where fine books are sold or directly from our publisher CRC Press.  Until January 31, 2011, you can get 20% off the cover price when you purchase directly from CRC Press using this link and this code: 810DE. Chapter Contents (excerpt is bolded below) 4. Cognition 4.1 How [...]

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Kitchen Taskonomy Part 1: A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger

January 4, 2011
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January magazines arrived a month ago, full of the annual list of ideas for organizing your house, life, office, even your car. I’ve been thinking lately about how we organize our workspaces. As Pottery Barn and Ikea entrance us with their coordinated sweater bins and modern snap-together wall-mounted organizers, how often do we ask this most important question: Do our [...]

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Designing Displays for Older Adults: Chapter 3 Hearing (excerpt)

December 29, 2010

Below is an excerpt of Chapter 3 from our book.  You can read an excerpt of chapter 1 here. You can also enter to win one of two copies.  The book is available where fine books are sold or directly from our publisher CRC Press.  Until January 31, 2011, you can get 20% off the cover price when you purchase directly from [...]

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Win a copy of Designing Displays for Older Adults

December 18, 2010
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Look what came in the mail! To help celebrate the publication of our book Designing Displays for Older Adults, we are giving away two copies (retail value $69.95 each) to two randomly chosen twitter followers.   If you already follow @hfblog, you’re entered!  If you would like to enter, just follow @hfblog using your twitter account–no purchase necessary.  We’ll announce [...]

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Age-related differences in the use of the Internet

December 16, 2010

One of my major research interests is in how people of all ages, especially older adults (those over age 65) use the Internet (shameless plug for our new book on Designing Displays for Older Adults).  The Pew Internet & American Life Project recent came out with a new survey of Internet usage across the age groups. A counter-intuitive finding is [...]

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Online Map Readability: A Comparison

December 3, 2010

Justin O’Beirne presents an extremely thorough and interesting analysis of why Google Maps appear more readable than its competitors. I’ve noticed this as well. It’s one of the major reasons I still prefer Google Maps despite some very compelling features of Bing and Yahoo maps. One visual trick that Google applies to maps is a localized de-cluttering around major cities. [...]

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Redesigning the airline boarding pass

November 15, 2010

Designer Tyler Thompson gets frustrated with boarding passes and attempts to redesign them.  I recently had a very similar experience with a boarding pass: my first flight was delayed and my connecting flight was taking off in minutes.  As I sprinted through the airport I glanced at my boarding pass only to stop dead in my tracks as I had [...]

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Microsoft’s Kinect Game Controller

October 26, 2010
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Our friend Tim Nichols was recently featured in a write up in the New York Times about his work with Kinect, Microsoft’s new game controller technology.  He’s a games researcher at Microsoft Game Studio.  Here is what he says about it: “I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people try and do the moonwalk,” says Mr. Nichols, [...]

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Furniture-flavored Pancakes

October 20, 2010

Things are quiet because we’re both hammered by the Fall semester. But enjoy this humorous image of a lack of discriminability in product packaging (via Consumerist):

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Keep up with the madness

September 30, 2010

HFES madness continues at the annual meeting in San Francisco. Visit the site to see the pictures.

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HFES Madness–There’s still time!

September 20, 2010

The annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting is next week in San Francisco.  If you’re attending as a presenter (of a lecture, a poster, or a symposium), consider participating in the HFES Madness Sessions!  These new sessions (organized by Anne, Kelly Caine, and me) are short-burst advertisements for your talk.  We’re borrowing this idea from our friends at SIGCHI. [...]

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