By February 2009, all over-the-air television broadcasts in the United States will be digital. There are good reasons for the switch such as better use of bandwidth. However, people who still use rabbit ear antennas for TV reception will need a new digital converter box which is not a simple undertaking. While this video is obviously tongue-in-cheek, the switch-over will not be easy for many. As the video illustrates, it is not clear how to get an antenna, and afterward, how to install it.
New York’s 11 public hospitals are at the forefront of a national movement to standardize color coding of hospital wristbands to designate patient conditions, in which purple — the color of amethyst — means “Do Not Resuscitate.” Red, or ruby, indicates allergies, while yellow — call it amber — marks someone at risk for falling.
The goal is to prevent potentially dangerous mistakes, like giving the wrong food to an allergic child, or allowing a patient with balance problems to walk unescorted down a freshly waxed hallway. The drive was spurred, in part, by a notorious 2005 Pennsylvania case in which a patient nearly died because a nurse used a yellow band thinking it meant “restricted extremity” (don’t draw blood from that arm), as it did at another hospital where the nurse sometimes worked, when at this hospital it meant D.N.R.
A new Pew report examines the usage of cloud computing applications and services which is a topic I’ve been interested in recently. Something noteworthy was that, as we suspected, older adults don’t appreciate the benefits of cloud computing compared to other age groups:
Older adults’ are seemingly the ones who could benefit most from cloud computing. Keeping mail or other information in the cloud means that the user doesn’t have to configure their mail client, maintain their computer, etc.
I was recently interviewed by our campus news service about receiving a Google Research Award to study information retrieval and aging. The research involves designing information retrieval interfaces around the capabilities and limitations of older adults (those age 60 and above). Here is a snippet from the press release:
Richard Pak, an assistant professor of psychology, has received a $50,000 gift from Google to study how older adults navigate the Web and what Web site design features make searches easier. The grant will fund an extension of his research on aging and technology.
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“The findings are that when you take a Web site and organize it hierarchically — like how you might organize your documents on your computer with folders within folders — older adults are much slower and make more errors when they are searching for information compared to younger adults,” Pak said. “We think that this is the case because the situation does not allow older adults to use their greater knowledge toward the situation. However, when you take that same Web site and organize it around keywords or concepts instead of folders, older adults are able to bring their wealth of general knowledge to the situation and perform almost equivalently to younger adults in the task.”
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That is, older adults seem to perform better using so-called “tag-based sites,” which are Web sites that organize their information around frequently used keywords. Pak said that while tag-based sites are still relatively new, several popular sites use tags. These include Amazon.com, Gmail.com, and the photo sharing Web site Flickr.com.
I‘m impressed by Slate’s detailed look at ballot design. Check out the alternative designs!
The answer: not far. A study carried out by USA Today and seven other newspapers in 2001 concluded that faulty design, not punch-card machines, was responsible for voters’ confusion in Palm Beach County in 2000. Despite this finding, states have focused their election-reform energies on upgrading old punch-card machines to optical-scan systems or on implementing electronic voting. They have dismissed or ignored the butterfly layout’s problematic design as an aberration—a stupid mistake on the part of local officials….
…Developed with a team of graphic and industrial designers, Lausen’s elections redesign proposal convinced the state of Illinois to change its election code to allow candidates’ names to be printed in lowercase, among other things. Oregon is implementing the group’s recommendations, and Lausen was just contacted for consultation by Texas. And this January the AIGA is publishing Election Design: Models for Improvement, a book of templates based on the principles of good typographic design….
How many times do we have to say that paper is not the problem?
*On the original, be sure to note the Cali tagline of “I voted, have you?” Um, when is someone going to tell them that the person reading this is actually IN the voting booth? What’s the right answer… “Yes” “No, forget this! I’m leaving!” “Well, I was halfway done when you asked me”?
A U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled the Treasury Department is discriminating against the blind by printing money that is all the same size, with no tactile features that would make it possible to distinguish, say, a $10 bill from a $20. The decision could force the Treasury Department to redesign U.S. bills.
