affordances

Blogging APA Division 21: Maximizing Stimulus-Response Compatibility

August 19, 2010
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Kim-Phuong L. Vu was this year’s winner of the Earl A. Allusi Award for early career achievement. Her presentation covered maximizing stimulus-response compatibility to optimize human performance. Vu reported on her studies of people’s performance under different levels of stimulus-response compatibility. For example, high stimulus response compatibility occurs when a blinking button needs to be pressed. The blinking is the stimulus [...]

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The Human Factors of Weapons

July 16, 2010

James R. in California sends along a tragic story of police officer confusing his taser with his firearm.  The news story can be found here.  Here’s what James says: Here in CA there is a big to do over the shooting death of a young man (Oscar Grant) by a BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.  Apparently, Mr. Grant was being [...]

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Don Norman’s 10 Rules for Successful Products

June 28, 2010

The embedded video below is a one-hour talk given by usability guru and cognitive psychologist Don Norman.  He discusses his 10 Rules for Successful Products.  Factoid: Did you know that his landmark book, “The Design of Everyday Things” was originally called, “The Psychology of Everyday Things“?  I guess psychology was a dirty word back then. [Link]

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Glass Shower Doors

June 28, 2010
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I found this story about shattering shower doors first on The Consumerist blog and then the original by the author, Bob Sullivan at MSNBC (quoted below). I had just finished showering and turned off the water. Soaking wet, I did what millions of Americans do every day — I reached for my snazzy sliding glass shower door. Seconds later, glass was raining [...]

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The Human Factors of Rock Climbing – A matter of life and death

June 25, 2010
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A tragedy occurred last week in West Virginia where a rock climber died apparently due to a human factors issue with her gear. This text comes from a commenter on Rockclimbing.com: The climber was Karen Feher from Midlothian Va. She climbed to the anchor of Rico Suave and clipped in direct. Her setup: She had two thin dyneema slings girth [...]

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Users: Are they the people using the towels or the people replacing the towels?

May 13, 2010

Answer: They are hopelessly intertwined.

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Exit Signs Across Cultures

March 11, 2010
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Slate.com has a nice article on the difference between U.S. exit signs and the rest of the world, as well as a nice history of the evolution of the symbols.  Here is an excerpt to get you interested: The text-based American exit sign has its origins in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, a blaze in a downtown Manhattan garment factory [...]

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Dissecting the iPad’s User Interface

February 5, 2010
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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 [...]

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

February 2, 2010
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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 every bit [...]

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Environmental Controls: Spotlight on Volvo

January 20, 2010
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I rode in a colleague’s new Volvo the other day and I love the environmental controls. The button lights up when active, showing where the airflow is going. Notice how the fan speed control is integrated into air direction display so they each add information to the other. Compare to the older Volvo buttons, which had a similar theme but [...]

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Encouraging Sanitary Behavior at the Urinal

December 19, 2009
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From reader Scot M. comes this NPR story. To encourage proper “aiming” at urinals, some places are now placing images of bugs so that men have something to aim toward. I’ve seen these at Schiphol Airport as well as my local grocery store bathroom (and I live in a tiny town). Keiboom in Amsterdam says the original fly idea was [...]

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Dangers of Automatic Windows

November 24, 2009
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Recently I posted on some potential human factors problems caused by Toyota’s design of their floor mats. For this post, I would like to compliment Toyota on their automatic power windows. The windows can be lowered fully and automatically by one quick press on the button. However, to be raised, the lever on the button must be continuously raised until [...]

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911: Trying to fight slips via warnings

August 4, 2009

I got a newsletter in the mail today from the City of Raleigh. Here are some excerpts centering on the problems with our area code: RALEIGH/WAKE 911 CENTER WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT HANG UPS HURT What do a child playing with a telephone, an unprotected non flip cell phone and someone dialing a ten-digit phone number in the 919 [...]

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Electric Scooters and their Warnings: A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger

June 16, 2009
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Electric shopping carts are common in large grocery stores. Essential for users with mobility impairments, they are also helpful for pregnant women, elderly shoppers, and other who have trouble walking long distances. A few months ago, my grandfather overturned such a cart in a parking lot and broke his hip. Interested in what might have caused the accident, I examined [...]

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Invisible Lines and Laundry Detergent

June 11, 2009

Consumer Reports tackled a pet peeve of mine: the invisible fill lines for laundry detergent. Most of you are probably using too much.. I finally took a sharpie to mine. Some excerpts from the Consumer Reports article: “If the lines aren’t clear or are hard to see, it’s easy to overdose and use too much detergent,” says Pat Slaven, a [...]

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Acoustic Information from Basketball Courts

May 14, 2009

I came across an article on ANSI standards that had an interesting human factors anecdote. Thought I would share: It seems that a critical part any basketball game is the wood flooring, something which the fans generally take for granted, but not so the players. Basketball floors are highly engineered surfaces, made of three-quarter inch thick tongue-and-groove northern hard maple, [...]

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