cognition/memory

Lack of human factors = more of your tax dollars at “work”

April 22, 2012

I live in Raleigh, NC. Our area code has always been a little problematic for the nationwide 911 emergency system – it is 919. But at least until now, dialing the 919 for a local call was optional. Looks like we’re finally big enough for ten digit dialing and we can expect to pay the price in our public safety [...]

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Revisiting an academic’s use of the iPad

March 9, 2012
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With the introduction of “the new iPad” (i.e., iPad 3) I thought it would be a good time to update one of the most popular posts on this blog. That post was about incorporating an iPad into my daily work and play routine. It was written when the iPad was first introduced in 2010 and was mostly an exploration of [...]

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What values are pilots allowed to enter for the weight of the plane?

January 22, 2012
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I’d assume when pilots enter a weight estimate for the plane prior to takeoff that there would be a decision aid to prevents gross miscalculation. It certainly seems like an undue load (no pun intended) on the pilot to require entering multiple components for weight correctly. From the article linked below I am no longer sure how much automation is [...]

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Influence of Environment on Behavior

January 4, 2012

Two articles came up that both touched upon the topic of how behavior is shaped and influenced by the environment and how we shape our immediate environment to suit particular behaviors.  The topic of how behavior is constrained by the physical environment is a long discussed topic in psychology and human factors (e.g., affordances, ecological psychology, situated cognition, “cognition in [...]

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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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Cataloging the Rights Along with the Wrongs: Angry Birds

March 10, 2011
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Charles Mauro provides a detailed analysis of reverse engineering an engaging interface: the Angry Birds game. For those who haven’t heard of it, Angry Birds is a wildly successful iPhone and iPad game. The post covers: the usefulness of examining existing artifacts that through their success must contain desirable attributes scaffolding training increasing challenge through cognitive manipulations adding “mystery”  through [...]

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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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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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Blogging APA Division 21: “One Thing at a Time” (but over a really long time)

November 21, 2010

I held off for a while writing this post because I wanted to make sure I could include media Dr. John Senders included in his talk. I think you’ll agree it was worth the wait! At the 2010 APA convention, John W. Senders, Ph.D. presented “One Thing at a Time: From Eye Fixations (1951), to Sampling (1954), to Information Theory [...]

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Blogging APA Division 21: You’re Looking Harmless Today

August 23, 2010
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I‘m on a plane writing this post and I look harmless, or at least not threatening. According to work presented by Poornima Madhavan from Old Dominion University, being a female in the screening line means I am less likely to be hassled by a false alarm of a screener seeing a threat in my bag.* In work done with her [...]

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Designing Displays for Older Adults: Chapter 1 (excerpt)

August 18, 2010

Below is the preface and excerpt of Chapter 1 from our forthcoming 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. Preface This book is focused on the [...]

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Blogging APA Division 21: “Who are we?” (how did we get here, and who do we want to be?)

August 16, 2010
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According to Peter Hancock, we are our tools.  His 2010 presidential address “Mind, Machine, and Morality,” was as entertaining and wide-ranging as is typical of a Dr. Hancock talk. Two of his philosophical takes on our field are well suited to discussion, and I present them to invite comment. Part I: Self-symbiosis – Uniquely human? Self-symbiosis refers to our propensity [...]

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Code Chartreuse – “Too many codes”

August 9, 2010
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Enjoy memorizing this hospital sign! How about just announcing the issue rather than matching it first with a color? For example: “Attention, tornado!” seems like it would be effective. Elopement, by the way, means a patient with Alzheimer’s needs to be located. That makes “purple” a code within a code (and makes me want to watch Inception again). This is [...]

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Soft Keyboard: Smart Idea or Incredibly Frustrating?

March 22, 2010

ThickButtons is a replacement soft-keyboard for Android phones that works in a very unique way. It uses the predictive word functionality available in many soft keyboards (where it can predict what word you are likely to be typing based on what you’ve typed) but takes that one step further by enlarging the next letter on the keyboard. Take a look: [...]

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Visual Search and Airport Security Screening

February 8, 2010
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Funny I should have mentioned conjunction search the other day, since this post is all about new research by Jeremy Wolfe who has and continues to contribute to the visual search literature. In this new work, already mentioned on i09, Wolfe and his former research assistant Michael van Wert investigated complex visual search as it applies to baggage scanning at [...]

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3D is better than 2D, right?

January 22, 2010
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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 navigation in [...]

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