From the category archives:

errors

Redesigning Toyota’s Keyless Ignition System

by Richard Pak
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The LA Times reporters Ken Bensinger and Ralph Vartabedian recently wrote a story about keyless ignition systems and the associated HF issues (we blogged about it here).  In a follow-up story, they report that Toyota is considering redesigning the system so that instead of requiring a single 3-second press to shut off the engine, it now requires 3 consecutive [...]

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Visual Search and Airport Security Screening

by Anne McLaughlin
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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 airport [...]

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Similar Medical Bottles Strike Again: Flu Shots and Insulin

by Anne McLaughlin
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One of this blogs most popular posts concerned the similarity of adult and pediatric containers for the blood thinner Heparin.  A story from 2008 concerns the mix up between “nearly identical” bottles of flu vaccine and insulin. When you don’t have high blood sugar, a shot of insulin is serious business and sends you straight to the hospital.
Five Bedford County [...]

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Keyless Ignition in Emergencies: Do you know what to do?

by Richard Pak
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This story in the LA Times illustrates several important HF/usability issues.  First, the  importance of knowing what the user knows before introducing new, seemingly “simple” technology, or changing the way they currently do things (in this case, what people know about ignition systems and how they start their cars).  Second, like the story about the alarms, it also clearly illustrates [...]

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Ahem…your heart has stopped

by Richard Pak
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Darin Ellis sends along this radio story about a woman’s robotic heart that has a malfunction warning system that literally breaks the textbook HF rules of alarm design.  I’ll let Darin explain the unfortunate issue:
This woman, who is living thanks to a robotic heart, related a story of the “heart” malfunctioning.  Apparently, although not prone to malfunction, there is a [...]

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Publically Available Databases for Research

by Richard Pak
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This is just a placeholder post to collect Anne’s collection of publicly available safety data:

Data visualization tools
Occupational safety
Aviation safety
Mining safety

Share/Save

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Pssssst! Free occupational safety data!

by Anne McLaughlin
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Do you love databases? Especially if you are interested in safety, there are a number of carefully archived databases of events out there. A couple of years ago, I found one of these while trying to answer the question “What kinds of human factors interventions would be most increase agricultural safety?” Six months of coding later, I had some [...]

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Medication Adherence Case Study

by Anne McLaughlin
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I talked with an 80 year old man last weekend about how he remembers to take his medication. His solution?
Put all the pills in one bottle and take out what he needs each day. It appears to be an anti-organizer.
If you or your loved ones are more interested in environmental support, a new free application created by Consumer Reports [...]

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Smells like more potpourri

by Richard Pak
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The end of the academic semester is upon us in the U.S. so we’re backed up with deadlines which is why we’re having Potpourri again for lunch. But tasty potpourri:
First, a curmudgeonly three-part series on things that give too little feedback or have too few buttons:

I just got an iPod Shuffle which uses a system of taps on an [...]

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Dangers of Automatic Windows

by Anne McLaughlin
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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 [...]

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Human Factors vs. Bugs – Somebody stop my Toyota!

by Anne McLaughlin
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In one of my courses this year I had students talk about the kinds of human factors problems they had run across when using computers. There were a number of great anecdotes, but one thing that interested me was the difficulty they had discerning the difference between a software bug and a human factors problem. For example, one student complained [...]

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HFES Conference Part 5: Automation & Trust & Google Maps

by Richard Pak

During the conference I had a very personal experience with the effects of automation reliability on trust and subsequent behaviors.  First, a bit of background.  There is a large body of research examining how humans interact with automated systems (Global positioning systems, for example).  Human-automation interaction is quite complex; being affected by many factors.
Julian Sanchez (of MITRE) presented a poster [...]

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Bad Design: Mouse mode and feedback

by Richard Pak
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I interrupt this HFES re-cap to express my slight dismay at my new computer mouse.  I purchased a portable Bluetooth-enabled mouse for my laptop (I hate using those mouse nubs).  The mouse is pretty nice because instead of a scroll wheel, it uses a full trackball to scroll.
Depending on my mood or environmental conditions, I can switch the mouse between [...]

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Error Leads to Radiation Overdose

by Richard Pak
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Not much detail but the LATimes is reporting that:
“There was a misunderstanding about an embedded default setting applied by the machine . . . ,” officials at the renowned Los Angeles hospital said in a written statement that provided no other details about how the error occurred. “As a result, the use of this protocol resulted in a higher than [...]

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Consequences of Mobile Phone Usability…big consequences

by Richard Pak
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Time.com is reporting that part of the economic recession may have been caused by Warren Buffet not being able to check his voice mail:
as Buffett was rushing out to a social engagement in Edmonton, Alberta, he got a call from Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital…[ed. Diamond was creating a plan to save an investment bank and needed money [...]

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Developing the “science of error measurement”

by Anne McLaughlin

I woke up this morning to the People’s Pharmacy on NPR and an interview with Peter Pronovost (of checklist fame in a previous post) and David Newman-Toker. These two M.D.s hope to inspire research into accurate error measurement as an essential to developing systems that avoid errors in medical diagnosis. The goal of their commentary, published in JAMA, is to [...]

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