errors

Kitchen Taskonomy Part 1: A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger

January 4, 2011
Thumbnail image for Kitchen Taskonomy Part 1: A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Children and Medication Errors – “Thanks, Mom and Dad!”

December 3, 2010
Thumbnail image for Children and Medication Errors – “Thanks, Mom and Dad!”

NPR had a story this morning about the high number of medication errors children experience and some ideas as to why. In short summary: Kitchen spoons are inaccurate for giving “teaspoons” of medicine, and it doesn’t take much to give the little ones an overdose. Dose instructions are in teaspoons, but sometimes the cups that come with the bottle are [...]

Read the full article →

Accidental Activation During Seat Adjustment on Plane

December 1, 2010
Thumbnail image for Accidental Activation During Seat Adjustment on Plane

CNN posted this story where a co-pilot accidentally bumped a control while adjusting his seat, sending the plane into a 26 degree dive. Disaster was only averted by the pilot returning from the restroom, as apparently the co-pilot lacked the training to correct the error. From the article: The aviation agency report concluded that the 25-year-old co-pilot had not been [...]

Read the full article →

Was it the interface?

November 1, 2010

A story at The Chronicle discusses the appointment and immediate resignation of a faculty member elected as chairperson of their department. Below are some quotes from the article that make me wonder what one had to do to remove one’s name from the ballot. Mr. Sheppard was elected under an online-election system, introduced last year, that was designed to make [...]

Read the full article →

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):

Read the full article →

Afford-door-ances

October 4, 2010
Thumbnail image for Afford-door-ances

The picture above was taken from the Starbucks near the convention hotel for HFES 2010. Rich and I were walking in there at 6:30 a.m. when we saw a man exiting the doors, shaking them violently, and uttering curse words. We had to laugh when we saw what made him so angry – a push bar on the inside of [...]

Read the full article →

ATM Alarms and Signal Detection Theory

September 23, 2010
Thumbnail image for ATM Alarms and Signal Detection Theory

My favorite folks over at The Consumerist posted a nice writeup on why ATMs do not have alarm buttons. According to a FTC report, at about $1,500 a pop, they’re expensive to retrofit, the police usually don’t have the resources to respond in real-time, and they result in more false alarms than real calls. In one pilot program, an alarm-equipped [...]

Read the full article →

Impending Disasters Announced Via Computer

September 3, 2010
Thumbnail image for Impending Disasters Announced Via Computer

I had no idea that there were automated disaster warnings on planes, such one telling passengers to prepare to crash. Apparently they exist. Apparently it’s not too difficult to mistakenly broadcast them. From one article on the event: “This is an emergency announcement. We may shortly need to make an emergency landing on water.” … Passenger Michelle Lord said: “People [...]

Read the full article →

11 feet 8 inches

September 2, 2010

A train trestle in Durham, NC has a clearance of 11’8″. The typical height of a large rental truck ranges from 11’6″ (don’t bounce!) to 13’6″. How often do you think about clearance when driving? Do you think you could adjust to thinking about it 100% of the time in your rental truck? I’ve seen parking garages that have a [...]

Read the full article →

“Clomiphene” vs. “Clomipramine”

September 1, 2010
Thumbnail image for “Clomiphene” vs. “Clomipramine”

Found at the Consumerist blog: The words “Clomiphene” and “Clomipramine” might look similar, but if you work in a pharmacy, you should know that they stand for very different things. Clomiphene is the generic version of the fertility drug Clomid. Clomipramine is a tricyclic antidepressant. A woman in Pittsburgh says that the pharmacy at a Giant Eagle grocery store gave [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21: The Cost of Automation Failure

August 27, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: The Cost of Automation Failure

Arathi Sethumadhavan, currently of Medtronic and recently of Texas Tech, was this year’s winner of the George E. Briggs dissertation award, for the best dissertation this year in the field of applied experimental psychology. Her advisor was Frank Durso. Her work was inspired by our need to increase automation in aviation, due to increases in air traffic. However, automation does [...]

Read the full article →

Too standardized? – The problem of tube identification in hospitals

August 25, 2010
Thumbnail image for Too standardized? – The problem of tube identification in hospitals

When it comes to efficiency, creating standard sizes and connections saves money, production efforts, and makes for easy substitution when one runs out of an object. For example, I was delighted that lid for one brand of pot perfectly fit my new frying pan. Unfortunately, there are times when we do not want parts of one object to fit another [...]

Read the full article →

Blogging APA Division 21: You’re Looking Harmless Today

August 23, 2010
Thumbnail image for Blogging APA Division 21: You’re Looking Harmless Today

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 [...]

Read the full article →

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Mining Tragedy Update

July 15, 2010
Thumbnail image for Mining Tragedy Update

There is new information on the West Virginia coal mine tragedy where the methane detectors were disabled to prevent automatic shut down of the machinery. This comes from NPR: Methane monitors are mounted on the massive, 30-foot-long continuous miners because explosive gas can collect in pockets near the roofs of mines. Methane can be released as the machine cuts into [...]

Read the full article →

Human Factors and Health care: Tackling Inefficiencies

July 12, 2010
Thumbnail image for Human Factors and Health care: Tackling Inefficiencies

I came across two examples of human factors angles in health care. The first is from the NPR show Planet Money.  The show focuses on how much inefficiency and waste there is in medical billing. The whole podcast is worth listening to, but there is one bit that made me laugh out loud (fast-forward to 10:35). Codes (NDC number) are [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →