misc

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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Paper isn’t so bad…

December 15, 2011

One thing that annoys me is the silly argument that paper is bad or paper kills. Such hollow arguments are used to encourage technology adoption in airplane cockpits, the class room, and hospitals. Usually they are associated with silly statistics about how much paper is saved or how much less weight is carried, or how much easier it will be [...]

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“Feel the pleasure of the mind in the least allayed”

May 6, 2011
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Enjoy this short but entertaining look at “Benjamin Franklin – the first American ergonomist?” by Dr. John Senders (who has appeared previously on this blog). An excerpt: Professor Chaplin states of Franklin (p. 65): Cato Major, or His Discourse of Old Age (1744). Franklin solicitously printed the book in large type so that elderly readers (beyond the help even of [...]

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New Magazine-like Layout for iPad Users

March 24, 2011

Just a small programming note:  we’ve installed the new OnSwipe plugin for WordPress that shows a specially formatted version to our iPad users.  The experience is very similar to what you might get from Flipboard (an iPad RSS app) complete with page turning animations. Let us know what you think!  Don’t forget to try swiping.

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Kitchen Taskonomy Part 2: Paying Bills (A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger)

February 7, 2011
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In my previous post, I talked about applying taskonomy to kitchen organization. Instead of organizing objects by their name or physical similarity–taxonomy—a taskonomic approach organizes objects by the way they are used. Today I’m discussing how I used taskonomy to revamp my overly precise but neglected system for paying bills. Paying bills used to be a real chore.  (Yes, I [...]

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Book Giveaway Winners

January 18, 2011
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Congrats to twitterers @inogrady and @andrea_dwyer. You were selected at random to receive a free copy of our book. Please contact us with your mailing address.

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Kitchen Taskonomy Part 1: A Guest Post by Kim Wolfinbarger

January 4, 2011
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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 [...]

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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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The Elusive Moodle!

December 9, 2010

Had to share this funny usability story. Google released the top searches by city today First on the list for Raleigh, NC was “moodle ncsu.” Topping the list for Charlotte, NC was “moodle nccu.” Moodle is the recently adopted open source courseware system we (NCSU: North Carolina State University) use. When I use Moodle to interact with my classes, I [...]

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Keep up with the madness

September 30, 2010

HFES madness continues at the annual meeting in San Francisco. Visit the site to see the pictures.

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HFES Madness–There’s still time!

September 20, 2010

The annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting is next week in San Francisco.  If you’re attending as a presenter (of a lecture, a poster, or a symposium), consider participating in the HFES Madness Sessions!  These new sessions (organized by Anne, Kelly Caine, and me) are short-burst advertisements for your talk.  We’re borrowing this idea from our friends at SIGCHI. [...]

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Usability Potpourri

July 2, 2010

HF/Usability Potpourri returns with two recent items. iPhone Reception Display Reports from some sites suggest that at least some of the cellular reception issues of the new iPhone 4 are due to improper display of signal strength.  This is a neat HF issue because it involves user’s trust in automation (the display of reception bars is actually a computed value, [...]

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Human Factors Blog @ SXSW

March 4, 2010
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Anne was invited to be a panelist at SXSW on Friday, March 12 at 05:00 PM.  SXSW is a yearly music, movie, and interactive media festival held in Austin, TX.  The title of the interactive panel is With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Future of Video Games. Here is a description: Video games are more popular than ever, and [...]

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HF Graduate Programs: North Carolina State University

February 4, 2010
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This is the second post in our 2-part look at some HF programs.  Rich’s post about Clemson’s program can be found here. The psychology graduate program at NCSU in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A, boasts eight faculty in the Human Factors and Ergonomics specialization. This is in addition to the faculty in our sister program in Industrial Engineering and related faculty [...]

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HF Graduate Programs: Clemson University

January 26, 2010
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This is the first post in our 2-part look at some HF programs. Anne’s post about North Carolina State University’s program can be found here. Did you know that Human Factors is not only a fun blog, but something you could get a graduate degree in?  The field is known by many names but they are the same, more or [...]

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Blog is 99% recovered

January 5, 2010

What started out as a small database glitch escalated into a problem where we lost almost all of our December posts.  We’ve recovered most of them (except the newest one) thanks to Google and Bing caches.  Unfortunately, we’ve lost some of your comments on those posts.  Please feel free to re-comment!  Meanwhile, we’ll be tweaking some things behind the scenes.  [...]

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