training

Redesigned Beltline signs to drop ‘Inner’ and ‘Outer’

RALEIGH - No more “Inner” and “Outer” for Raleigh’s Beltline. Soon it will be Interstate 40 and Interstate 440, east and west.

The state Department of Transportation is about to make good on a long-standing promise to get rid of the Inner Beltline and Outer Beltline signs that get lots of motorists mad, confused and lost.

This human factors redesign feels personal. I’ve bemoaned the difficulties with the Raleigh loop signs for as long as I’ve lived here. I know people who have no trouble with it, but I am incapable of translating “inner” or “outer” into actual directions, especially during the multi-tasking required for driving toward an entrance ramp and thinking about where my destination is in relation to my current position.

I think the greatest difficulty comes from translation. To know which way the inner beltline goes, the driver must mentally step through the following (at least until s/he just memorizes what ramp to take).

1. Raleigh is surrounded by a loop with 12 o’clock in the north.
2. I’m at about the 9 o’clock position approaching an on-ramp from outside the city.
3. My destination is close to the 4 o’clock position, so it would be best to go right to get there.
4. Right is….
5. Right is… uh
6. Right is inner or outer?
7. Ok, inner means inside the outer. In the U.S. cars go in prescribed directions on certain sides of the street, so looking down at the beltline I can expect cars on the inner side to be going north from where I am.
8. Wait, is that true 180 degrees on the other side of the circle? I think so…
9. So that means that the inner beltline is going clockwise?
10. That means that the outer beltline goes counter clockwise which is to the right and where I want to go
11. I want the counter clockwise entrance
12. The counter clockwise entrance is the outer beltline

No wonder I’m always late.

For a bonus, don’t miss out on the typical “common sense” comments attached to the News & Observer article.

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Most everyone probably heard about the gun accidentally fired in the passenger plan cockpit last week.

But did you hear about the designs that lead to this human error?

I had to do some detective work (and quizzing gun owners) to find the following pictures:

Here is the gun in question (or similar enough) showing the safety and the spaces in front of and behind the trigger.

Pilots keep the gun in a hoster (see below).

Users report some difficulty ascertaining whether the gun is “locked” into the holster. If it is not, then the trigger can be in an unexpected place (namely, higher in the holster than the shaped holster seems to indicate.)

The TSA requires pilots who have been issued these guns to padlock the trigger for every takeoff and landing. Reports are that pilots do this about 10 times for a shift. Therefore, let’s assume we have 10 chances for error in using the holster and in using the padlock.

The padlock goes through the trigger. It should go behind, to keep anyone from pulling the trigger. If the gun is 100% in the holster, this is the case. If it is not… then the padlock can end up in FRONT of the trigger. The opaque holster prevents a visual check of the trigger.

The holster also prevents a visual check of the safety.

All of this might be forgiven, or addressed with training, if it weren’t for the fact that there are numerous other ways to prevent a gun from firing rather than locking something through the trigger. Remember, we should be on the “Guard” step of “Design out, Guard, then Train.”

I’m not even going to discuss whether pilots should have guns.

“Boyd said he supports the program to arm pilots, saying, “if somebody who has the ability to fly a 747 across the Pacific wants a gun, you give it to them.”

For an amusing take, see “Trust is not Transitive.”

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What if a Radio DJ hosted a morning show and no one heard?

Lesson learned! I will try to make certain to hit ‘publish’ at the end of this post.

From the article:

“”I’ve been doing the show three days a week for 10 months and always pressed the button at the right moment. Goodness knows why I forgot this time.

“Mr Dixon, the station’s only employee, will not fire his “excellent” breakfast show DJ, who is one of 35 volunteers who have learnt their radio skills from scratch.”

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NPR ran a story earlier this week on an intriguing new human factors problem: fire-safe elevators.

The fall of the World Trade Center made it painfully obvious that stairs in skyscrapers do not function adequately in emergencies. We’ve always been warned away from elevators in case of fire, and I would go so far as to say it part of our collective knowledge from a young age. With the advent of elevators you should use in a fire comes a host of difficulties.

1. Training the zeitgeist: Not all elevators will be replaced, though new tall buildings will all have fireproof elevators. There may be new rules requiring older buildings over a certain size retrofit at least one elevator as fire safe.

• This still makes fireproof elevators the exception instead of the rule. A great research question would be how to train people for a small-percentage case? You want the public, of all ages and experience levels, to know “In case of fire, use stairs, unless there is a fireproof elevator around, which you may or may not have noticed while you were in the building.”

2. Warnings and Information: The symbol in this post is probably familiar to all of you. I’ve occasionally seen it in Spanish, but not often. How will we indicate the difference between fire-safe elevators and other elevators?

• Decals, signs and other indicators will not only have to indicate which elevators are safe and their purpose, but whether other elevators in the building are safe or unsafe. My building is square, with elevators on mirrored sides. If one were safe and the other not, I am sure I could remember which was safe, especially under the cognitive demands of an emergency.

3. Wayfinding and luck: Use of the elevator may depend on the location of the fire.

• One of the original problems was that elevators opened onto smoke-filled or fire-filled floors. The story did not specify how the new elevators would avoid this. If there is a sensor that prevents them from opening onto such a floor, what if there are people desperately waiting for the elevator on that floor (as they have been re-trained to do)?
• Should the system be even more complex, with people gathering on certain floors to await the elevator rescue? And then, if those floors are on fire..

In short, researchers start your engines! We have some training, warning, design, and way-finding work to do.

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Improvements in simulator performance didn’t come from just any Wii (see image), or any game. Marble Mania is good, for example. Tennis (astonishingly fun to play on the Wii, which uses a motion-sensitive wireless control) isn’t so helpful. “The key is to have subtle hand movements,” Kanav Kahol one of the authors of the study, told the Health Blog. “You can’t hit a tennis swing and expect to become a better surgeon. You need fine motor control.”

[wsj.com]

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