usability

Mobile Phone Design Constraints

June 14, 2011
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For projectors, new technology means new training (and new errors!)

May 23, 2011
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Mode errors! Coming soon to a theater near you? Have you ever forgotten to set your camera back to Auto from Portrait? How about not understanding what those modes mean? Apparently a similar phenomenon occurs in the professional world of movie theaters. There is a special lens filter used for 3-D movies and when it is not removed for normal [...]

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Bill Buxton Likes Input Devices

May 13, 2011
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And now you can browse his collection with him — all 28 minutes and 48 seconds worth! Channel 9 has the whole story and you can browse the collection one by one on the Microsoft Research site for Buxton. (Buxton obviously has his own site as well.) Photo credit andreakirkby @ Flickr

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Miller Column Inception (or the geekiest movie you’ll see today)

May 11, 2011

Miller Columns are the browsing/visualization technique used in the Mac OSX Finder. It was inherited from the NeXT operating system (one of my favorites). I personally prefer this to the tree view that’s common in Windows Explorer. The embedded video below summarizes the essential action of the movie Inception (spoiler alert!): INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo. (via Kottke)

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Radiation: The Difficulty of Monitoring the Invisible – Post 2 of 2

April 27, 2011
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This post continues the list of articles on HF-related errors in radiation delivering healthcare devices. As Technology Surges, Radiation Safeguards Lag But the technology introduces its own risks: it has created new avenues for error in software and operation, and those mistakes can be more difficult to detect. As a result, a single error that becomes embedded in a treatment plan can [...]

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Radiation: The Difficulty of Monitoring the Invisible – Post 1 of 2

April 22, 2011
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Lately, I have noticed a plethora of stories on human factors mistakes with medical equipment that delivers radiation. I have collected them here for those who are interested in this problem. At times a computer bug was at fault, but often radiation overdoses came from: inadequate training (and perhaps a poor display, but those are not available for me to examine) non-transferrable mental [...]

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Driven to Distraction

April 19, 2011
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This editorial from MSN Autos nicely summarizes a topic we’ve covered many times:  in-car technology interfering with driving.  The central problem appears to be that in-car interfaces are designed in isolation–devoid of the context in which they will actually be used (while driving).  So the designs demand a high amount of attention and concentration. Expert on human-automation interaction Dr. John D. [...]

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Website Usability Success Story – Bethel University

April 18, 2011
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The Chronicle of Higher Education has posted a great “interactive graphic” about Bethel’s re-design of their admissions page. It includes their metrics of success, an important but often difficult to quantify validation of usability. Special problems they faced: A large number of specialized programs with different application methods Including financial aid information appropriately and early in the process Managing multiple [...]

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Crowdsourced Usability III: Skype

April 1, 2011

The new Skype client for Mac has received some very loud complaints about the redesign mostly centered on usability.  Skype has heard the cries: We want you to create the chat style for an upcoming version of Skype for Mac that will be enjoyed by millions of people around the world. We’ve put a template together containing everything that you’ll [...]

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When poor usability costs you your job?

March 30, 2011

You may have heard that an employee who managed “social media” for Chrysler accidentally posted on Chrysler’s twitter account about *ahem* poor driving in Chrysler’s home city of Detroit. Click here for the original story. The guy who sent the tweet blames the program he used for multiple twitter accounts. The article calls it a “glitch,” which would not necessarily [...]

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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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Scroll direction, touch screens, trackpads

March 2, 2011
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When we interact with a touch screen, we expect a certain “directness”; that is, if I grab something and push up, I expect that thing to move up.  Like dragging a web page up or down.  However, did you ever notice that on a track pad (like on a laptop), the direction is reversed? Trackpad:  fingers move DOWN, position indicator goes [...]

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Automakers: Don’t skimp on the interface!

February 27, 2011
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A very angry but insightful comment about the vehicle electronic interface of the 2011 Buick Regal from an automotive journalist: Non touchscreen touchscreen: The GM navigation system and the graphics for it are designed with a touchscreen in mind — when entering in a destination, there is a recreation of a keyboard that allows you to punch in your letters and [...]

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Apple, UCD, and Innovation – A Guest Post by Travis Bowles

February 25, 2011
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This guest post is in response to the article User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs: Just ask Apple and IKEA at fastcodesign.com From the article: One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? “It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and [...]

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“It’s better for real”…not really [3D phones]

February 14, 2011

This has to be one of the silliest use-cases for including 3D in a mobile phone. I guess when there really isn’t a reason to include 3D, you have to make one up.

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Designer of movie UIs to design real UIs

February 11, 2011
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We’ve discussed Mark Coleran before with his fantastical work with those fake user interfaces you see in movies (see movie below).   According to this Fast Company blog post he will have a hand in designing real interfaces. But Coleran doesn’t just throw out the rule books on user experience and “human interface guidelines.” In fact, because many of his clients know [...]

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