Similar Medical Bottles Strike Again: Flu Shots and Insulin

by Anne McLaughlin
Thumbnail image for Similar Medical Bottles Strike Again: Flu Shots and Insulin

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 [...]

Read the full article →

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

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Keyless Ignition in Emergencies: Do you know what to do?

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 [...]

Read the full article →

HF Graduate Programs: Clemson University

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for HF Graduate Programs: Clemson University

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Design & HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Design & HF Potpourri

Comparison of text entry input speeds.
Steve Krug (of “Don’t make me think“) has a new book on usability titled Rocket Surgery Made Easy.  See the first few chapters.  [via Photoshopblog]
Smashing Magazine has a list of how various websites portray progress in multi-step tasks.
A piece on complicated and overwrought design from the NYT.  Choice quote:
Sadly, more and more products seem set [...]

Read the full article →

3D is better than 2D, right?

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for 3D is better than 2D, right?

It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to [...]

Read the full article →

Environmental Controls: Spotlight on Volvo

by Anne McLaughlin
Thumbnail image for Environmental Controls: Spotlight on Volvo

I rode in a colleague’s new Volvo the other day and I love the environmental controls. The button lights up when active, showing where the airflow is going. Notice how the fan speed control is integrated into air direction display so they each add information to the other.
Compare to the older Volvo buttons, which had a similar theme but not [...]

Read the full article →

Ahem…your heart has stopped

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Ahem…your heart has stopped

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Tabs, tabs, and more tabs…

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Tabs, tabs, and more tabs…

This post on Smashing Magazine about vertical navigation had me thinking about the book Anne and I are writing (manuscript due this Friday; panicking…I’m a 10 on the Wong-Baker scale).  In one of the chapters I discuss tab navigation.  When I was looking for a particularly bad example of the use of tabs I remembered Amazon’s website circa 2000.  Fortunately, [...]

Read the full article →

Pain Scale Emoticons

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Pain Scale Emoticons

I don’t visit the doctor frequently (less than once a year) but last year I went to the doctor and as part of the paperwork, I encountered a question about how much pain I felt (shown above).
This is the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale (which seems to be available online).  I thought this was a great way to ask about [...]

Read the full article →

Publically Available Databases for Research

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Publically Available Databases for Research

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

Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Database Three: Mining safety data
Data visualization tools
Heatmapping the Keyboard
Database Two: Aviation safety data

Share/Save

Read the full article →

HF Potpourri

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for HF Potpourri

James Rubinstein sends along a this post about a 32 inch LCD TV presumably designed for older users.  It has features such as a dramatically simplified remote control, fewer wires, and a shut-off timer.  [Engadget]
Designing Devices is a relatively new blog devoted to “how and why to create devices” from Dan Saffer (author of Designing for Interaction).  I’m loving the [...]

Read the full article →

Blog is 99% recovered

by Richard Pak

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.  [...]

Read the full article →

Database failure–we’ll be back shortly

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Database failure–we’ll be back shortly

We had a database failure and it turns out our daily backups are junk–thanks Wordpress Database Backup Plugin!  Our December posts are missing but should return in the next few days.
Similar Posts (auto-generated):

Blog is 99% recovered
Database Three: Mining safety data
Smells like more potpourri
Database Two: Aviation safety data

Share/Save

Read the full article →

Distracted Driving: The Experience

by Anne McLaughlin
Thumbnail image for Distracted Driving: The Experience

We’ve posted quite a bit on driving before, but these new links are too good to be missed.
This first video from the NYT goes over the dangers of multi-tasking while driving (including on-the-street interviews of what American’s might think) and ends with an interview with David Strayer of the University of Utah, including a video of his lab simulator in [...]

Read the full article →

Vision-themed Potpourri

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Vision-themed Potpourri

Today’s potpourri happens to be related to understanding or enhancing what your users see (or don’t see):

Google Browser Size let’s you see how much of your web content is visible by users.
Rocker Lou Reed (of the Velvet Underground) designs an iPhone app for near-sighted users.  It basically increases the font size in the contacts application.  It appears that Mr. [...]

Read the full article →

Encouraging Sanitary Behavior at the Urinal

by Richard Pak
Thumbnail image for Encouraging Sanitary Behavior at the Urinal

From reader Scot M. comes this NPR story. To encourage proper “aiming” at urinals, some places are now placing images of bugs so that men have something to aim toward. I’ve seen these at Schiphol Airport as well as my local grocery store bathroom (and I live in a tiny town).
Keiboom in Amsterdam says the original fly idea [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →