Winner of HFES Morning Madness

October 1, 2011

Congratualations to Stephanie Whetsel (of Clemson University) for winning the straw poll for morning madness. Her talk, entitled, “Pedestrians’ Estimates of Their Own Visibi- lity at Night Are Not Reduced When Head- lights Are Severely Weakened” made entertaining use of video clips and was an audience favorite according to the poll. A big thanks to everyone who participated with hilarious [...]

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NYT: So Many Gadgets, So Many Aches

September 11, 2011

A nice but short article in the New York Times about the ergonomic challenges with new electronic devices.  I’m pleasantly surprised that the article mentioned both physical and cognitive issues.  When most people hear or think of “ergonomics” they think of physical issues only. Most of the content will not be new to HFB readers but it’s nice that the [...]

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Update on the BMW iDrive

September 8, 2011
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Nice writeup by BimmerFile on the iDrive, a single-button input device for the non-driving functions of the BMW. I’ve excerpted my favorite portions below — specifically their connection of iDrive design to the proximity-compatibility principle and the principles of importance and frequency of use.  BimmerFile was recently invited to Munich and into the very secret BMW labs that birthed the [...]

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Don Norman Chimes in on Scrolling Direction

September 5, 2011

Touch Usability points to a nice Don Norman post about new gesture scrolling differences primarily instigated by Apple.  As a side note, i’ve fully converted to the “content moves” model (at home, work, laptop) and did not find the transition unusual at all.  As Norman notes, it just required a subtle mental shift in my model: Both models are correct in [...]

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Human Factors in the News: Next Generation Aviation

August 17, 2011
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I don’t know how I missed this back in March! They even use the words “human factor” in the title! The article is an interesting overview of the “NextGen” systems coming to aviation and explains our field to the general public. Air traffic overhaul hinges on ‘human factor’ From the article: Human factors’ engineering Even amid the amazing technological achievements [...]

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Calibrating User’s Perception of Automation

August 11, 2011

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting in a symposium on automation in safety critical domains arranged by Dr. Arathi Sethumadhavan at the American Psychological Association annual meeting.  My fellow participants were: Arathi Sethumadhavan, PhD (Medtronic) Poornima Madhavan, PhD (Old Dominion University) Julian Sanchez, PhD (Medtronic) Ericka Rovira, PhD (United States Military Academy) Everyone presented on issues related to human-automation interaction.  I [...]

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Coming to APA 2011: A Conversation Hour on Use of Electronic Health Records in Clinical Practice

August 2, 2011
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Drs. Kelly Caine (of guest post fame)  and Dennis Morrison will be presenting on human factors considerations for the design and use of electronic health records.  Audience participation is welcome as they discuss this important topic. See abstract below. In this conversation hour we will discuss the use of electronic health records in clinical practice. Specifically, we will focus on [...]

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Treemapping Your Way to Healthier Food Choices

August 2, 2011
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Renee Walker, MFA in Design, came up with an innovative use of treemaps to provide nutrition information – winning the Rethink the Food Label contest. Can you imagine the horror of food companies once they realize how much of their treemap has to say SUGAR? This visualization is certainly easier than the rule of thumb I was taught: “If sugar is [...]

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Humans and Automation on the Colbert Report

August 1, 2011

Look! A human factors colleague on the Colbert Report! Does this mean we’re cool? Dr. Missy Cummings, Associate Professor at MIT Director of the Humans and Automation Lab The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive Similar Posts (auto-generated): Virtual Assistants (automation) and Etiquette The Human Factors “elevator speech” Profiles in Human Factors: Dr. Elizabeth Blickensderfer, [...]

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Verdict Reached for Air France Rio Crash

July 29, 2011
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The BBC has reported the incident analysis of the Air France crash that killed 228 people was due to lack of pilot skill in dealing with a high altitude stall. Here is a link to the BEA Report from the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses. It’s a frightening read, as they give a moment by moment analysis of the last minutes in the cockpit. No emergency [...]

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Are we too trusting of GPS automation?

July 26, 2011
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A GPS certainly makes life easier — and although I think many of us might consider what would happen if we were without it or it was unable to identify where we were, it is less often we consider how it may lead us astray. One of our early postings on the Human Factors Blog was about a bus driver [...]

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HFES Madness 2011

July 21, 2011

Will you be at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Annual Meeting in September?  If so, and you are presenting, consider doing a 25-second madness presentation.  The theme of “madness” is very appropriate for the conference locale:  Las Vegas! This year the madness presentations will be right before the opening plenary so you’ll have a huge audience. The purpose of madness [...]

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Coming to APA in August: Information Foraging in the Social Web

July 21, 2011
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Peter Pirolli (currently a Research Fellow at Xerox/PARC) will be presenting on Information Foraging Theory. See below for an abstract of his upcoming talk. Information Foraging Theory is a theory of human-information interaction that aims to explain and predict how people will best shape themselves to their information environments, and how information environments can best be shaped to people.  The approach involves [...]

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Resources: Human Factors Design Considerations in Home Health Technology

July 19, 2011

The National Academies of Science and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have just released two publications. The first, Health Care Comes Home, is a 200 page report: Health Care Comes Home reviews the state of current knowledge and practice about many aspects of health care in residential settings and explores the short- and long-term effects of emerging trends and technologies. [...]

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Hope to see you at APA 2011!

July 17, 2011
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There will be an extensive program for the Applied Experimental Division of the American Psychological Association at their conference in D.C. from August 4-7, and I invite all to come! We’ve collected a who’s-who from established to up-and-coming researchers to bring you cutting edge work in human factors, ergonomics, automation, human machine systems, aviation, video gaming, and much more! Below [...]

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“The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped”

July 5, 2011

I completely agree: A capacitive button has no place on a phone, and the people who are pushing it into the marketplace are over-fetishizing visual design to the detriment of the overall experience. Which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Nokia seems to think otherwise. Design Dare via Daring Fireball Similar Posts (auto-generated): Older adults and Windows [...]

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