Papers from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 53rd Annual Meeting

I recently received, and started reviewing, the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 53rd Annual Meeting (2009).  As always, there’s a wide variety of research topics covered.  Some of the more interesting papers I’ve reviewed so far include:

Teams

• Developing a Subjective Shared Situation Awareness Inventory for Teams
• Overcoming Bias in the Deliberations of Distributed Teams
• Supporting Expertise Coordination in Multidisciplinary Project Teams
• Team Cognition and External Representations: A Framework and Propositions for Supporting Collaborative Problem Solving

Safety

• Considering Trends among Industrial Accidents: A Preliminary Meta Analysis of HFACS Causal Factors across Industries

Education

• Evaluating and Designing Education: A Collaborative Effort Between Educators and Ergonomists
• Macroergonomics in Education: On Your Mark, Set, GO!

Health Care

• Healthcare Workers’ Perceptions of Information in the Electronic Health Record
• Medical Informatics: What contributions can human factors make?
• Improving the User Interface and Adoption of Online Personal Health Records
• Improving Communication of Health Status Information
• Development of an Integrated Model for Predicting Patient Compliance
• A Holistic Human Factors Evaluation Framework for the Design of Consumer Health Informatics Interventions

Human-Robot Interaction

• Autonomy and Automation Reliability in Human-Robot Interaction: A Qualitative Review
• Human-Robot Interaction: Issues in the Design of Interfaces for Work in Distant Environments
• More than a Servant: Self-Reported Willingness of Younger and Older Adults to having a Robot Perform Interactive and Critical Tasks in the Home

Interested readers can see the complete table of contents here (270 KB, .pdf).  Also, you can purchase a copy of the CD directly from HFES.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about the latest conference, visit the Human Factors Blog  for a six-part review: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

 Print This Post

Information Visualization Using Wordle

Yesterday, I created a “word cloud” of my post, Quotes from Adaptive Path’s “Subject to Change,” using Wordle (see below for the result).  This is a great example of using technology to visualize non-numerical content – known as information visualization.  To learn more about this topic, from the perspective of the human factors and ergonomics discipline, check out this chapter (2.4 MB, .pdf) from Chris North.

References

North, C. (2006).  Information visualization.  In G. Salvendy (Ed.), Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics (3rd ed., pp. 1222-1245).  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

 Print This Post

Quotes from Adaptive Path’s “Subject to Change”

 

This weekend I finished reading Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World by Peter Merholz, Todd Wilkens, Brandon Schauer, and David Verba (all affiliated with Adaptive Path).

While I disagree with their comments about the discipline of human factors and ergonomics only focusing on “tasks and goals” (see pp. 44-45), overall, I found they made several insightful comments on design, user experience (including strategy), and research.  Some of the more interesting quotes include:

Design

• To cut through the complexity of a world that is both shrinking (in terms of the global village) and expanding (with respect to technological capability), businesses must take advantage of the power of design to realize true competitive advantages. (p. 7)
• At heart, we believe that design is an activity.  As an activity, it incorporates these elements: empathy; problem solving; ideation and prototyping; and finding alternatives. (pp. 9-10)
• The true success of experience design isn’t how well it works when everything is operating as planned, but how well it works when things start going wrong. (p. 93)
• Design can and will fail when it’s practices outside of the context of systems and strategy. (p. 110)
• Giving your customers tools to be designers lets you explore options that you may never think of or invest in on your own. (p. 139)

Experience – User/Customer & Strategy

• An experience strategy is a clearly articulated touchstone that influences all of the decisions made about technology, features, and interfaces. (p. 24)
• An experience strategy can take many forms.  At its heart is a vision, an expression of the experience you hope customers will have. (p. 25)
• …experience strategy begins with the customer.  It’s about contributing to a desirable experience, helping people accomplish what they want to get done. (p. 27)
• A strong experience strategy makes clear not just what to do, but what not to do. (p. 82)
• …“great user experience” always appears as a bullet in the PowerPoint presentation for every new product and service that gets pitched to upper management.  Few organizations move beyond the bullet point because a great experience is difficult to plan for, and almost impossible to spec. (p. 100)
• Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “Wow!,” when the product or service delights, anticipates the needs of, or pleasantly surprises a customer. (p. 131)

Research

• Design research needs to inspire and indicate a clear direction. (p. 65)
• Truly effective customer research takes both a traditional marketing approach and a design approach. (p. 66)
• We’ve found that solid research deliverable exhibit three key characteristics: they are clear and straightforward; they engage readers; and they tell stories. (p. 71)

Some additional noteworthy quotes include:

• The key to creating successful products and services in a rapidly changing world is not resistance to unexpected change, but the flexibility to adapt to it. (p. viii)
• Differentiation isn’t just about being new, it’s also about being relevant. (p. 21)
• As important as customers are to every business, it’s amazing how seldom organizations explicitly consider how they think about the people who keep them in business. (p. 40)
• Creating something new is easy when compared with creating something desirable. (p. 102)
• Good ideas need to fail early and often so you can arrive sooner at a great one. (p. 125)

 Print This Post

World Usability Day 2009

Today is World Usability Day.  Started in 2005 by the Usability Professionals’ Association “…to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.”  Each year it has a different focus – this year it’s “Designing for a Sustainable World.”  If you’re interested in the topic, take the opportunity to review their website and this overview (596 KB, .pdf).

 Print This Post

November Issue of the HFES Bulletin is Out

The November Issue of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Bulletin is now available online.  Some of the topics covered, include:

• Global HF/E Insights From My China Travels by Kathleen L. Mosier
• On Driving Distracted Driving Policy by William C. Howell
• The DOT Distracted Driving Summit: Highlights and HF/E Challenges by John D. Lee
• Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 by William J. Horrey
• Distraction Was the Attraction at Gothenburg Driving Conference by Peter A. Hancock

 Print This Post

Next Page »