I'm looking for ideas for a Human Factors project
As part of my studies at CMU MHCI, I’m taking a Human Factors course. I must say that it’s one of my more interesting courses and I’m happy I chose it as an elective. Human factors is a bit similar to usability analysis, but it has less to do with computers and more with actual daily physical objects. It’s pretty much synonymous to “ergonomics”. It tends to involve large systems like ships and airplanes and factories and cars. But the analysis applies also to smaller things. Aviation accidents are often a study of Human Factors analysis, examining the factors that caused it to happen.
Part of Human Factors is also deconstructing the myth of “human error”: although it does happen, in most cases things can actually be traced back to design problems. If a user chooses the wrong button because it’s unclear from the labelling or colors which one is the right one, it’s a design error and not just “human error”.
Part of the course is that we have to do a project, making something better with Human Factors. I must say that I don’t yet have a clear idea of what it would be. I have some small ideas, but am looking for contributions and help here. If something comes to your mind that I could study, then please send the thought my way. It has to be an object from my own daily life, so maybe it’s something that we’ve used together at some point. It could be something like an appliance (fridge? microwave?) with an especially unusable interface, or heating/cooling systems, or something about cars or such.
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If you really want to spend a fruitful semester, pick just any universal (preferably programmable) remote control to dissect…
I have a case for you. In May this year, eight deaths in a hospital in Castellaneta in the South of Italy were linked to a “mistake” in the intensive care unit. Patients were hooked up to a machine that, instead of delivering oxygen, delivered a powerful anaesthetic, nitrogen peroxide. Apparently the size and color of the gauges in the tubes linking the tanks to the machine were different, but not different enough that a careless technician wouldn’t mess them up. One more death in Siena was also linked to the same type of gas distribution plant. The investigation is still ongoing.
Of course I hope you don’t have frequent contact with intensive care units in your daily life. But one never knows. And it may be more interesting than studying other design problems, such as those in cookbooks that don’t open flat out and get their pages dirty with sauces and seasonings.
Can opener. You’d be amazed by how many people still have problems opening cans.
Usability of e-voting system? Too hard and large, perhaps
Yep, e-voting is a bit too large and also a bit too “online”. I’m looking for offline stuff. Can opener, hospital systems and remote controls are all good examples, thanks
keep it coming…
How about presence buttons?
Which combination of affordances (colors, shapes, text, logos, adjacency to other web page objects) conveys a button’s meaning and guides the decision to click through? How does this vary between complete newbies who’ve never seen one before or used IM or VoIM, vs. experienced users?
I really want a twitter reader (different from my clunky sms reader) for my nokia n80. how you read and scan and act on twits is different from other texts. right now i’m spending too much time and too many keystrokes to work through my messages, missing important ones, a hassle to respond with twitter-specific codes. one result is nearly all my twittering moved back off my mobile to the web.
On the other hand, you could easily pay your grad school bills with a patent on just one way to avoid a particular type of medical accident.