Just a short note about two new HF-oriented blogs.  First, Arathi Sethumadhavan Ph.D. has started a new blog. Arathi Sethumadhavan is a Human Factors Scientist at Medtronic’s Cardiac Rhythm and Disease Management. She received her PhD in Experimental Psychology (Human Factors) from Texas Tech University.  Second, Ergonomics in Design, a publication of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, has started a blog as well.  Check ‘em out!

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Interesting research (PDF link) on how people behave when robots are wrong. In a recent paper, researchers created a situation where a robot mis-directed a human in a game. In follow-up interviews, one of the striking findings that caught my eye was:

When asked whether Robovie was a living being, a technology, or something in-between, participants were about evenly split between “in-between” (52.5%) and “technological” (47.5%). In contrast, when asked the same question about a vending machine and a human, 100% responded that the vending machine was “technological,” 90% said that a human was a “living being,” and 10% viewed a human as “in-between.”

The bottom line was that a large portion of the subjects attributed some moral/social responsibility to this machine.

Taken broadly, the results from this study – based on both behavioral and reasoning data – support the proposition that in the years to come many people will develop substantial and meaningful social relationships with humanoid robots.

Here is a short video clip of how one participant reacted upon discovering Robovie’s error.

I wonder if similar results would be found when people interact with (and make attributions to) less overtly humanoid systems (disembodied automated systems like a smartphone app).

(via Slate)

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I live in Raleigh, NC. Our area code has always been a little problematic for the nationwide 911 emergency system – it is 919. But at least until now, dialing the 919 for a local call was optional. Looks like we’re finally big enough for ten digit dialing and we can expect to pay the price in our public safety system.  Check out this email from the Director of Emergency Communications, particularly the part about dispatching officers every 7.5 minutes to investigate hang-ups:

I am sure by now that you have seen or heard about some of the impact that the new 10 digit dialing requirement has made upon our 9-1-1 center. Unfortunately, we are almost three weeks downstream from this implementation, and are seeing few signs of improvement.

Neither the 9-1-1 center, the city, or the local telephone carriers are responsible for selecting area codes. They are distributed according to a national plan. “Overlays” are added when a region begins to run out of numbers in their original pool; in this case 9-1-9. Unfortunately, with the similarity between 9-1-9 and 9-1-1, our agency has seen this issue in the past, as some of our citizens have utilized 10 digit dialing for some time. The current impact on our staff – and on law enforcement – is that on our peak days we are dispatching officers to investigate hang up calls once every seven and a half minutes. Of course, this is a daily average, meaning that at peak times the impact is even more severe. Plus, we only dispatch calls that we can’t resolve another way. Many people who misdial don’t realize they have until we answer. Others hang-up, but answer when we call them back. In such cases sending an officer is not required, so the total number of calls we receive in error far exceeds those dispatched.

As Director of Emergency Communications, I am asking for your help. We have identified that a majority of such calls come from either senior citizens or business telephones. In the first case, confusion over the proper procedures seems to be the norm.  After 40 years, folks now have to dial 10 digits just to talk to their neighbor. We’ve had callers tell us they thought they had to now dial 9-1-1 before calling in our area, and others ask if they needed to dial 9-1-9 before they called 9-1-1. If you have an elderly friend, relative, or neighbor, I’d like to personally ask you to take the time to make sure they understand to carefully dial “9-1-9” when required. I believe that with some patience and understanding we can make significant inroads.

With regard to business telephones, the issue is a little more complex, and may in some cases even involve the need to dial “9” to get an outside line, followed by the unnecessary “1” before dialing the area code. Whatever the reason, it really boils down to just taking a few extra seconds to make sure of the numbers you’re dialing. Whether you work at a local business, or own one, can I please also count on you to assure that your co-workers use due care when calling? This is a very serious issue and takes resources away from dealing with actual emergencies.

So, to summarize:

• There is a lack of understanding when to use 10-digit dialing.
• Being “careful” is not going to fix this problem.
• The added traditions for businesses to dial “9″ to get out adds to the problem (NC State moved to a dial “7″ system, presumably for this reason).
• Those with a lifetime of 7-digit experience, and presumably the least likely to have numbers pre-programmed into a cell phone, make the most errors.

The issues here are fascinating, yet predictable. I don’t know if there is a perfect answer, since changing the long-term ill-chosen area code would be confusing (although my home town in Alabama has gone through 3 such changes in the last couple of decades – from 205 to 334 to 251!). But it is clear that we are penalized by the similarity of our numbers to a national standard for emergency calls. I applaud the tone of the email, which is not blameful – just desperate for a solution. However, I have great skepticism that advising “due care” in dialing will make any difference at all.

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In addition to distracted driving, and walking, now there is increasing awareness of distracted learning.  This has long been a problem in academic circles but it’s finally getting some news coverage.

Some professors in Ottawa want the right to ban laptops in class:

The University of Ottawa is considering a proposal which would give its professors the power to ban laptops and other electronic devices in the classroom.

Professors say everything from texting to time on Facebook is allowing their students to do everything but learn.

“They are distracted and we are competing with that for their attention,” says University of Ottawa professor Marcel Turcotte who voted in favour of the policy.

“You see one student who is really not listening, would be watching the video and then it’s kind of contagious,” says Turcotte.

As a professor, I see my share of this as well.  Every classroom has wireless and it’s just too tempting to browse Facebook and other non-relevant sites while in class.  A student once told me that they are distracted by OTHER people’s laptops when that other student is watching Youtube or browsing Facebook:  secondhand distraction.

I happen to see more phone texting in my classes.  <begin RANT>My opinion is that there is nothing special about a laptop where it deserves special treatment over any other technology (it’s not a magical note-taking tool).  If we take a more critical analysis of what the students and administrator say in the article:

But many students say they learn better with a laptop and the vice president of the university’s student federation says it’s an important tool.

What does that mean?  ”Learn better”?  How do they know?  And what does “important tool” mean?  Again, it’s just a word processor; not a magical note-taking tool.  It’s attitudes and implicit assumptions like this (more specifically, a blind, unquestioning trust that the simple PRESENCE of a high technology tool will inevitably lead to better outcomes; it HAS to, it’s HIGH TECH!) that’s a major problem.  It’s marketing speak by companies who want to sell and integrate very expensive technology into our cars, classrooms, phones, and offices and administrators just eat it up.  What problem is being solved? <end RANT>

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Just a small plug for some recent research from Anne and me. The topics are ones that we’ve discussed on the blog:  games and cognitive training and e-health tools.  First, Anne and colleagues recently published a paper showing that playing World of Warcraft can boost some measures of cognitive abilities in older adults:

The effectiveness of a game-based cognitive training intervention on multiple abilities was assessed in a sample of 39 older adults aged 60–77. The intervention task was chosen based on a cognitive task analysis designed to determine the attentional and multi-modal demands of the game. Improvements on a measure of attention were found for the intervention group compared to controls. Furthermore, for the intervention group only, initial ability scores predicted improvements on both tests of attention and spatial orientation. These results suggest cognitive training may be more effective for those initially lower in ability.

Meanwhile, my group has recently published a paper looking at the barriers to older adults’ adoption of electronic personal health records:

Electronic personal health records (PHRs) have the potential to both make health information more accessible to patients and function as a decision-support system for patients managing chronic conditions. Age-related changes in cognition may make traditional strategies of integrating and understanding existing (i.e., paper-based) health information more difficult for older adults. The centralized and integrated nature of health information, as well as the long-term tracking capabilities present in many PHRs, may be especially beneficial for older patients’ management of health. However, older adults tend to be late adopters of technology and may be hesitant to adopt a PHR if the benefits are not made clear (perceived usefulness). Toward the design of a useful PHR, a needs analysis was conducted to determine how people currently manage their health information, what they perceive as useful, and to identify any unmet needs. This paper describes two qualitative studies examining the health information needs of both younger and older adults. The first study used a 2-week diary methodology to examine everyday health questions or concerns, while the second study examined maintenance of health information and perceptions of PHRs through the use of a three-part interview. User’s perceptions of the usefulness of PHRs are provided as recommendations for the design of e-health technology, especially those targeted for older adult healthcare consumers. The results suggest that both older and younger adults would deem a PHR useful if it provides memory support in the form of reminders, provides tools to aid in comprehension of one’s health concerns, is interactive and provides automatic functions, and is highly accessible to authorized users, yet one’s information is kept secure and private.

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In an earlier post we discussed how illuminating simple user testing can be. The video below is computer blogger Chris Pirrilo who put his dad in front of the new Windows 8 Preview. The dad seems to be relatively sophisticated and knows about Windows 7 but is completely flummoxed by Windows 8 new “Metro” interface.

Note that this is the reaction of just one person but we shouldn’t discount it. Plenty of users (both young and old) are not as sophisticated as you and I. I guess Anne and I (and other human factors & aging researchers) will still have lots of work!

(via Daring Fireball)

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With the introduction of “the new iPad” (i.e., iPad 3) I thought it would be a good time to update one of the most popular posts on this blog. That post was about incorporating an iPad into my daily work and play routine. It was written when the iPad was first introduced in 2010 and was mostly an exploration of some initial impressions and app suggestions from the perspective of an academic (non-student, higher education).

Based on the incredible popularity of that and the updated post it’s clear that many academics would like to incorporate the iPad into their workflow. My work is probably very similar to a generic office worker: lots of reading (mostly scanned journal article PDFs, writing, light note-taking, presentations, & data analysis.

In the years since I got first got the iPad, I’ve slowly learned what tasks can best be accomplished with the iPad and which should be left to the computer. I’ve also downloaded and deleted a large variety of apps whittling down until I find one (or three) that works best.

I’ve also since moved on to the iPad 2. It was a nice upgrade because it was dramatically thinner and lighter than the original iPad which made holding it more comfortable. The increased speed also made reading the scanned PDFs more pleasant. This is why I can’t wait for the iPad 3: more speed and higher resolution screen will significantly affect my most frequent tasks (see below).

This post is organized around my common work tasks and the apps I use most frequently. I don’t discuss the built in mail program, calendar, or web browser (which are heavily used).

Reading PDFs

Most of my library of thousands of PDFs are scanned journal articles. A smaller but growing portion of the newer articles are non-scanned PDFs that were created by the publisher. The difference is that the scanned PDFs are usually bigger and slightly fuzzier.

My original suggested app was iAnnotate mainly because of its ability to directly annotate PDFs with notes and scribbles. But I kept Goodreader for just plain reading because it seemed faster and more intuitive. Fortunately, Goodreader has kept improving and it’s now my most-used PDF application. The best feature is integration with Dropbox; so I only have to point it to a folder to download a semester’s worth of PDFs.

As good as Goodreader is, there are times when I need to move between PDF pages quickly and would like an alternative to page flipping. In that case I use PDF Expert since it has a nice birds-eye view of 9 pages but it just seems slower in page rendering.

Light Note-taking

I still use the iPad for light note-taking in meetings or by myself. I find it sufficient for most of my needs especially if you add a few accessories. In my previous post, I mentioned Evernote. I don’t really actively use Evernote much anymore. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet but it’s just not the right app/service for me. I notice that I tend to just dump things into it that I think i’ll need later but end up not needing.

Instead, I use a few note taking tools; none of which are preferred yet. The software keyboard is still sufficient for 80% of my needs. I’m able to type relatively fast and error free. For typewritten notes, I’ll use the built-in Notes application (which syncs to cloud services).

Simple, clean, and free!

When I’m traveling light (and I always am) but I know i’ll need to type out some e-mails or do some other writing, a great hardware accessory is the low-cost Amazon Bluetooth keyboard. It’s only about $35 (half the price of the metal Apple-branded accessory keyboard) and has a relatively nice feel for such a small keyboard. The great thing is that I only take it when I REALLY want a hardware keyboard which is not all the time.

Very thin, very light, about the same height as the iPad. It's slightly smaller than Apple's bluetooth keyboard.

On the rare occasion that I need to capture handwriting I don’t have a favorite app; instead there are 2 or 3 that each have something the others do not. As an aside, some people think they want hand writing but I’m not one of them. My handwriting is horribly mangled and unreadable unless I concentrate. Plus, handwritten notes are not usually text-searchable.

First, my usual app is called Notes Plus. It recently underwent a major upgrade with some pretty amazing features like split-screen viewing of a web page while you take notes and audio recording:

Ghostwriter; zoom mode to write more precise text. The shaded zoom window moves automatically.

Both of these applications export their notes into Evernote, Dropbox, or plain PDFs. When I am handwriting (again, which is probably less than 5% of the time) I use a cheap stylus from Amazon.

Presentations

Finally, I’ve been editing presentations more on the iPad since switching to the Keynote presentation app on my desktop. When I need to organize my lectures or work on a presentation, the Keynote iPad app is surprisingly powerful but easy to use. I’m amazed that so much functionality could be built into a touch-only app:

I still use my laptop to actually give the presentation because I like to view the upcoming slide and the iPad currently just mirrors the current slide. I also use in-class clickers which require a laptop.

Other Useful Utilities

Finally, there are a few add-ons or apps that I find useful. The first is Wikipanion (yes, it’s OK to use Wikipedia). Wikipanion is a nice app front end to Wikipedia:

Wikipanion view of Wikipedia

The second, Offline Pages, is an app that allows you to download full web pages or websites for off-line viewing (e.g., on a plane).

Finally, there are times when you want to send a link or snippet of text from your desktop computer to your iPad. A useful app/service is Prowl. When you sign up for and then install the Prowl app and browser extension, you can send links directly from your browser to your iPad.

Another bonus is that once you sign up for the Prowl service and install an app on your desktop computer, you can also send text snippets from anywhere on your computer (e.g., a telephone number, address, paragraph of text) to your iPad.

What I Don’t/Can’t Do

Data analysis/Programming

Based on the number of hits the iPad posts have received from the following search term: “SPSS and iPad” there seems to be a bit of a demand…are you listening IBM?

To be honest, I don’t know if I want to be analyzing data on the iPad anyway. However, most data analysis is pointing and clicking so knows; who maybe some creative developer will create a data analysis application perfectly suited to a touch only interface.

I do a fair amount of programming and it would just be unbearable to do that on an iPad.

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Reader Nicole sends in this image from the gas pump. Can you find the button?

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It’s election season which means more opportunities to point, laugh, and cry at the state of voting usability.  The first is sent in by Kim W.  As part of an NPR story, the reporter dug up a sample ballot. Pretty overwhelming and confusing (“vote for not more than one”??); makes me long for electronic voting.

Next, Ford is sending out a software update to their popular MyTouch car telematics system. The following NYT article is excellent in highlighting the importance of not only basic usability but that “user experience” is just as important as technical capability/specs.  The article lists a variety of usability quirks that should have been caught in user testing (e.g., “a touch-sensitive area under the touch screen that activates the hazard lights has been replaced with a mechanical button, because Ford learned that drivers were inadvertently turning on the hazard lights as they rested their hand while waiting for the system to respond.”).

My Touch (photo: NYT)

I am being facetious when I point an laugh but seriously, many of these issues could have been caught early with basic, relatively cheap, simple user testing.

“I think they were too willing to rush something out because of the flashiness of it rather than the functionality,” said Michael Hiner, a former stock-car racing crew chief in Akron, Ohio, who bought a Ford Edge Limited last year largely because he and his wife were intrigued by MyFord Touch.

Now Ford has issued a major upgrade that redesigns much of what customers see on the screen and tries to resolve complaints about the system crashing or rebooting while the vehicle is being driven. Ford said on Monday that the upgrade made the touch screens respond to commands more quickly, improved voice recognition capabilities and simplified a design that some say had the potential to create more distractions for drivers who tried to use it on the road. Fonts and buttons on the screen have been enlarged, and the layouts of more than 1,000 screens have been revamped.

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File the above under funny, if inaccurate, information visualization.  The Bread-o-Meter shows how many slices of bread would be needed to fuel your mad bicycle ride!

Click here for the original post and other neat antique exercise articles.

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I peripherally heard about another Tylenol recall and assumed the recall was prompted by tainted medicine or something.  Anne just sent me a link to the story and it is apparently usability related.  The syringe-based dosing system, called SimpleMeasure, seems to be difficult to use.  Here is what NPR says:

the “SimpleMeasure” dosing system that’s supposed to make it easier to fill a syringe with the right amount of the grapey painkiller and fever-reducer is too complicated for some parents.

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Click here for a gallery of wonderful visualizations. My favorite is the Histomap (pictured above) from 1931.

Someone update it, please!

Photo credit feeb @ Flickr

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Here is a design that requires disobedience of the fundamental rule in a sport: don’t point your gun at someone you don’t plan to shoot. Blogger Mark Shead posits it might be due to a lack of domain knowlege by the designer and extends the analogy to software design.

Mistakes in software design aren’t always as easy to spot, but often it comes down to the same thing. To design something you must have at least a basic level of domain knowledge.  That doesn’t means you have to be a world famous chef in order to write a recipe webapp, but you need to make sure you at least know the basics.

Read the full post discussing this design.

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This article tells the story of inspiration for and creation of a ”ground proximity warning” system for pilots, as well as multiple other types of cockpit warnings. Don’t miss the video embedded as a picture in the article! It has the best details!

Some choice excerpts:

About 3.5 miles out from the snow-covered rock face, a red light flashed on the instrument panel and a recorded voice squawked loudly from a speaker.

“Caution — Terrain. Caution — Terrain.”

The pilot ignored it. Just a minute away from hitting the peaks, he held a steady course.

Ten seconds later, the system erupted again, repeating the warning in a more urgent voice.

The pilot still flew on. Snow and rock loomed straight ahead.

Suddenly the loud command became insistent.

“Terrain. Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!”

…

Accidents involving controlled flight into terrain still happen, particularly in smaller turboprop aircraft. During the past five years, there have been 50 such accidents, according to Flight Safety Foundation data.

But since the 1990s, the foundation has logged just two in aircraft equipped with Bateman’s enhanced system — one in a British Aerospace BAe-146 cargo plane in Indonesia in 2009; one in an Airbus A321 passenger jet in Pakistan in 2010.

In both cases, the cockpit voice recorder showed the system gave the pilots more than 30 seconds of repeated warnings of the impending collisions, but for some reason the pilots ignored them until too late.

…

After a Turkish Airlines 737 crashed into the ground heading into Amsterdam in 2009, investigators discovered the pilots were unaware until too late that their air speed was dangerously low on approach. Honeywell added a “low-airspeed” warning to its system, now basic on new 737s.

For the past decade, Bateman has worked on ways of avoiding runway accidents by compiling precise location data on virtually every runway in the world.

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Ford is introducing a system that first warns of a lane change, then actually changes the direction of the car if the warning is ignored. From the USA Today article:

When the system detects the car is approaching the edge of the lane without a turn signal activated, the lane marker in the icon turns yellow and the steering wheel vibrates to simulate driving over rumble strips. If the driver doesn’t respond and continues to drift, the lane icon turns red and EPAS will nudge the steering and the vehicle back toward the center of the lane. If the car continues to drift, the vibration is added again along with the nudge. The driver can overcome assistance and vibration at any time by turning the steering wheel, accelerating or braking.

Is this going to be as annoying as having Rich Pak’s phone beep every time I go over the speed limit (which is A LOT)? Just kidding – stopping a drifting car could be pretty great.

LOLcat photo credit to ClintCJL at Flickr.

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