DESIGNING *for humans

Blog Re-Skin

This blog has just been given a more professional look-and-feel thanks to some new design templates offered by TypePad.  I chose this design as it seemed to give the best balance of aesthetics and readability, while emphasizing the IDSA red, albeit not the same red value.  Let me know if you have any feedback about this new design.

Upcoming Human Factors Presentations at IDSA Conference

There will be two collabroative Human Factores-related seminars at this year's conference:

Human Factors and Medical Design - Thursday, August 25th @ 2PM

This presentation will show you three new exploratory methods that are being used in a medical context that have the potential to apply in a variety of circumstances. Medical and user research design experts will show you how they used "standard patients," games to identify unmet needs and operating room simulation to understand the real desires that may not be identified through typical interviews or observations.

and

Human Factors and Interactive Design - Friday, August 26th @ 330PM

So, what are blogs or RSS feeds? Why should you know what they are? Because user researchers and designers can use blogs to gain amazing insights into people's lives. There are tens of thousands of blogs on the Internet today, and blog content varies dramatically, but few are used by user researchers and designers to better do their work.  An introduction of the new Human Factors Section Web site that uses a blogging format and discusses how blogs can be used to disseminate information as well as to gather it will also be included.

Midwest and Pacific NW Job Postings

Manager of User Interface Lab
Leading Manufacturer of Home Appliances
Midwest

Summary
The UI Lab provides usability and research solutions to Industrial Designers, Product Developers, Engineers, and Marketers to ensure that user-centered design principles and methods impact their wide range of consumer products. The Manager of the UI Lab will be part of the Advanced Platform Studio and will work across all global brands and product categories to manage global issues of human factors and user interfaces. You will design and execute product evaluations, usability studies, and user-needs research for this fast-paced and conceptual group.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Masters Degree in Experimental Psychology, Human Factors, Ergonomics, or a closely related behavioural science discipline
• 5+ years of industry experience as a hands-on Human Factors or Usability practitioner
• Strong research background, with proven experience in experimental design, data analysis, and results interpretation
• Working knowledge of user-centered design processes and of user-interface design principles
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to develop and implement UI processes
• Ability to articulate cross-functional experience (working with marketing, strategy, engineering, etc.)
• Experience working with physical product UI and not only software and/or interactive projects
  

If you are interested, please send resume to Julie Alperen, Senior Search Consultant at julie@jpakter.com.


Product Design Lead
Leading Manufacturer of Software, Services and Solutions
Pacific Northwest

Summary
The User Experience team is a multi-disciplinary design organization that employs a vision driven, user scenario focused, user centered design process. The Product Design Lead will report to the Design Manager of Mobile Devices and will have responsibility for the Productivity User Experience Design. The person will lead the planning, design and documentation of software/hardware interaction, user scenarios, mobile applications, and guidelines. They will also lead the RD&D of the product category and work with other UX and Research Leads to build a world class User Experience team to ensure the delivery of the highest degree of product design quality possible. Working interaction will include a variety of managers and directors throughout the company. The Product Design Lead will be responsible for the overall success of his or her group as a business.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Proven track record of hardware/software interaction design in the area of advanced consumer electronics and deep knowledge of the mobile device market
• 10+ years industry experience in brand and experience centric product design and development   
• Strong team building skills, essential design leadership abilities, and keen sense of business strategy
• Ability to apply these capabilities to the planning and design of state-of-the-art, end-to-end user experiences of advanced mobile devices
• Demonstrated success in leading design teams to meet a variety of dynamic business strategies, establishing and maintaining external partnerships, and building successful collaborations with peer teams within a large company
• In addition to supervising work effort, budget and schedule of engagements within the multi disciplinary group, the Product Design Lead will also be responsible for tracking and forecasting the team’s resource utilization and direction

If you are interested, please send resume to Julie Alperen, Senior Search Consultant at julie@jpakter.com.

Human Factors Society Site Redesign

The Human Factors & Ergonomics Society Web site was recently redesigned.  This was a much needed improvement since the previous version was not well-organized or navigate.  I've asked HFES whether they've conducted usability testing during the site redesign...will let you know what I find out.  I certainly couldn't find anything on the site about it.

Blogs as Reference and Research Tools

I'm currently gathering data (albeit, informally) for research on how industrial designers use blogs - specifically around learning about design research.  I'm also interested in hearing whether anyone has directly used blogs as a design research tool - for example, in place of traditional journals.

I'm collecting input via the Core77 boards and I'm also planning on launching a brief survey to HF section within IDSA.  I'll post the findings here, but my the primary purpose behind this is for a presentation on blogs (see p. 9) that I'll be making at the IDSA conference on August 26th.