Designing for Humans

Upcoming Service Design Conference

The second Emergence conference will be held at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) on September 7 -9.

From the conference site:

The second annual Emergence conference will explore how different design disciplines work together to create the tangible and intangible artifacts of service. We will address how to design services, consider how business can benefit from the increased value of a well-designed service, and continue to define this emerging design field.

The program includes speakers from Core77, Electronic Ink, IBM and IDEO, to name a few.

I'm planning to attend, so check back for a post-conference review.  Also stay tuned for an upcoming service design/industrial design connection.

-Rob Tannen

Usability of Videogames

The cover story of the current issue of Wired magazine (15.09) discusses the user-centered approach to make an upcoming game playable.  Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play focuses on the work of Randy Pagulayan and his team at Microsoft, who conduct usability testing and analytics to optimize game play - for example, when an area of the game might be too difficult, or a key weapon overlooked by too many players. (Note - Randy is a grad school buddy of mine from University of Cincinnati - I've personally visited his lab and its quite impressive in terms of technology and methods).

I'm also trying out a new feature on the IDSA Human Factors site called Snap Shots, which displays a preview of a linked site on rollover.  Let me know if it's more useful than annoying or vice versa.

-Rob Tannen

IDSA 2007 Conference Research Project

If you're an IDSA member, you must have heard by now, but if not, the 2007 IDSA/Icisd World Design Conference (Connecting07) will take place in San Francisco, CA from October 17-20.

I'll be coordinating an effort to evaluate the conference from a service design perspective and envision the future conference experience.  And I'm looking for your help - we need designers and researchers  who can spend a bit of their time at the conference documenting their experiences.  You don't need to be an expert - students and first-time conference attendees are welcome.  If you are registered, or even just planning to attend, and would be interested in getting involved, please contact Rob Tannen, vice-chair of the IDSA Human Factors section via email: robtannen@hotmail.com

RedesignMe.org - The YouTube of Usability?

http://www.redesignme.org/ is a Flash-based beta site where anyone can post video, photo and text of a product with usability problems.  You can also add comments to other people's postings (down with OPP?), ratings, and most importantly, post your own design solutions in image or video format.  The goal of the site is to "promote simplicity in product design" and give "a signal to industry".

The site has a friendly, comic-book feel, although is a bit navigationally clunky.  For example, when I submitted a new example (poor placement of the volume control in the Mini Cooper), I had to refresh the site following submission to view my entry.  And when viewing a full-size image I had to negotiate three vertical scrollbars at one time. I also can't send you a direct link to my posting.   Let's chalk it to growing pains - it is a beta, so please don't submit the site as a self-referential product example.   A simple registration is required to submit content.

This site is a great idea - a slicker interactive update on classics like http://baddesigns.com/

Thanks to Maxim Schram of Ease of Use (Netherlands) for this link.

The Future of "User-Designed"

Core77 is featuring an article about a collaborative project between Ignition, Texas Instruments and Southern Methodist University students/users to design next-generation digital projectors. 

In, The Future of "User-Designed": How one company worked with end-users to design their perfect product, by Bryan Hynecek, ininitial design concepts were created by gaming users - in this case master's students in video game development - and then reviewed and improved by the professionals. 

One might question whether using master's students in game development is truly "user-centered" in the sense that these might not be considered novice users.  On the contrary, I applaud the selection of a targeted, expert end-user sample who have clear interest and motivation, but are by no means product designers.  Decide for yourself.

Also see previous, related articles on user-driven innovation: http://humanfactors.typepad.com/idsa/2007/03/userdriven_inno.html

HFES Product Design Group Summer Newsletter

The summer newsletter of the Product Design Technical Group from the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society has just been released.  It includes an interesting article by Stan Caplan on "Total User Experience" - demonstrating that Human Factors professionals tend to have strong input for the usage aspect of products, but little in the front-end (acquisition, preparation) and back-ends (maintenance, support, termination) of the product ownership experience.

The newsletter also includes bios of the PDTG executive council and a program of PDTG-related activities and presentations for the upcoming HFES conference in Baltimore in October.

Download pdtg_summer_07_newsletter.pdf