DESIGNING *for humans

Connecting '07 - Service Design Results

A summary report from the service design analysis of the Connecting '07 conference has been posted.  The report includes an overview of the service design research and suggestions for improving the conference experience in four areas, Invitation (pre-conference), Orientation (navigating at the conference, Participation (involvement in conference activities) and Memorializing (takeaways following the conference)

Among the key findings and recommendations are:

• Leveraging web technology to support planning and choice leading up to the conference
• Supporting sustainability through recycling during the conference
• Promoting the growth of non-IDSA conference-related activities (e.g. Airbed & Breakfast)
• Enabling attendees to create a personalized "scrapbook" integrating notes, photos, sketches and other related contents collected during the conference

Download the Connecting '07 Service Design Results

Bang & Olufsen: Great Designers vs. Great Process

This past week's Businessweek contains an interesting article about the design process at Bang & Olufsen.  Bang & Olufsen: Design Reigns Supreme describes what might be called the "great man" theory of design, where design vision takes precedence over engineering and business, and does not include design research. This "model is a throwback to an earlier time when CEOs worked closely with gifted designers to differentiate their products in the marketplace".

While B&O is clearly a leader in aesthetic design of consumer electronics, they have been failing at making the transition to the digital world (e.g. from CDs to MP3s).  And it's evident from reading the article that this is partly attributable to the lack of a research process:

"They don't, for example, do even the basic market research ethnography common among consumer-oriented companies. Sorensen says consumers often don't really know what they want. Instead, B&O designers intuit the products that will fly."

Read between the lines and it's apparent that there's a lack of understanding about design research.  Ethnography is not about asking consumers what they want, it's about identifying their unmet needs, a very creative process in itself.  Later in the article there's a likely example of what happens when you rely on designer intuition:

"Take the digital music player. Even the company's loyal cognoscenti prefer Apple's iPod, with its elegant design and easy interface, to the $460 BeoSound 2--conceived by none other than Lewis in 2002. BeoSound 2 has been, by all accounts, a dud. Lewis says his mistake was not appreciating how quickly digital memory would grow. He figured with 50 songs on a device, the amount the original memory card would hold, consumers wouldn't need a screen to navigate through their music."

Perhaps if Lewis and his team had better understand their user audiences - typically high-net worth music lovers - it would have been discovered that 50 songs was not going to meet their needs long terms and a different design approach would have been more successful.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and B&O is shifting its focus to bringing in designers who understand the digital world. Unfortunately, it appears that they're still missing the point - they don't so much need new designers, as a new design process.

. Rob Tannen

Human Factors of nonobjects

The release of branko Lucic's forthcoming design fiction book, nonobject has been moved from late 2007 to early next year.  This seemingly fascinating book is about:
" deliberately creating objects that cannot exist -- because the material is not yet available, or the business plan, or the manufacturing process, or the infra- structure to support it, or even the human sensibility -- it becomes possible to explore the meaning of design at a more profound level and to think more richly about what is and what might be."

In addition to a penchant for starting proper nouns with lowercase letters, Lucic's four initially available concepts and videos emphasize communication, with two versions of cell phones - the CUin5 (pictured above) and the Tarati (pictured below).  I recommend viewing the videos about each of the design concepts before reading further to get a clearer understanding.  At his presentation at Connecting '07, Lucic previewed some to-be-released concepts as well including a motorcycle design, which will presumably be available online at a later date.

In the spirit of intellectual/conceptual thought, I started thinking about these nonobbjects for a human factors perspective.  One of my first realizations is that while these are conceptual product designs, the concepts that are strongly human-centered.  I don't know whether or not ergonomic and usability aspects of these concepts will be discussed in the book, but here's my take with respect to the two phone concepts - based on the limited information currently available:

CUin5
This concept might best be described as the anti-iPhone.  While Apple's device is all about screen size and minimal buttons, the CUin5 is literally all buttons and no display.  Multiple sets of numeric keypads are provided on all six sides in different arrangements and orientations.  The foreseeable human factors aspects of this include:

• Ability to "dial" the phone without re-orienting it.  In other words it may be used immediately whichever way the device is facing when you pull it out of your pocket or pick it up.
• The large, clearly visible and tactile buttons would lend the device well to use by individuals with visual and motor limitations.
• Single-handed and multi-finger dialing.  For example, when holding the phone in the palm of one hand, the user could conceivably use all 5 digits in their resting positions to access the buttons on the various faces of the device, perhaps somewhat analogous to holding down different strings on a guitar.  Compare this with the relatively laborious current process of holding the phone in one hand and selecting buttons in sequence with a single finger.  Similar benefits might be applicable to text messaging as well - were there a display for reading messages.
• At the same time, the presence of buttons across the device suggests a risk of inadvertently pressing buttons.  This could be addressed by finding an appropriate resistance for the buttons (which may vary from face to face) as well as a lock-out feature.
• The lack of a dynamic display would suggest that the phone would have limited functionality compared to current smart phones. But this might be fine by many people who just want a phone that works well as a phone. And some features (e.g. address book) could be handled through interactive voice functionality.

Tarati
If CUin5 is all about maximizing tactile connection with a phone, the Tarati is about minimizing it.  A very thin design is accomplished by removing all buttons and replacing them with spaces for the user's finger to pass through while dialing.  A dynamic digital display, in conjunction with dial tones, provides feedback on actions.  From a human factors perspective, several issues are worth considering:

• The lack of tactile feedback when "pushing" buttons is probably not a problem for most users, given the familiarity of the keypad arrangement, the audio/visual cues and and procedural or muscle memory that we have for using phone keypads.  One case where it may be a bit of an impediment is when dialing consecutive numbers - tactile feedback is more important here as it let's the user judge when to reverse the application of force from withdrawing to re-pressing.  The effectiveness of this in Tarati will largely depend on the sensitivity, distance, and timing of the sensing system.
• It's not clear whether the lack of visible and tactile buttons would automatically be an impediment for users with limited vision and/or motor skills.  For example, the lack of visible button labels is of no consequence to blind users, and the fact that no force is required to depress a button may make use easier for some people.
• Minimum finger dimensions, particularly circumference, would need to be accounted for in the size and shape of the insertion points to accommodate use with large fingers without getting scraped by the edges or stuck - not to mention long fingernails.
• A device with openings such as this is likely to collect dirt from both use and lack of use - so cleaning and maintenance are important factors.

.rob Tannen

Technologies for Reading Minds and Expressions

News from the rapidly growing area of user research technology:

• MIT Technology Review reports that Omron, a Japanese electronics company, recently demonstrated software that can detect and measure smiles.  Applications may include smile detection sensors in digital cameras.  I see a clear connection to potential emotion measurement systems for user and market research.
• New Scientist reports on Microsoft's patent for  "Using electroencephalograph signals for task classification and activity recognition" aka mind reading.  Actually, the patent is for a method to filter EEG signal readings.  The solution can be applied during usability testing as a non-obtrusive method to measure user reactions.  There's a link to the patent itself for those interested in the legal and technical details.

"Designing Medical Devices Requires a Pound of Flesh"

A brief article in Wired online about the development of medical instruments features the work of Mary Beth Privitera of the University of Cincinnati:

"Privitera said designers could cut training time and anticipate problems by getting involved earlier in the medical design process. But to do that, they have to increase their knowledge of anatomy and physiology by working in the field with doctors."

Mary Beth also presented at last week's IDSA Connecting '07 conference.

(Thanks to Core77 for calling attention to this article).

HF Highlights from Connecting '07 - Size China

Given the 140(!) sessions that took place at the 2007 IDSA national conference this year in San Francisco, there's no shame in missing a few sessions.  Of course the topics that you really want to see all occur simultaneously, leaving one with a "paradox of choices".   

I was most impressed by Roger Ball's Size China:  A New World of Ergonomics.  Roger is a designer by training and professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic.  For the last 18 months, he has been building a database of anthropometric data by digitally scanning over 2,000 Chinese citizens.  The project was inspired by the lack of a comprehensive anthropometric database of Asian head and facial features, comparable to what is available for Caucasian populations.  For example, most helmets used in China were designed against Caucasian measurements and are ill-fitting due to significant differences in head shape between Asians and Caucasians(see image).

Roger said that his data will be made available for free to academic endeavors by contacting him directly.

Learn more about the project at: http://www.sizechina.com/html/index.html

I was intrigued by this project and interested in potential differences in perceived and reported fit among populations, not due to head size, but due to potential cultural and linguistic variances in what is considered comfortable and fitting. Perhaps some of the presenations on measuring emotion would have helped me address those issues, but like I said, I couldn't make all of the presentations.

Top 100 User-Centered Blogs

Jessica Hupp has put together a list of top 100 user-centered blogs.  The list is definitely skewed towards web design, but has some more general ergonomic and human factors sites as well.

Thanks to Putting People First, a great blog in it's own right, for the feed.

IDSA 2007 Conference Human Factors Presentations

I've pulled summaries of some of the key human factors and design research related presentations from the upcoming Connecting '07 conference schedule -but by no means complete nor a subsitute for reviewing the full program yourself:

From Me to You: Designer Connecting to User (Thurs, Oct 18, 2PM-Masonic)

Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck

Although the designer and the user are at opposite ends of the design spectrum, they each have a strong, emotional sense of ownership over a product. The designer thinks the product is his, my baby; the user thinks the product is hers, my thing. The transfer of ownership that happens between the two is what sustains a design process. This is what we will explore with you during our CONNECTING’07 presentation.

Blurring the Boundaries between Anthropology and Design (Thurs, Oct 18, 430PM-Masonic)

Suzanne Gibbs Howard

Today is a good day to be an anthropologist. Anthropologists and other social scientists are in demand by design divisions, marketing firms, advertising agencies, and innovation consultancies. Thanks to the popularity of the “voice of the customer” and the dominance of Human Centered Design, many researchers with a passion for studying people are finding happy homes in the world of design. Suzanne will share stories from her experience working at IDEO to illustrate how anthropologists and other social scientists have been working alongside designers to inspire innovation.

2:00pm - 2:45pm - Thurs, Oct 18- Fairmont

Crystal RoomHuman Factors Section: Evolving Empathy: Deeper and Wider Design Impact

Jane Fulton Suri, IDSA, Managing Partner and Co-Chief Creative Officer, IDEO; Aaron Sklar, Human Factors Designer, IDEO; Introduction by Stephen B. Wilcox, PhD, FIDSA

The Human Factors Section will present a brief overview of recent developments in human factors and design research followed by a presentation by Jane Fulton Suri of how IDEO addresses human factors.

5:45pm – 6:30pm - Thurs, Oct 18- Fairmont

CrystalRoomDesigning The Medical Experience

Brian Stonecipher, IDSA, Continuum

All of us have been medical consumers at one time in our lives. Come to think of it, we are all medical consumers a lot of times in this life, whether as patients, family members, caregivers or medical administrators. Moreover, we are spending more and more time in a medical environment because the medical environment is no longer just a hospital or a doctor’s office. It can be one’s home, office, or even car. As the medical environment transitions from the hospital to the home (or car or office) new considerations come into place. A high level of usability is key.  Human error can cause illness or even death.  Sound, well thought out design is imperative. How would you describe your last medical experience as a medical consumer? Were you scared? Confused? Positive and confident? What was your environment? How did this affect your comfort level as a patient or caregiver? In this presentation I explore how Continuum develops an understanding of the perceptions and emotional needs of all types of medical consumer in all types of environments – and how we use those findings to design products that deliver a better experience.

2:00pm – 2:45pm, Fri, Oct 19th, Fairmont

Gold Room

Size China: A New Worldof Ergonomics Roger Ball, IDSA, Hong KongPolytechnicUniversity

Size China.com has created the first ever digital database of Chinese head and face shapes. Most current consumer products such as sunglasses, motorcycle helmets and hygienic facemasks are designed for western head and face shapes and, as a result, do not fit Chinese people properly. Size China.com will solve this problem by creating practical, sophisticated design tools for industries that need to create the next generation of perfect fitting products.

4:30pm – 5:15pm, Fri, Oct 19th, Fairmont

CrystalRoom

Seeking a Shared Understanding of Design Research

Marty Gage, IDSA and Spencer Murrell, IDSA, lextant

Over the past decade, companies have made big strides toward integrating disparate disciplines into a seamless product development process in order to shorten time to market and improve outcomes. Yet the relationship between research and design remains less mature than that between engineering and design. This presentation will describe how to effectively integrate research and the social sciences with cross-functional product development teams. A shared team experience will provide a foundation for breakthrough ideas and real-life solutions that can be commercialized as quickly as today’s economy demands.

4:30pm – 5:15pm, Fri, Oct 19th, Fairmont

Vanderbilt Room

The Art and Science of Measuring Emotion

Laura Richardson, M3

Design brings together aesthetics and the bottom line, experience and strategy, emotions, and data. Every consumer has a different emotional history toward a product and its brand, whether or not the product is familiar. Yet once the user begins to test a given product, he relates through a series of conscious or subconscious assessments. He examines the product’s utility and usability, its task efficiency, controllability, challenging features, ergonomic properties, etc. The product may meet the user’s usability assessment, but fail in its emotional appeal, a second layer of assessment based on five categories of relation: surprise, instrumental, aesthetic, social, and interest. Finally, once product acquisition and initial inspection have passed, the user moves to product attachment, that is, its emotional afterlife. Product attachment can also be perceived by imagined use of the product and what the user aspires to become by using the product. A substantial body of work has been performed around emotional usability and engagement. Research to date has hinged on three primary measurements – the use of facial expression, the use of metaphor, and the use of emotional terms. Laura Richardson, director of design research for M3, has developed a new perspective in examining users’ emotional responses. She has developed an “emotion engine” and an “emotion timeline” as part of her analysis.

(re)name this web log

As we're coming up on the 3rd anniversary of the Human Factors section site as a blog format (and eight years since the first version - more on that in the future), we're planning some small changes soon.  We'll make some minor design adjustments, but are also going to map to a more meaningful and memorable URL.  If you have suggestions, post as a comment here or email me at [email protected]  If we end up using your suggestion (and hadn't already thought of it ourselves, and assuming the domain name is available, etc., etc.) you'll get a $25 Amazon.com gift certififcate. Something original, but identifiable, serious, but clever.

Additional Reviews of Digital Audio and Video Recorders

Audio Recording

Due to interest generated by an earlier post on the advantages of using high quality audio recorders for field research I am posting this recently published comparative review of digital audio recorders from Wired magazine.  Note that I haven't used any of these reviewed recorders and moreover I don't think any of them record in stereo, which is a key advantage of the Samson H2 in my original post.

Video Recording

Along the same lines, I did an earlier post on the pros and cons of high definition video-recorders.  Well, here's a follow-up review of tape-less video-recorders from the New York Times.  It discusses the Sony/Panasonic used AVCHD format specifically designed for tape-less, high definition recording.

Addendum (Oct 12th) - I left out a link to one more useful review of high definition video-recorders from MIT's Technology Review.  The Sony HDR-CX7 HandyCam has great video quality, but lackluster editing software:

Review: Sony stuffs top-notch HD video into small camcorder, but included software falls short

Applied Ergonomics International: Special Session on Driving

From the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society - Product Design Technical Group:

A special session on driving, chaired by Pat Jordan will be held at the Applied Ergonomics International Conference which is being held in Las Vegas from 14-17 July 2008.

Topics suitable for presentation include anything to do with drivers and driving, usability, in-vehicle interfaces, driver assistance systems, the use of nomadic and navigation devices.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 15 October 2007. Full papers are due on 1st March 2008.

In the first instance please submit a title and presenters name to [email protected]

Details of the conference can be found at: http://www.aei2008.org/

The State of Human Factors in Medical Device Design

A new article at Medical Device Link, Catching the Human Factors Fever, discusses the current state of human factors in the medical device industry.  The author, Erik Swain, who is the editor-in-chief of MD&DI, discusses successful examples of integrating HF processes into product development.  Industry trends, such as increased FDA enforcement and a shortage of healthcare providers have increased the need for usable medical products. Human factors is also playing a role at the supplier end, moving usable design further upstream in the product development process. 

Swain concludes that:

"More device companies are committing to human factors programs, and that will benefit caregivers and patients in the long run. But mere acceptance of human factors programs won’t be enough. The next step is to integrate usability findings with the risk management process. "

Industrial design and...

Two upcoming presentations in San Francisco will discuss the relationships between industrial design and related disciplines:

• Interaction Design and ID: On the evening of Thursday, October 18th, IxDA San Francisco is hosting INTERSECTION: Where Interaction and Industrial Design Meet featuring case studies from Cooper, frog design, Motorola and IDEO.  The event coincides with Connecting '07 IDSA national conference and is "an evening of dialog between two closely related but often siloed fields: Industrial Design and Interaction Design. On October 18 at C|net, we will hear case studies from Cooper, frog design, Motorola and IDEO, highlighting the intersection point of the two disciplines and the ups and downs of collaboration."  For more information - http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=21100 - no registration required.
• Service Design and ID: On Friday October 19th, at the Connecting '07 conference, Rob Tannen (disclosure: that's me) will be presenting Connecting Service Design and Industrial Design.  As the title implies, this will focus on the important role of industrial designers within the context of service design.  This will include using the conference experience itself as an example of service design analysis.  For more information/schedule -  http://www.idsa.org/PDFs/connecting07_schedule.pdf - IDSA conference registration required.

Stay tuned for information about these two presentations following the conference.

iZone Sticker Photos for Field Research

A little bit of back to the future...although discontinued, Polaroid produced a line of cameras called iZone which were an updated version of the classic Polaroid instant camera. 

The cool feature of iZone was the film.  The photo sizes were very small ,about 2" x 1" - the goal was fun, not fidelity.  There were several different  types of novelty film: one film had fortunes printed to go along with the photo.  But my personal favorite is the sticker film, which has an adhesive back.  This made it very well suited for field observations.  You could take a quick photo, stick in in a note book,  jot down your observation notes and then go on to the next observation (click on photo inset above).  Even today with digital cameras there's no quick and easy way to combine photos and written notes in such a compact package.

Since the camera (and film) have been discontinued, they are a little hard to come by, but available through ebay and similar sources.  However, most of the film is near or past expiration - but I am told, and can testify from personal experience, that the film works well past its expiration date.

We'll be using iZones and sticker film to capture observations at the upcoming IDSA Connecting '07 conference.

Rosenfeld Media - Usable Publishing

Rosenfeld Media is a relatively new publishing company focused specifically on producing books for the user experience industry.  Their first publicaiton is forthcoming, and there are several others scheduled for publication through 2008.  While the titles lean towards web and interface design, some of the publications will focus on widely applicable topics and techniques such as mental models and prototyping methods.

What's also interesting is that the company is "usability testing" their first book before publication.  See Lou Rosenfeld's slide presentation on applying user experience to the publishing business.

2D vs 3D Prototypes in Testing 3D Consumer Products

An interesting, forthcoming study on the interaction between prototype format and control labeling in consumer products:

In their upcoming article in the journal Applied Ergonomics, Juergen Sauer and his co-authors compare the effectiveness of 2D (e.g. paper) prototypes to 3D products in evaluating usability and performance issues.  The authors' meta-analysis reveals that the inherent limitations in 2D prototypes typically limits their application to usability testing - for example clarity of control labels.  Consequently, they set out to determine "to what extent user behaviour with a 3D consumer product can be predicted from user behaviour with a 2D paper prototype."

The study examined user temperature and pressure settings for an actual power washer (arguably, not a 3D prototype) and 2D control settings prototypes.  As a second factor, different control label types (click on image detail, above) were used including standard numerals, and then two types of "enhanced labeling": substance-oriented (e.g. mud, grease) and object-oriented (e.g. tire, window). 

Enhanced labeling influenced users for both the paper and real-world products - for both types of prototypes users would use the control label as a guide to task-appropriate settings.  On the other hand, in the case of the numerical labeling, paper prototype users were much more likely to adjust the standard settings, whereas the real product users did not adjust the temperature as frequently.  The authors suggest an effort hypothesis as one possibility to explain the results.  In the case of the paper prototype, the relative effort and motivation to make changes is relatively small and consistent; whereas in actual product use greater effort is typically required.  When task-specific, enhanced, labeling is provided, there is significant motivation and cues to make changes in the actual product that were not available when relying only a numerical scale.

So what does this all mean?  Among other things, motivation and effort need to be considered as key factors in user's decision-making process when using real-world products that require physical effort.  Making design decisions, even about control labeling, based solely on paper prototypes, is risky.  This is probably less so, but not irrelevant, for on-screen interfaces, where less physical effort is required.

Designing interactive consumer products: Utility of paper prototypes and effectiveness of enhanced control labelling
Applied Ergonomics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 71-85
Juergen Sauer, Holger Franke and Bruno Ruettinger  http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:17498642