DESIGNING *for humans

10 Years of Designing for Humans

This blog as it was in 2005, courtesy of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine

A Brief History of Designing for Humans

This month marks the 10th anniversary of Designing for Humans.   While I started the blog format in 2005, I had created an even earlier, more traditional website back in 2000.  Originally, the site served as the online presence for the Human Factors section of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

In my professional work I often found myself looking up human factors references again and again, so I started to document recommended resources on the blog.  Over time the site gained a life and following of its own, far beyond the IDSA membership.  

While I was no longer officially involved with the IDSA section, I continued to write and develop the blog as my own, and took it in a more broad direction to cover not just human factors, but product design and usability.

I recently browsed through all of the posts (over 300) that have seen almost 600,000 visits over the years. I've made an attempt to summarize some of the highlights and to give a sense of what I have written about over the past decade.  While I don't post on the blog as nearly as frequently as I used to, I still enjoy writing both online and offline, and will continue to maintain the blog for a few key posts throughout the year. Thanks for your support!

Without further ado, The Best of Designing for Humans:

• Research Tools - One of the areas that I emphasized in the "early years" was adapting technology to support user research.  I took early looks at the LiveScribe Pulse, various versions of Morae, and even FitBit.  I even conceptualized the ultimate research tool kit, FieldCREW as a stand-alone toolkit, and later as a concept app.   
  

• Original Essays - Essays are what make a blog a blog.  I've written a few, most notably the    Ergonomics for Interaction Designers series, a criticism on What the FDA can Learn from the NHS, and the esoteric User Interfaces as a Force of Entropy.

• Books - I've done a handful of book reviews.  I loved a few like Customer Visits,  101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, and one of my all time favorites, Universal Principles of Design.  All the more reason I was excited to contribute to the "sequel", Deconstructing Product Design.
  
  
• TV - I've mentioned a few noteworthy commercials showing the influence of touchscreen and gestural  interactions in advertisements.  And had my own 15 mins of fame on Bloomberg.
  
  
• Awards - I was fortunate to judge both the IDEA awards and the ID Magazine awards in the same year and even managed to win a few awards for medical and scientific devices in subsequent years.
  
  
• Print Publications - Blogging opened up opportunities to write offline, including the fun, but short-lived series, Bureau of Ergonomics for Design Bureau magazine, and a great piece on simplicity for Barlcays360.
  
  
• Presentations  - I like to present almost as much as I like to write, so what's better than writing about my presentations - how about watching a video of the presentation.  Here's a few examples: Measuring Your User Experience, Ergonomics for Interaction Designers, and Documenting Physical Behavior.

• Blogging - At the risk of being meta, I've blogged about blogging on other sites such as Fast Company, Medium and Intuitive Company's We See.
  
  
• Patents - More recently I've been blogging about patents, and their utility to designers. You can browse a variety of my patent-related posts.

 

Bureau of Ergonomics - Holiday Edition

The latest Bureau of Ergonomics discusses the frustrations of impossible packaging (with a pretty cool illustration), and the future of voice interfaces.  In case you missed it, catch-up on the the initial BoE column.

Human Factors Guidelines: What the FDA can learn from the NHS

 

NHS Recommendations for Color Coding Devices

 Recently the FDA has been making an evener strong push to have medical device manufacturer's design their products more effectively with regards to human factors.  By requiring manufactuers to addess ergonomics, usability and user neer needs in their product development process, we can expect a reduction in errors and improvements in ease of learning and use.  

Towards that end, the FDA recognized HE75 as a standard human factors  guideline in 2010.  This guideline for the design of medical devices provides over 500 pages of human factors principles and recommendations on anthropometrics, user interface design and more.

HE75, like many other consolidated human factors references, is an ambitious effort to consolidate a diverse body of knowledge into a usable resource.  I admire it's scope, but it sometimes fall short on clarity.  More importantly, the document violates a basic tenet of human factors design - know your user.  Much of the content is very technical and ambiguous, which makes it a challenging tool for someone looking for a direct answer.  I present a couple of representative examples for consideration.

Sizing a Font
Suppose I am designing a medical device and wish to find out how large to make the type on the screen so that it is readable.  This is actually a non-trivial question because readability depends on a number of variables including distance, illumination, and angle, not to mention the acuity of the viewer.  But all I want to know is what font size to use.  Fortunately, HE75 provides a reference table (see below) of recommended font sizes for various reading distances.  The table provides recommendations for six different conditions, including:

• Minimum threshold
• Adequate (lower bound)
• Adequate (upper bound)
• Preferred (lower bound)
• Preferred (upper bound)

but no rationale or definition for what each of these categories mean.   Should I assume that if I meet the minimum threshold then I will have created a sufficient design?  If I have the space, should I go to adequate, or preferred?   Is upper bound for adequate better than lower bound for preferred?

Making matters more complicated, there is another section on type display (hundreds of pages later into the guidelines), that includes this statement: 

The minimum character height should be 16 minutes of visual angle. 

It would have been great to put that closer to original table, but at least I now know that I should use a minimum visual angle  of 16 minutes, which is actually equivalent to "Adequate (lower bound)" in the table, and not "Minimum threshold" - got that?   Accordingly, at a reading distance of 36 inches away, the font size should be 12.

Or should it?  If I continue reading, I also learn that:

 the recommended character size of important but noncritical information is 1/300th of the viewing distance, so a key parameter value on a patient monitor viewed from 3 feet away should be at least 1/8-inch high (a 9-point font: 1 point equals 1/72.27 inch). 

So now 9 points is okay from 3 feet (36 inches) even though I previously understood that 12 points would be the miniumum (based on 16 minutes of visual angle from 36 inches)?  I have a PhD in human factors and find this challenging - am I missing the subtleties?  For such a fundamental question about font size, the guideline is confusing at best, and  hypocritical at worst.  

 Viewing an Alarm
A second example is to find out the visibility requirements of an alarm indicator.  Alarms are a critical design feature for obvious reasons, and even have their own standard - HE75 provides a dedicated chapter to alarm guidelines in addition to referencing IEC 60601-1-8.

One question for a device designer relates to placement of an alarm indicator - does it need to be seen from just the front or from all around the device? HE75 provides the following guidance:

IEC 60601-1-8 mandates that point-source visual alarm signals be visible at a viewing distance of 4 meters and from 30 inches off the perpendicular axis.

This is a specific and clear recommendation.  So when I went to IEC 60601-1-8 to view the original reference in more detail, I was surprised that there is no mention of "30 inches", but there is a reference to 30 degrees regarding alarm visibility:

the viewpoint is at the OPERATOR'S POSITION or at any point within the base of a cone subtended by an angle of 30° to the axis horizontal to or normal to the centre of the plane of display of the monitoring display or visual indication

Disregarding whether either of these statements is understandable to a lay person in written terms (no diagram or visualization is provided), are these two guidelines equivalent?  Is "30 inches" a mistype of "30 degrees" when going from one reference source to the other?  If anyone knows, please let me know.

 A User-Friendly Alternative
Given the challenges in understanding and interpreting the FDA's recommended documentation, it is not surprising that many medical device manufacturers struggle for guidance and hire consultants to sheperhed them through the human factors process.  And it's all the more impressive and refreshing to see a guidelines document that is user-centered and well designed.

The United Kingdom's NHS (National Health Service) has been putting out a series of patient safety guides that are effective for two reasons.  First, they focus on a narrow set of topics that are device specific, such as intravenous connectors or urinary catheters.  Second, and more importantly, the documents are presented in a clear, direct and visual manner.  Specific issues are succinctly described and illustrated, followed by succinctly described and illustrated recommendations.  Here's how text size on medication packaging is addressed (note that the recommendation for 12 point size is clearly communicated):

One might make the case that these NHS guidelines are over-simplifications; that they generalize too much and don't accomodate for the variability of real-world conditions.   This may be true in some cases, but I would counter that the simplification is much more in the communication, not the content.

Ultimately, the NHS documents come from a customer-facing design approach, while the U.S. documents are derived from engineering, technical standards.  Ironically, it is when you provide this greater level of detail and complexity, that you need to provide visualizations to help communicate information more effectively.    The cliches abound, but  when it comes to design and usability, the FDA (and AAMI) needs to change from a perspective of "do what I say, not what I do", to one of "show me, don't tell me."

 

 

Integrating User Interface & Industrial Design

The editors at IDSA's Innovations magazine have been kind enough to allow me to provide a digital version of an article I co-authored in the latest issue (Summer 2010).  

The article,  Integrating Industrial and User Interface Designers: Creating Effective Interactions, discusses the evolution of user interface methods and capabilities from the perspective of an industrial design firm.  In particular, the article focuses on the key factors that determine when outside expertise is needed and when it makes sense to build-out an internal UI team - a complex equation, illustrated above.

Download Integrating Industrial and User Interface Designers - Creating Effective Interactions (PDF)

I co-wrote the article with Mathieu Turpault, Bresslergroup's Design Director.  It is an extension of the presentation of the presentation we gave at 2010's IDSA Northeast District Conference on Creating Effective User Interface & Industrial Design Teams.

You can also comment on any of the articles in this issue of Innovations at papercomment.

Designing *for humans - year end

2009/2010

If you're a regular follower of this blog you may have noticed that I've reduced my output in recent months.   I'm not writing less - in fact I may be writing more than ever before, but I have diversifed my outlets so that I have less time to spend writing specifically for the blog.

One major factor in this change has been Twitter.  In many cases it's much quicker, and just as effective, to write a brief Tweet than to go throught the formaility of structuring a blog post.   Tweeting allows me to communicate more information, more quickly.  You can follow me on twitter @robtannen (and also via Linkedin).  Also, any blog post I write here will automatically generate a Tweet, so you can keep up that way as well.

Beyond Tweeting, I am still writing lengthier content for several different channels.  This includes design blogging at FastCompany.com.  And continuting to contribute via books, magazines and speaking engagements as usual.

In January, 2010, Designing *for humans will be five years old.  That's a long time in blog years.  I plan to continue with the blog as a central place for publishing key information about my activities and publications.  Suggestions and advice are always appreciated.

Have a happy new year.

-Rob

P.S. I'll be attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, researching user interface design trends.  If you're there, feel free to get in touch.

Design Blogging at FastCompany.com

 

 This week I'm "on break" from this blog, but will be guest blogging for the FastCompany.com design section.  Every week Fast Company has a guest design expert write about their areas of interest and expertise.  The first posting I've written is Creating Virtual Interfaces for Physical People, which discusses the role of ergonomics in interaction design.

Book Review - Deconstructing Product Design

The forthcoming Deconstructing Product Design, by William Lidwell & Gerry Mancsa is somewhat of a sequel to the beloved Universal Principles of Design.  But while UPD focused on guiding, general rules for design, DPD looks at the results of applying those rules (or in some cases, not applying them) to real-world products.

DPD is a survey 100 of well-known products from roughly the last century, ranging from the mundane (Dixon Ticonderoga Pencil) to the luxurious (Chanel No. 5 Flacon).  Each of the products is presented in a two-page visual spread.  The format is visually engaging, but requires some explanation - in fact the beginning of the book includes a template that describes the structure and layout of the product page spreads.  Each product layout includes descriptive information, a photograph and a set of varied symbols or icons.   These "Semantic Icons" are intended to reflect attributes of the product's history and design, but can be challenging to interpret. 

For example, in the page pictured above for the Aeron Chair, we see a spider, a Da Vinci-like human symbol, a set of gears and a jellyfish(!).  My take is that the spider and the jellyfish reflect the chairs visual appearance and flexibility, while the figure and gears characterize the ergonomic and mechanical aspects of the chair.  It's refreshing to see a bit of reader interpretation required in contrast to the otherwise analytical and descriptive content.

 The other unexpected aspect of the book are the commentaries provided by over 30 experts in graphic design, design history, industrial design, architecture, human factors (including myself) and other specialized fields.  Each product spread contains brief, but generally insightful and diverse comments from four experts in various fields.  I found these opinions and ideas made the book repeatedly browsable as I was not always getting the same perspective from the primary authors alone.

One could always argue about the rationale for including each of the 100 individual products -  did we really need to include both the iPod and the iPhone?  does a gun belong in such a context, even a well-designed one?  why the Segway but no bicycles? - and so on. 

The critical reader should recognize that such questions are most appropriate for late-night design student discussions, and instead focus on the value of the book to such students, professional designers, and the general public.  Besides memorializing the effect of design over the last century, the content does indeed deconstruct design elements into principles that can be applied to new ideas.  In other words it's very similar to its predecessor, Universal Principles of Design.  But rather than using deductive reasoning to go from principles to products, the reader must now apply inductive reasoning to infer general principles from specific product examples.  A literal, meaningful example of "design thinking" as I've ever seen. 

Review - Wrench in the System

Harold Hambrose's Wrench in the System is a highly readable and cogent perspective on the lack of effective design in business software, in the spirit of Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum.

Hambrose, founder of user interface consulting firm Electronic Ink, essentially lived through and helped lead the growth of user-centered design over the past 20 years, and much of the book is directly drawn from his professional experiences {Disclaimer: I formerly worked for Hambrose as Director of Human Factors at Electronic Ink].

Wrench in the System combines personal narrative, case studies and historical perspective to point out that the creation of business software does not parallel the successful design processes in other industries such as architecture and product design:

"In the race to deploy new information technology, businesses and software developers often have stumbled because they have ignored traditional methods of product development and have seriously miscalculated the risks of developing software without pausing to find out more about how this new technology will be used.  The information technology industry, still in its adolescence, has been in too much of a rush to stop and tie its shoelaces." 

The book is targeted at business decision makers - CIOs and CEOs, who have the power to demand usable software, but lack the awareness of why it matters.  The focus is more specifically on enterprise software - large scale, technology driven, million dollar software systems that are notoriously challenging to use and difficult to change.  Hambrose frequently picks on SAP, both explicitly and implicitly - the book even includes a mini-fable called "The Emperor's New Enterprise System".

The majority of Wrench is spent defining the problem with examples from healthcare, financial services, energy, etc.  A reader who is already well versed in user-centered design will likely find these examples familiar, and somewhat repetitive.  But where Hambrose excels is in articulating the value and impact of design to business, for example:

"It's not a lack of technical know-how or business expertise or even a shortage of time or money that accounts for software's failure to provide the information we need.  The source of most of the trouble is a fundamental conflict between human beings and their machines, a conflict that causes profound misunderstanding"

The book itself, with clear typography and substantive paper stock, exemplifies user-centered design, as well as the still evident value of paper over electronic books.  It should benefit those sleepy business decision makers who clearly still need it, but it's language and stories will also benefit user-centered design practicioners who can apply its lessons to their own internal and external design sales challenges.

Simplexity and Product Design

Jeffrey Kluger's Simplexity is a book full of interesting, but poorly inter-related ideas.  Kluger covers a range of topics - politics, sports, linguistics - and summarizes what some of the leading thinkers have discovered about the underlying factors that influence complexity in behavior. 

Simplexity is at its best when it focus on the general theories and definitions around the connection between simplicity and complexity.  For example, the simplest systems are either inert (like a lump of carbon) or highly chaotic (a room full of gas molecules).  Complexity emerges when systems fall between the highly static and the highly dynamic - like an organism.  Unfortunately, these types of graspable principles are not carried out through the book.  I found myself wondering whether Kluger had used the theme of simplicity/complexity as a convenient thread to assemble of number of disparate, but individually interesting ideas.

There is chapter on product design - "Why are your cell phone and camera so absurdly complicated?".  As in other chapters, the leading experts in the field - in this case primarily Donald Norman, Alan Cooper and John Maeda - provide commentary on the balance of complexity.  Given this group of experts, its not surprising that a good deal of time is spent on blaming engineers and technology for failing to effectively account for the capabilities of the end-user: "the fault lies less with those designers themselves than with the nature of the entire industry."

The chapter points out that technology shifts have caused the rapid rise in complexity and poor usability.  For example, the replacement of visible knobs and dials on an old television set with invisible, hidden states that are not immediately accessible to the user.  The solution is not to move away from complexity, but to make the complexity hidden from the user.  With the obligatory iPod reference:

"In some ways, this is anything but simplicity; it's a very complicated program doing very complicated work.  But it's doing it all in the background and simply presenting you with the functional result." "Your eyes and hand are the front ends of the bodily system.  The screen and scroll pad are the front ends of the iPod."

keep it simple, stupid - online version available

My article for Barclay's 360 corporate magazine on simplicity, clarity and complexity in business is finally available in a slick, online magazine format.  You can view and print portions of the entire issue.

Top Posts of 2008: DfH Year in Review

With just a few weeks left in the year (and even less productive blogging time), I thought I would put together this brief "best of 2008" on Designing for Humans.  If you're new to the blog, this is a good way to catch-up on some of the highlights you may have missed over the past year:

• User Research Technology - Always a core theme on DfH, this year I took a hands-on look at applying many emerging tools to support design research.  This included the Livescribe Pulse Pen, Casio's High Speed Camera and the IDEA award winning Size China anthropometric data set.  Looking to the future, I unveiled the FieldCREW workstation concept (pictured), and discussed the state of user research technology at the Design Research Conference.  Still waiting on the FitBit tracking device (hopefully in the approaching weeks).
• Reading - I recommend the best book on user research, a forthcoming book on product design, design research-related articles in the Harvard Business Review, human factors in mechanical engineering and an international standard on product usability that's not worth the money. 
• Awards - I blogged on the unique experience of judging both the IDEA awards and the ID Magazine Annual Design Review in the same year.  Also, read about the IDEA award winners in the research category.
• Ergonomics- I put together the FoRCePS guidelines for observing ergonomic problems during contextual observation.

...okay, my link pen ran out.

New Design and Human Factors Blogs

A pair of relatively new blogs have come to my attention - you may want to check them out yourself:

• the Human Factors Blog- As the name says, this is a blog that covers human factors topics, but seems to primarily focus on interface and usability issues.  Recent posts have included a discussion on interface design for "hypermiling", the practice of maximizing mileage in high mpg vehicles (e.g. like the honda hybrid pictured above).

• Designer's Review of Books- Many blogs (present company included) include relevant book reviews from time to time.  This new blog is exclusively focused on review of design books.  It's only been online for a few weeks, but has a good number of review including some from guest writers (present company included).

The Best Damn Book on User Research.

"Using prose to create a data array is like using the edge of a fork to cut meat.  It can be done, but not well, unless the meat is tender indeed (corresponding to very simple data arrays)."
- Edward F. McQuarrie

Colorful language is not what makes Edward McQuarrie's Customer Visits the best book I've read on the topic of user research.  In fact, the book is overwhelmingly direct, cutting like a knife through the ambiguity and vagueness that surrounds the corporate customer research process. 

As a hardcore human-centered researcher,I approached the book with a skeptical manner: its sub-title is Building a Better Market Focus, and I learned of it indirectly, through a brochure for a seminar that McQuarrie was giving.  But I was quickly impressed by the organization and specificity of the content.

The book is structured around the processes for planning, conducting and analysis for site visits.  While it's focused on researching business customers, such as medical equipment and software developers, the methods and advice can be applied to other cases (e.g. consumer research). 

McQuarrie's to-the-point style is supported by case studies and referenced sources, providing both pragmatic and conceptual guidance.  What I found most useful was that Customer Visits specifically addresses the key questions that many organizations face when planning and conducting user research, such as:

• What types of customer are appropriate for field research - "Customer visits are most applicable when there are some hundreds or thousands of customers in the market, the product is technically complex, its application is highly contextualized, and the underlying technology allows for differentiated product offerings."
• Defining the right level and wording of qualitative research objectives - "Note that objectives that rest on words such as 'identify', 'explore', 'describe' and 'generate' properly come early in the decision process....Specific verbs that do not match the capabilities of customer visits would include 'test', 'select', 'evaluate', 'rank order', 'measure', 'forecast' and 'track'."
• Number of participants to include in a sample and creating a sample frame  - "a sample of thirty customers could be expected to identify 90% of all the needs that might exist in the total population of customers...a sample of twelve might uncover 70 to 75 percent of needs."

Obviously I can't articulate the full context and insight around a a topic in a quote, but I hope this gives you a sense of the level of detail that McQuarrie delivers. 

Of course, the book is not perfect - much of the information on writing appropriate interview questions and conducting observations should be known to professionals, and McQuarrie does not get into any deep domain knowledge or tools for conducting more effective observations (e.g. observing ergonomic issues).  But the strength of the book is in what comes before and after the observations.  The section on analysis procedures is excellent, providing a clear analysis framework ("partition, cluster, connect, and array") and addressing how to handle quantitative expectations in a qualitative context.

Finally, McQuarrie updated the book this year and thoughtfully covers trends in corporate user research such as data visualization, research data management, and the explosion of the the term 'ethnography' -

"...there is no inherent opposition between customer visits and ethnographic approaches.  A customer visit program can be made as ethnographic as you like...there exists a variety of business and market situations that require a broad range of approaches to information gathering.  Let a thousand flowers bloom."

Perhaps, a little more colorful language than I had initially stated, but in the case of this book, the author has earned the right to use it.

DFH Follow-Ups

Here's some follow-ups on several items I've blogged about in recent months:

• Redesigned BMW iDrive: The New York Times reviewsthe improved user interface (including rotary text entry, pictured above) and control system for the storied design failure that I discussed most recently in July.
  

• Design Research Blog: Sam Ladner provides a new article and slide set discussing Qualitative versus Quantitative Research (part 2) on her blog.  I discussed a couple of her earlier posts on design research back in June.

• Design Research Portfolio Review: Last, but not least, following up from this past April's IDSA northeast district conference, Marty Gage (Lextant) has provided his presentation slides for his talk, What is a Design Research Portfolio? - Download Research_portfolio_final(PDF).

Size China Headforms & Data Now Available

I've been talking about SizeChina ever since I heard Roger Ball present at the 2007 IDSA conference.  Subsequently, his effort to create reference anthropometric data of Chinese heads and faces for product designers has won an  IDEA Gold award for research. The project made valuable discoveries regarding key differences between Asian and Caucasian head sizes and ratios, that have not been consistently accommodated in the design of eyewear, protective headgear, medical/dental products, etc.

Finally, the products from the SizeChina project are commercially available from Certiform.  These include a set of 10 representative solid headforms (pictured).  You can purchase the set for $20k or a single on for $2500.

The detailed data sets (3D scan files and measurements) are also available at various prices/package levels, ranging from a 12-person "light version" for $399 up to almost $15k for the complete data set of over 1500 scans.

Certiform has provided a sample file set in Excel format to give you a sense of the level of detail included: Download Landmarks_data_sample.  See the diagram below to interpret the data set, especially if you can't tell your tragion from your zygofrontale.

Contribute to Deconstructing Product Design

Here's some good news/bad news about a book I've been looking forward to for several months -

First the bad news:  Author William Lidwell has informed me that Deconstructing Product Design won't be available until the Fall of 2009.  For background, Lidwell is one of the authors of my favorite design reference book, Universal Principles of Design (see my review from a couple of years ago).  Like UPD, DPD will combine a smart balance of applied and conceptual design analysis in a highly visual and readable format.  More specifically, DPD will,

"explore the meaning of 'good design' as it pertains to consumer products. Deconstruction here is an exploration of the form, function, and usability of these products by way of emotional response, objective analysis, and subjective commentary."  

Unfortunately we'll have to wait another year for publication.

But now the good news:  Lidwell is asking design professionals and enthusiasts to contribute their input to the forthcoming book.  The 100 classic products that will be covered in the book, ranging from the Sony Walkman to Cabbage Patch Dolls, are presented on the Deconstructing Product Design web site.    You can provide your comments about any of these individual products:

"If you have actually used any of these products, know interesting or little known facts about them, or have a visceral response or personal perspective that you would like to share, write it up as a comment on this site. If we select your entry for inclusion in the print book, you will have a byline with your comment and you will be included in the contributor section."

I look forward to reading comments from DesigningforHumans readers on the site, and perhaps some published in the book as well.

Mythbusters - Design Research Edition

People Can’t Tell You What They Want – and nine other design research myths.

View SlideShare presentationor Uploadyour own. (tags: conferencepolaropposites)

Chris Rockwell's (Lextant) IDSA conference presentation on design research myths is available via SlideShare...and directly above.  There's no audio,but the slide text is largely self-explanatory.  This was one of the presentations that I regret missing since I wasn't at the conference, so I'm glad it has been made available. 

I particularly appreciate Rockwell challenging the now cliche notion that "people can't tell you what they want" (Myth #2), which has been used as a rallying cry for observational research over interviews and focus groups.  In fact both interviews and observations are effective and have their place when done appropriately (and in most cases, co-exist). 

Similarly, "Designers can't design until research is complete" (Myth #10) again brings the real-world perspective against theoretical ideals.  If anything, the mainstream emphasis on design research in recent years should have increased the cross-collaboration between research and design.

Lextant is also hosting a recurring conference call program on various topics.  Today it's on Design Hacks (registration required) and features Steve Portigal. 

Design Research in the Harvard Business Review

 

Let me begin by admitting that I've unfairly avoided reading the Harvard Business Review (HBR).  I had an inaccurate perception that it was too academic - that is both too technical and too removed from real-world applications to be useful.  But I've recently actually read several articles as background research for an article that I was writing and I was impressed by the readability and the applicability of the content to design research.

The HBR has recently received exposure in the design world with Tim Brown's article on Design Thinking:

"In the past, design has most often occurred fairly far downstream in the development process and has focused on making new products aesthetically attractive or enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising. Today, as innovation's terrain expands to encompass human-centered processes and services as well as products, companies are asking designers to create ideas rather than to simply dress them up. Brown, the CEO and president of the innovation and design firm IDEO, is a leading proponent of design thinking - a method of meeting people's needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way."

But Brown's article was just one of a number of recent HBR articles that directly discuss design strategy and research.  And rather than going through years of back issues, you can purchase packaged sets of related articles [Caveat: some articles appear in multiple sets].  For example the Customer-Driven Innovation set contains three articles that cover topics including:

• Creating a job map "to discover what the customer is trying to get done at different at different points in executing a job and what must happen at each juncture in order fo the job to be carried out successfully."
• Methods for translating and prioritizing customer input into quantifiable opportunities

Another set, Make Sure All of your Products are Profitable includes an article on Defeating Feature Fatigue.  The authors discuss the balance between the number of features and usability in consumer decision making.  Recommendations include giving consumers decision aids, designing products that do one thing very well, and conducting prototype testing and product in-use research.  My favorite quote from the article - "You made your remote-control-adjustable, dual-firmness mattress, convertible bunk and trundle bet - now lie in it".

So what's the value of such articles to professional designers and design researchers?  On the one hand, some recommendations, like usability testing, are old-hat, but there are several examples of innovative tools and methods.  For example, the article Turn Customer Input Into Innovation provides an algorithm for prioritizing opportunities based on the gap between customer ratings of feature importance and current satisfaction.

More generally, the Harvard Business Review can provide support and credibility to research decisions and results to a business-focused audience,   It can also help design researchers stay focused on the outcomes of their results to business opportunities and profitability.

Lastly, consider the range of HBR articles, that while not written specific to research methods, can strengthen your professional capabilities.  Case in point, a recent interview with documentary filmmaker Errol Morris on Making Sense of Ambiguous Evidence:

"There is one objective reality, period." Getting to it requires keeping your mind open to all kinds of evidence- not just the parts that fit with your first impressions or developing opinions-and, often, far more investigation than one would think.

Simplicity Continued...

The concept of "simplicity" in design continues to interest the design and business communities.  Don Norman furthers his discussion of the topic in the latest issue of Interactions, Simplicity is Not the Answer, and you can read a version of that article on Norman's web site.  I also published an article in Appliance Design magazine, Clarity & Complexity.

What both articles have in common is addressing a misconception (either real or perceived) that users want simplicity - when in fact what they want is ease-of-use of complexity, or clarity (i.e. high functionality paired with high usability). 

Norman and I address this challenge from slightly different perspectives - while I focus on human factors aspects of "complexity management", Norman suggests design principles to address complexity:

"Good design can rescue us. How do we manage complexity? We use a number of simple design rules. For example, consider how three simple principles can transform an unruly cluster of confusing features into a structured, understandable experience: modularization, mapping, conceptual models."

September Issue of Interactions

 As usual, the September/October issue of Interactions contains many interesting articles and commentary, but there are two items of particular note to product design researchers (subscription required to access full articles):

• Gretchen Anderson of LUNAR discusses the the convergence of interaction design and industrial design in Let's Get Physical.  She includes a set of constraints to consider when pairing a UI with hardware such as size & placement, differentiation and iconic appearance, "controls will be like facial features that make the product instantly recognizable."
  
  
• I (Rob Tannen) have an article that covers some of the latest technologies that can be applied to field research in The Researcher-Tool Mismatch: Improving the fit between user researchers and technology.  The article takes a look at several tools, including video (high definition, high speed video) and audio technologies like the LiveScribe Pulse Pen, "For ethnographic observations, both conversations and environmental sounds can be unobtrusively recorded (in stereo) while taking notes. While the device does not provide the highest-resolution audio quality, it increases the working bandwidthand accuracy of the design researcher."

 

An International Standard for Product Usability

I've got a bias against design standards based on my experiences working with organizations that have tried to set them before, rather than after designing a product.  Standards should be a way to document a proven approach, not a prescription for how to do something that hasn't been done yet.  On the other hand, process standards are useful a priori because they provide guidance on how to do something that you may have not done before.  And like design standards, process standards should be updated over time with experience.

With all that said, I am encouraged to see that the International Standards Organization (ISO) has published a set of standards and related process guidelines on "ease of operation for everyday products".  This refers primarily to consumer products.  Userfocus provides a useful, high-level explanation of the four part ISO standards:

"Part 1, 'Design requirements for context of use and user characteristics', provides a set of sensible design guidance for anyone who is developing consumer technology. It outlines a five-step process that the design team should follow...The remaining three parts of ISO 20282 (parts 2-4) propose test methods for measuring the usability of every day products. The three test methods are essentially the same and will be familiar to anyone who has observed a usability test."

In other words, the standards don't provide significant educational value to experienced usability practitioners, but may be useful for those getting started, or even those with some experience who are looking for guidelines on best practices.  Note that you can purchase the documents from the ISO site, but each of the four is over $100 US. 

The Userfocus article also stresses an important point about product usability testing - you need large samples to get reliable data in a variable population, but:

"remember that for most consumer products there is only one key goal: 'the most frequent and/or important user goal that the product is intended to support' as it says in the standard. This means that each participant will be asked to carry out just one or two tasks with the product, so the participant session time should be much shorter than with 'thinking aloud' testing. My estimate is that each participant could be briefed, tested and sent on his or her way in 20 minutes."

in the cards

You may already be familiar with IDEO's Method Cards, which succinctly show & tell 51 methods for conducting research and design.  The cards tend to emphasize ways of thinking like "Look" and "Try", rather than specific, concrete methods.

Enter design consulting firm nForm with their own set of "user experience trading cards".  These provide more tactical methods, apparently focused on UI design, with cards for "Ethnography" (pictured), "Taxonomy" and "Usability Capture Software".

The IDEO cards are probably more valuable due to the greater diversity of ideas presented (although they do overlap internally in some cases) and are more of a way to think about a problem; whereas the nForm cards are more of a primer to user-centered design methods.  And the IDEO cards are tangible in a more important way - you can order a set of actual cardsfor reference and sharing.

Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces

While Dan Saffer's forthcoming book Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces is not out yet, you can download and read the first chapter.  Aptly titled "Introducing Interactive Gestures", Saffer covers the recent and formative histories of direct manipulation interfaces, as well as key definitions, and relevant usability/design issues in an approachable manner.

The chapter is readable, while still providing appropriate references to human factors principles and technologies.  If you're new to the world of gestural interfaces, this is a great place to get an overview of the field.  If you're already knowledgeable, this is a useful refresher, and you might learn some new terms like "iceberg tips" (touch points that are larger than they visually present).

I did spot one point of dispute.  In his explanation of affordances (p. 30), Saffer refers to James Gibson as a "cognitive psychologist".  While Gibson was a psychologist, his theories of perception were actually contrary to the cognitive movement - Gibson posited a theory of direct perception where information is perceived without the need for any intermediating mental interpretation (i.e., cognition).  A more accurate label would have been "ecological psychologist" - but since that's not a school of perception known by most people, simply "psychologist" would probably be best.

Forgive me for being academic.

Deconstructing Product Designs

Deconstructing Product Design: Exploring the Form, Function, and Usability of 100 Amazing Products is now available for pre-order.  William Lidwell's quasi-sequel to Universal Principles of Design (my all-time favorite design book), promises to be just as enjoyable and valuable with a balanced format of evidence-backed information and clear visual descriptions.  Looking forward to its near-term release (is it me or are lots of good things scheduled for a March launch)?

*Updated (3/17) - Author William Lidwell has informed me that the March publication date that Amazon has been listing may be premature.  I'll let you know when I know of a more accurate date.  But you can still pre-order.

Back to the Future of Ergonomics

The first issue for 2008's volume of the journal Ergonomics is focused on the future of the field.  While an academic or professional subscription is required to access the volume, the lead article, Bartlett and the future of ergonomics, is available for free online. 

The article takes a retrospective look at Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett's 40+ year old predictions on the future of ergonomics, which were surprisingly insightful and accurate:

"Bartlett predicted that developments in automation and communication technologies were likely to present a significant challenge for Ergonomics. Specific predictions he made seem to derive from overall anticipated changes in working activities, and research foci, as a result of the new technologies. These were:

1. greater physical isolation of individuals;
2. greater demands on technologically-mediated communication;
3. reductions in physical workload;
4. increases in mental workload;
5. combining of the work of several people into the work of one;
6. presentation of multi-modal stimuli;
7. greater emphasis placed upon decision making; and
8. shorter working hours and more leisure time."

The article closes with a look at more recent predictions made by ergonomists, as well as design research practitioners:

"Fulton Suri (2001) proposed the adding of 'empathy' to the armoury of the professional ergonomist. She saw challenges arising from an ever widening field for the application of ergonomics, from resolving conflict between the commercial goals of organisations and the societal goals of maintaining human values and from trying to influence how systems are designed and operated. Fulton Suri saw the role of the ergonomist as being one of a centrally positioned facilitator of effective solutions through being more empathetic to the needs of all concerned."

Beyond this lead article, the content of the special issue contains articles on future ergonomics trends taken from the present context, presented by a range of international experts.  If these experts are nearly as accurate as Bartlett was about the future, then this is clearly worthwhile reading.

On a related note, the Human Factor & Ergonomics Society recently published an article, On the future of ergonomics, based on a survey of their members.  It includes estimates of the ergonomics job market across a number of relevant fields and industries.

"If you don't get DesigningForHumans, you're making a mistake."

Actually, the quote I am making light of is:

"If you don't get the magazine from the Rotman School of Management, you're making a mistake."
-Bruce Nussbaum, Assistant Managing Editor, BusinessWeek

Nussbaum's admonition is used by the University of Toronto to promote its business school magazine, but strikes me as oddly worded, or faint praise.  As if reading the magazine was avoiding a mistake, but nothing beyond that (e.g. informative, stimulating, etc).  Which is too bad, because it's actually an interesting, well presented periodical, with an emphasis on design and its relationship with business.

The current issue, Winter 2008 (recent issues are available as PDFs), espeically, may interest design researchers and designers.  Of particular note, Jane Fulton Suri of IDEO authored Informing our Intuition - Design Research for Radical Innovation (p. 52 of the PDF/p. 54 of the print magazine).  Like many design research articles targeted at business readers, the content is heavy on definitions and clarifications of terms - for example the differentiation between quantitative and qualitative research:

"...effective research is not just about analysisof objective evidence – there isn’t any directly applicable data anyway; it’s also about the synthesis of evidence, recognition of emergent patterns, empathic connection to people’s motivations and behaviours, exploration of analogies and extreme cases, and intuitive interpretation of information and impressions from multiple sources. This type of approach is now often referred to as ‘design research’ to differentiate it from purely analytic methods."

The Winter issue also contains several articles related to applying 'design thinking' in the context of business.  And the Idea Exchange section consists of about a dozen, brief Q&As with thought leaders around the theme of thinking.  Ultimately the domain content only goes so far - an experienced design researcher is unlikely to learn much about his/her own field - but it's useful for understanding how to relate and communicate to the business world.

Rotman also walks the walk on design, with strong visual presentation and readability.  You could of course, read/print the PDF versions online for free, rather than paying the $99(Canadian) subscription fee, but given the elegance of the format and the relevance of the content, perhaps you'd be making a mistake.

An Introduction to Neuroergonomics

In my recent article on emerging trends in design research, I intentionally left off the field of neuroergonomics.  While it is a growing field, I don't see it becoming commercially viable for several more years.  Moreover, it is a fascinating area  deserving of it's own posting (or several). 

To begin with, the term neuroergonomics represents the merge or overlap of neuroscience and ergonomics/human factors .  In other words, how a better understanding of brain functions can improve human factors methods and tools.

A primary research area within neuroergonomics is the application of neuroscience-based technology to the study of ergonomics.  Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work, published in 2007, is a surprisingly accessible and readable collection of chapters covering these technologies, which include relatively familiar ones such as EEG and MRI, and others from the medical field.   While such technologies are robust, they can be impractical for real-world applications.

Other methods, while less precise, may have promise for measuring brain activity in less obtrusive ways.  For example, transcranial doppler sonography (TCDS - think weather radar for your head), uses localized sensors to measure cerebral blood flood as a potential correlate of workload or stress.  For example, higher bloodflow in certain parts of the brain may indicate that the user is working harder to complete a task.  Imagine having such a TCDS sensor embedded in a car or cockpit to evaluate if a driver was mentally overloaded and required assistance.  For more information on TCDS, see a video of the work being done at the University of Cincinnati (from the dept where I did my grad work, incidentally). 

Much of the work in neuroergonomics is at the level of basic research - determining the validity, reliability and practicality of applying such technologies to real world problems.  Consequently, the focus tends to be on high-level human factors variables such as attention, workload and stress.  Applications to more "everyday" product design problems are further down the road, but probably not as far as you might expect.

Of course, I've barely scratched the surface of the field of neuroergonomics.  For more information, I highly recommend the previously mentioned book.  You can also check out Raja Parasuraman's work - he is one of the leading researchers in this domain - including this introductory overview.

AnthroDesign Online Discussion Group

One of the best, but perhaps lesser known online discussion groups amongst designers is AnthroDesign, as in Anthropology & Design.  The group, which was originally made up solely of anthropologists, has grown to include a range of interests from corporate, academic, non-profit and consulting design/research worlds:

"This group consists of individuals interested in anthropology and design. We are interested in the role of applied anthropology in the corporate, public sector, and medical contexts. Not all list members are anthropologists, but group members share the common interest of applying ethnographic techniques and social sciences theory to industrial, software, and other types of product design."

Membership is permission-based.

Download the Human Factors Design Standard

Even if you don't design aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration's Human Factors Design Standard, is an invaluable (and free) reference for design practitioners. 

The complete design standard is large (10MB) and comprehensive - "an exhaustive compilation of human factors practices and principles" - but it provides succinct and tactical, evidence-based information.  For example, concerning touchscreens, fourteen specific guidelines are given for button size, labeling, position, dead space, etc, but the need to test with representative users is also recommended to keep these rules grounded in reality.

In 2007 the FAA added draft updates related to interface design, including displays and non-keyboard input devices (e.g. mouse, joystick, touchscreen). 

A brief, anonymous survey form is required to download the Human Factors Design Standard (HFDS).  Once past that, you may download the entire document or any of the 15 individual chapters or drafts, ranging from Alarms, Audio and Voice to Anthropometry and Biomechanics (a particularly strong section of the document).

Sparsely, but appropriately illustrated, the HFDS gives the actionable guidelines that so many product designers and students are desparate to find in a single location.

PS - Experimenting with larger font size for better readability on recent posts.

Ergonomics of Wheelchairs

...an interesting thread from Google Answers on design anthropometrics to accommodate people in wheelchairs.

Affordances in Product Design

One of the ongoing "philosophical" points of contention when I was in graduate school was between the cognitive psychologists and the ecological psychologists over the theory of perception. 

In a nutshell, the cognitive approach assumes that information in the world is ambiguous and cognitive-perceptual processes are required to interpret stimuli into meaningful information.  For example, an object is observed through the visual system and the brain uses that stimulation in conjunction with memory to disambiguate and identify the object.  This is in fact how most people understand perception to work. 

The minority alternative comes from the ecological perspective ("ecological" as in a rich stimulus environment, and not related to sustainable design), which posits that information in the world is specific and sufficiently detailed to communicate information without any interpretation.  That is, the visual stimulus is unique and conveys the relevant characteristics to the observer.  

This contrast in approaches also emerged in the world of product and interface design over the term "affordance".  The term was coined by J.J. Gibson, the father of ecological psychology, to define the relationship between an actor (e.g. human, animal) and an object or environment.  For example, a flat surface "affords" sitting on, a pointy one does not.  Note that an affordance is a property that exists whether it is perceived or not or acted on or not. 

Following Gibson, the term "affordance" was popularized, but also modified in use by Donald Norman, among others, to emphasize the perception of an affordance (rather than the existence of one).  In other words, good design is about effectively communicating affordances to the user. 

Now a recent article in Design Studies looks at the issue of affordances vs. perceived affordances in a tangible way - by applying those ideas to the control panel of a stereo system.  The paper summarizes the theoretical issues that I have attempted to touch on above, and then illustrates how they are applied to controls.  While there are not actionable conclusions from this work, it's an opportunity to understand some of the key theoretical issues in perception and design.

Incidentally, ecological psychologists have more fun.

Ergonomic Resources from/for Furniture Designers

Several office and furniture design companies provide free, valuable resources on ergonomics for design.  I've highlighted two particular examples:

• The ergonomics section of the Allsteel web site includes a downloadable reference guide: Ergonomics and Design (PDF).  This is one of the best introductory ergonomic guides that I've seen, with a clear explanation of basic anthropometrics and references for further information.  The guide effectively provides illustrations, a glossary and representative data tables to inform readers about designing for offices - including universal design.
• Steelcase's ergonomic section covers many of the same fundamentals, but give's broader consideration to other areas of ergonomics such as cognitive and acoustic concerns in office design.  The site also has a dedicated research article section, which covers both strategic (e.g. "A Macro-ergonomic Approach) and tactical (e.g. "Choosing a Chair") topics.

Book Review: 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

In the range of enumerative design books, Matthew Fredrick's just-published 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School falls nicely between the tangible, utility of Universal Principles of Design, and the theoretical, philosophy of John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity.

101 TILiAS is a pocket sized book that communicates principles of architecture and architectural education and practice through simple explanations, quotes and illustrations.  It can be a quick read, but can also be re-read several times, with each of the topics taking roughly between ten and sixty seconds to digest.

While many of the ideas are specific to architecture - for example "How to make architectural hand lettering" (#22) or "Careful anchor placement can generate an active building interior" (#87) - a good number of the topics are directly applicable to other fields of design, particularly industrial design.  For example, "Any design decision should be justified in at least two ways" (#18) is a terrific principle, considering some design decisions lack any justification at all.  And "Limitations encourage creativity" (#97) is a common way of life in the ID studio.  There are also several fundamental recommendations on 3D sketching (e.g. draw hierarchically, use soft lines for soft ideas, hard lines for hard ideas), which are certainly applicable to industrial design sketching,

And even the seemingly more architectural-specific principles can be related to by swapping out "architect" for "designer" as in a pair of my favorite, and quite direct observations:

• "Engineers tend to be concerned with physical things in and of themselves.  Architects are more directly concerned with the human interface with physical things." (#20)
• "An architect knows something about everything.  An engineer knows everything about one thing." (#21)

Above all, Frederick emphasizes the role of process over just following rules and as he elaborates "the design process is often structured and methodical, but it is not a mechanical process.  Mechanical processes have predetermined outcomes, but the creative process strives to produce something that has not existed before" (excerpt from #81).

Introducing DesigningforHumans.com

The IDSA Human Factors section site (what you're reading right now), has been reconfigured and renamed.  It is now DesigningforHumans.com

All of the previously working bookmarks, links and subscriptions should continue to work as before - you can continue to access the site with the previous URL - http://www.humanfactors.typepad.com/, or the new one.  All new links will use the DesigningforHumans.com domain, but will automatically map back to the old domain as well for continuity.  Please email me if you experience a problem: [email protected]

The change was made to give the site a more memorable and meaningful identity, but the content and mission remain the same - to inform IDSA members and the overall industrial design community about human factors, design research and usability.  The name is a tribute to Henry Dreyfuss' Designing for People, with our obvious slant towards human factors.

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

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.

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

Slideshare - online presentation sharing

Although it's technically still in beta, slideshare is definitely worth checking out.  Self-described as "the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web", the site provides searchable, user-provided presentation content - typically Powerpoints or PDFs. 

The content is largely made-up of voluntarily posted presentations following conferences.  One of the co-founders is Rashmi Sinha, who is a leader in user experience technology, so it's no coincidence that there's a good amount of content on design, research and usability available.  For example, a search for "human factors" resulted in 50+ presentations ranging from ethnography, to game design, to farming.

Of course, what typically makes for an engaging in-person presentation (e.g. interesting visuals), is not necessarily effective for reviewing a Powerpoint out of context - ironically, in those cases, text-heavy slides may communicate most thoroughly.

Incidentally, there's a lack of presentations on Industrial Design - hopefully we can encourage presenters at Connecting '07 to post there presentations at Slideshare.

Rob Tannen

Preview of Don Norman's "The Design of Future Things"

Don Norman's forthcoming book, The Design of Future Things is scheduled for a November 2007 launch, but you can learn about the book at Norman's web site and even download a draft of the introductory chapter as a PDF.

As is typical of Norman's work, the first chapter is geared towards a mass audience, focusing on familiar examples of automobiles and home appliances.  It is clear from the closing pages of the available chapter, not to mention the book title, that the book will focus on emerging areas of human-machine interactions including emotional design, augmented reality and real-time sensory systems.  Perhaps most interesting, seems to be a re-emphasis on the role of the machine in the human-machine interaction, after such a heavy focus on primarily the human part of the equation.

Online Human Factors Compendium

The U.S. government provides a number of free web-based resources for finding human factors information.  I recently found the a searchable and browsable version of the Engineering Data Compendium: Human Perception and Performance - http://www.hsiiac.org/products/compendium.html

The Compendium is one of the standard references for Human Factors research - while much of the data is from studies 20+ years ago, these are universal psychophysical and perceptual analyses that remain relatively static.  For example, searching for "visual angle" returned over a hundred results ranging from parameters for calculating visual angle, to recommended conditions for classroom viewing and visual acuity as a function of age.

This rich resource is a great starting place for determining what basic research has been done and identifying basic principles to apply in design.

FYI: The site is provided by the Human Systems Integration Information Analysis Center (Human Systems Integration IAC),  a government owned, contract operated agency that deals with the interface between the human component of a system and its hardware and software using a total system approach.

The Plasticity of Products and The Products of Plasticity

A couple of recent Core77 articles of interest to the design research crowd - one about the flexible and unexpected ways that people utilize products in everyday life, and the other about the flexible material that goes into making so many everyday products:

• Parallel Universes: Making Do and Getting By + Thoughtless Acts  - Kevin Henry discusses Jane Fulton Suri's Thoughtless Acts and Richard Wentworth's Making Do and Getting By - both photographic examples of how people take advantage of the (often) unintended behaviors afforded by designed objects.  For example, using a bottle cap as an ashtray or a pencil as a lock.  Such examples not only illustrate human ingenuity with found objects, but the limitations and opportunities for intentional design.
• Not Created Equal:A Long, (Loving) Plastics Primer - Carl Alviani provides a brief history and taxonomy of popular plastics used in modern products.  As someone who entered product design from the research world, and not an expert on materials and engineering, this is very valuable background.

An Ethnography Primer

For those new to ethnography, or looking for a simple way to describe it to others, the AIGA and Cheskin have put together an ethnography primer.  The visual appealing PDF has limited content, but focuses on the value, basic steps, applications and terminology of ethnographic research to support design.  Perhaps most useful is the brief descriptions of the respective activities of the ethnographer and the designer during each step of the research process.

Check it out, and while you're there, explore AIGA's redesigned site.

A Brief History of Usability

Joe Dumas has authored "The great leap forward: The birth of the usability profession (1988-1993)" for the Journal of Usability Studies.

Dumas discusses the early efforts in the study of human-computer interaction, and its differentiation from product usability.

Examples of Product Simulations

This year's Human Factors section "research project" is taking a look at product simulations - prototype designs created to evaluate the usability and design of potential products.

We're collecting examples of digital simulations that have been produced for product testing and demonstration purposes  - these can range from online demonstrations, interactive flash simulations to stand-alone applications.

Please submit examples through the comment feature of this blog posting, or email directly to Rob Tannen - [email protected]

Please only provide examples that can be publicly shared.

Other Human Factors Podcasts

In addition to the occasional human factors-related IDSA podcast, there are a few human factors and usability related podcasts out there if you look for them.  Here are a few that are accessible via the iTunes store (typically for free).  This list is by no means complete - please add your own recommendations via the comments feature.

• Design Critique: Products for People: Tim and Tom's conversational discussions of current product designs with designers and users.  Emphasizes consumer electronics and software products and design processes.
  http://www.designcritique.net/
• Icon-o-Cast: A podcast by Lunar Design: Not limited to human factors, covers a range of industrial design people, products and issues.
  http://www.lunardesign.com/podcast/index.html
• UXPod: User Experience Podcast: Gerry Gaffney primarily presents interviews with leaders in user experience process.  Software/usability focused, with some product design discussions.
  http://uxpod.com/
• Humech Podcast Series: "academic discussions of current work in human-machine systems".  Tends to focus on virtual reality and research-oriented content.

Survey Results: Technology for User Research

This past fall the IDSA Human Factors section conducted an online survey to gather data on technologies used to conduct user research.  We had nearly eighty responses.  The information was used in a recent Usability Professionals Association presentation in New York on Technologies for User Research (TURe).  Edited presentation materials, that describe the survey results, may be downloaded from that site (the presentation breaks-down the results between product design and interaction design).  The research will also be discussed in an upcoming IDSA podcast (TBA).

Thanks to everyone who responded.  I have summarized some of the findings below, and attached two files with more detailed data. 

Key Findings:

78 respondents (39 in product design, 47 in interaction design; small overlap between groups)

Overall technology utilization in user research:

• Video Cameras - 61%
• Surveys - 58%
• Software Analytics - 60%
• Computer-Based Video - 35%
• Journals/Diaries/Blogging - 30%
• Remote Testing Tools - 22%
• Physiological Data Tools - 15%
• Eye Tracking - 11%

General Feedback:

• 48%  feel limited by current user research technology
• 53% believe user research lags behind technology that is subject of research
• 51% plan to upgrade user research technology within year
• 33% have created custom technology tools or solutions for user research

Data Files:

• HTML Summary Data (no drill-down): Download User_Research_Technology_Summary.html
• Detailed Excel Data: Download User_Research_Technology_detail.xls

The Laws of Simplicity

John Maeda's new book, The Laws of Simplicity, is essentially a set of ten associated essays on principles of design.  While the goals and concept of the book are reasonable, it is flawed in its execution by two factors: lack of tangibility and, frankly, silly word games.

Each of Maeda's chapters covers a particular principle that should be applied when designing to achieve simplicity.  For example, Reduce (e.g. reduce extraneous features and ornaments) and Organize (e.g. categorize information into related groupings).  These happen to be the most straightforward of the ten principles.  I'd be hard pressed to give you a succinct, actionable definition of some of the other principles, such as Differences or The One.  Perhaps Maeda is going from the concrete to the abstract as he presents his sequence of principles - if that is the case, it is not explained.

Maeda rarely provides tangible examples of where and how these principles have been applied.  A notable exception is a dot-cluster diagram (worth looking at) that illustrates the variations in control placement across the evolution of the Apple iPod controls.  It would have been useful if that technique was discussed in more detail and applied to more examples.  Unfortunately, space for meaningful content was limited given the compactness of the 100 page book.  Maedea refers the reader to forthcoming examples on the companion Web site.

Which leads me to the other flaw of the book - there is a great deal of text and time (both the author's and readers') on word games and acronyms.  For example:

"...I had the simple observation that the letters "M", "I" and "T"-the letters by which my university is known - occur in natural sequence in the word SIMPLICITY.  In fact, the same can be said of the word COMPLEXITY."

Yes, that is a simple observation - but one worth noting?  Especially in a book of 100 pages that espouses the principle to Reduce?  Other verbal devices include a set of acronyms for remembering subcomponents of the key principles.  Certainly acronyms are an effective mnemonic, but in this case (SHE, HER, BRAIN), I'm not sure if the information contained within the acronyms is worth remembering.  For example, Madea's acronym for learning (BRAIN):

• BASICS are the beginning
• REPEAT yourself often
• AVOID creating desperation
• INSPIRE with examples
• NEVER forget to repeat yourself

As a usability practitioner I certainly appreciate the value of Maeda's contribution, but I struggle with how to classify this book.  It's meandering, stream of consciousness style, lends itself more to a philosophical monologue, rather than a educational tool on the meaning and value of simplicity.  For the more results-oriented reader, I strongly recommend Universal Principles of Design - in both is content and format it truly embodies simplicity, rather than just paying it lip service.

-Rob Tannen

Innovation Design Research Issue now online

Selected articles from the Summer 2006 issue of IDSA's Innovation are available online, including:

Digital Ethnography: Sparking Brilliant Innovation
Darrel Rhea, IDSA, CEO, Cheskin, and Lisa Leckle, account management director, Cheskin

Market Research Today: How to Stay on Target
Forrest Elizabeth Folsom, marketing communications manager, Herbst LaZar Bell, Inc.

A Visit with the Chair Man
Bruce Sterling, novelist, journalist, columnist for Wired magazine and the former Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design.

You may also download:

The Future of User Research Ubiquitous Computing - Rob Tannen, PhD, IDSA - Posits that many of the constraints of current research methods may be overcome through the development of product usage measurement technology.  You may download Tannen's artice:  innovation_tannen.pdf.

Innovation: Design Research

The Summer 2006 issue of the IDSA quarterly, Innovation, has just been published.  This issue is of particular interest because it features eight articles representing a range of perspectives on design and user research.  Three articles of particular interest for Human Factors advocates:

• Digital Ethnography Sparking Brilliant Innovation - Darrel Rhea, IDSA and Lisa Leckie - Discusses the role of digital consumer technology as a means to for users to capture and deliver self-report research from the field.
• The Integration of Industrial Design and Human Factors Bricks & Mortar - Barry H. Beith, PhD and Joseph Jasinski, IDSA - Provides a discussion of how Industrial Designers and Human Factors experts can work together effectively.
• The Future of User Research Ubiquitous Computing - Rob Tannen, PhD, IDSA - Posits that many of the constraints of current research methods may be overcome through the development of product usage measurement technology.  You may download Tannen's artice:  innovation_tannen.pdf.

Note - IDSA typically publishes a few of these articles online.  The journal site has not been updated as of this posting (it still features the Spring 2006 issue), but when the Summer issue is posted, we will post a blog entry with the specific links.