1. AVI/Psych 358/IE 340: Human Factors
Technology Wreaking Havoc
September 3, 2008

2. Admin Read Chapter 3 for Friday Quiz 1 (on Monday):
What’s included: everything discussed till Friday
Slides, chapters 1 and 2 from book
Multiple choice, short answers (~15 minutes)
Check course website for updates (psych358.blogspot.com)

3. Group Activity (Due Monday)
Look around your house/apartment and take pictures of TWO badly designed objects
Annotate/Mark picture to clarify your point
Upload your picture on the Facebook group (2 pictures per group), so others can see
Must be completed before class on Monday
Tag your pictures with your team number (e.g., Team 1)
HW 1 will be based on this (so think a little bit about your choices)

4. My Example: Monitor
Difficult to plug the monitor cable due to the location of the socket

5. Chernobyl Tragedy April 1986, Nuclear Reactor incident
What were the causes?

6. Chernobyl Tragedy HF Causes
Complex controls were not understood by the operators
Effects of certain actions were not clear (e.g., limited feedback)

7. Mercedes E 320 Oil Check Five step process
What makes it less intuitive?

8. Medical Errors
Between 40,000 and 100,000 preventable deaths due to medical errors
What are the possible causes of medical errors?
Neglect (physicians, care providers)
Misdiagnosis
Stress (physicians, care providers
Wrong medicines

9. Other Examples Airlines Airport Security
Several other examples of complex applications of user-system interaction

10. Design Principles
Themes or abstractions that help think about different aspects of design
Based on theory-based knowledge, experience, and common sense

11. Visibility • make relevant parts visible
…you need to insert your room card in the slot by the buttons to get the elevator to work!
How would you make this action more visible?
Make the card reader more obvious
Provide an auditory message, that says what to do (which language?)
Provide a big label next to the card reader that flashes when someone enters
• make relevant parts visible
• make what has to be done obvious

12. Invisible controls?
Invisible controls make systems difficult to use

13. Providing Feedback for the user
Sending information back to the user in response to his/her actions
Sounds, highlighting etc
More examples
Web (links)
Error messages
“ccclichhk”

14. Developing a better design
How to make the socket more visible?
Affording feedback with visibility (some way of letting the user know that the cable has fit)
Difficult to plug the monitor cable due to the location of the socket