Tuesday, September 25, 2007
World Usability Day's Healthcare Focus: Thoughts about health care user-experience design...
The theme of the 2007 World Usability Day is healthcare. This event aims to create awareness about the need for user-centered design within the health care system. Here is some information posted on UPA's World Usability Community blog:
"..."The importance of user-centered design in healthcare is truly about life and death” noted Elizabeth Rosenzweig, Founder and Director of World Usability Day. “Whether it’s new medical devices or technologies; drug research, approval or delivery; patient forms or medical record sharing; emergency disaster planning or increasing the functionality of hospitals and everyday healthcare delivery, everyone is effected in some way by the intersection of usability and healthcare. There are many commonalities, yet each region of the world faces its own set of unique challenges. We believe that focusing World Usability Day 2007 on healthcare will create a stronger awareness of these issues and lead to initiatives that have long term impact on the quality of everyone’s life".
Information about World Usability Day:
www.worldusabilityday.org.
Usability and interaction with the health care system has become a personal interest of mine, as I've spent the better part of the past month assisting a close relative negotiate three hospital stays, a couple of surgeries, numerous medical tests, and visits to various medical professionals. This has been an eye-opening experience, as anyone who has followed a similar path would agree.
I propose that efforts to improve usability should consider using some of the strategies employed by user-experience designers, taking into consideration that the definition of "user" includes the patient/consumer, the patient's family and social support network, health care professionals, hospital and medical staff, health educators, researchers, and so forth.
When I have the chance, I'll post some of my observations and thoughts related to this topic.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Search for Researchers: Ubiquitous computing, large screen displays, touch screen displays & tables, and mobile devices
I am in the process of compiling list of links to researchers who are interested in off-the-desktop systems and applications that can seamlessly inter-operate with mobile and remote devices and systems, especially systems that include large-screen displays and touch-enabled tables or surfaces.
A variety of fields are involved in this area - interactive design, computer-supported collaborative work, embedded system design, industrial systems engineering, virtual reality, human factors, educational technology, mobile learning, computer & video game development, mobile computing, audio-visual media, new media, mobile marketing, GIS & geography/ geology, graphic design, computer music, interactive storytelling, etc. etc.
Here is a start:
Stacey D. Scott, Ph.D
Collaboration Technologies Researcher
University of Waterloo
Dr. Scott is the Program Co-Chair for Tabletop 2007 (IEEE Int'l) Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems, held on October 10-12, 2007 in Newport, R.I., in conjunction with UIST 2007 (ACM Symposium on User Interface Software & Technology)
The program for both conferences has a list of presenters and their topics, but no links.
Here are a few more links:
Desney Tan
Bill Buxton
Jeffery Han
Harry "Gravano" van der Veen
On the Tabletop(Stefano Baraldi)
Human-world Interaction from the Refrigerator? G.E.'s Future Concept
This video clip presents a future scenario of how technology can support "human-world" interaction through a system embedded in a kitchen, from G.E. Any comments?
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Search phrases leading users to this blog...
I thought I'd post a list of recent search phrases readers use to find this blog:
The Trouble with Computers
advantages of technology to human
kyffin economist
usability professionals' association
interactive design
tech support comedy video
computing
new interaction technology
world people interaction game
technology on human interaction
user support video clip
tara prakriya
Vista supported virtual worlds
tech comedy books
Video clip-technology of a book
video clip ancient help desk
adam greenfield
Putting People First blog from Experientia
I recently came accross the "Putting People First" blog when I was looking for information about usability and user-experience design. The blog focuses on "daily insights on user experience, experience design and people-centred innovation". The Putting People first blog is coordinated by Mark Vanderbeeken, from the experience-design company Experientia, located in Turin, Italy.
If you have an interest in user-centered design and related topics, take the time to explore the Putting People First blog, as well as the Experientia website.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Trends: New interfaces and new interactions for computing and technology: Link to an article from The Economist
If you are interested in emerging technologies, ubiquitous computing, interface/interaction design, and topics related to usability and user-centered design, a recent article in the Technology Quarterly of The Economist, "The Trouble with Computers" provides a good overview of problems and solutions. The article quotes experts such as Adam Greenfield, the author of "Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing".
My favorite quotes from the article:
"Its an interface designed by engineers for engineers" - Adam Greenfield, on the Nokia 6680 mobile phone.
"...computer programmers and engineers....are often guilty of designing complicated systems packed with too many features...There's a point where humanity just can't handle it." -Steven Kyffin, senior researcher at Philips.
"Ease of use is one area where technology firms can differentiate themselves and gain competitive advantage" --The Economist
"Making computers simpler to use will require more than novel input devices. Smarter software is needed, too." --The Economist
The article goes on to discuss touch screens, gesture-aware interfaces, and context-aware devices and applications.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Interaction Design: Link to post and resources
If you are interested designing applications for in off-the-desktop applications, take a look at a recent post on the Interactive Multimedia Technology blog. You'll find information and links about Dan Saffer's recent book, "Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices".
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Usability/Interaction Hall of Shame (In a Hospital)
What were they thinking?
Here is an example of a user-unfriendly interactive touch-screen map on an information kiosk at a large hospital:
An information kiosk that looks like it was torn up by a frustrated hospital visitor:
Here is a picture of a hospital bed/TV remote control in my dad's hospital room. The TV channels could only scroll up, so if you were on Channel 6 and you wanted Channel 5, you had to go up through the remainder of the stations! If you hit a button, different hospital room lights would turn off and on without warning.
For more information about good (and bad) usability design, take a look at the World Usability Day 2007 website.
The following excerpt is from the "making life easy" website from World Usability Day 2006:
"Confusing cash machines, unclear signs, frustrating websites - poor usability is everywhere and it gets in the way of life. Sometimes it is just annoying. At other times it stops us doing what we need to do.
It can even be dangerous.
World Usability Day is an international event promoting the message that people have had enough of things that are hard to use."
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Know your user: Video clip comedy depicting tech support interaction with someone transitioning from ancient scrolls to books
This funny video clip highlights the idea that developers can not assume that users share similar approaches to learning new applications and technologies!
I noticed version of this videoclip, entitled "Old School Help Desk", posted on Ladonna Coy's (ladcoy)Technology in Prevention blog.
The scene depicts two medieval European men making the transition from scrolls to books. One man plays the role of the "low-tech" user, new to the concept of "books". Even with the patient support from the help-desk guy, the poor soul continues to be baffled by the book-opening, page-turning, and book-closing process.
If you watch the clip to the end, it closes with a humorous interaction with the new-fangled book's tech manual. The clip has English subtitles, but it is clearly funny in Norwegian.
Off the Desktop: Technology Supported Human-World Interaction
This is the first post of the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction, or "TSHWI" blog. I'm planning on using this blog as a resource for people interested in developing, using, or learning about user-centered application development for emerging and innovative technologies.
Just after I posted the template for this blog, I came across an intersting article, written by Tara Prakriya, a Microsoft Architect who focuses on the "incubation of emerging markets that leverage pen, touch, and ink". Although the article focuses on Microsoft Vista, much of what's covered in article is useful to people developing for other operating systems.
The article, "How to Be Where Your Customer Wants to Be" was written for software developers who are making the transition from desktop to the world.
In the article, Prakriya emphasizes that developers must take an "off the desktop" point of view. At first glance, this sounds like mobile computing, but it is much, much more.
Prakriya shares that Microsoft has "done a lot of research with our customers to try and define some core areas and scenarios for which they want and need to use their computers more times of the day. Taken together, we often hear: “Give me more applications to help me when I am traveling, shopping, on the train or bus-basically, fill the gaps where I know access to information can help me.”
What does this mean for developers? According to Prakriya, Vista has many features that will enable developers to tailor applications to meet the needs of users. These features support collaboration, multitasking, time-slicing, and data/note capture.
Prakriya also discusses a number of areas that are open for project development, which is just about anything people do or need when they are away from a desk, including home automation, social communities, personal productivity, navigation or wayfinding, games, education, media, and entertainment.
Prakriya concludes with a pitch for developers to explore user-tailored application development that takes advantage of the Windows Vista Platform, which supports touch-screen systems such as the HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC, the Tablet Kiosk UMPC.
In my opinion, in order to create useful, usable "off the desktop" applications, traditional software developers will need to take on the perspectives of a sociologist, psychologist, and ethnographer in order to anticipate the technology needs of humans across a wide range of settings and situations. This development might very well provide women and people from other disciplines who are considering a career in software development more meaningful opportunities for study and work.
Short list of related resources:
Roy Want's recent articles, published in IEEE Journal of Pervasive Computing, provide a good background for developers who are moving off the desktop:
Carry Small, Live Large and People First, Computers Second
The work of Don Norman, the author of "The Design of Everyday Things" "The Design fo Future Things" (November 2007), and "Why Things Don't Work" (2008)
UPA: Usability Professionals' Association
