Real World Design » Ergonomics and Design

Twitter Updates from The Ergonomics Society Conference

Fergus Bisset — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:25:55 +0000

The Real World Design team will be Twitter-ing updates from the Ergonomics Society Conference in London today and tomorrow. Please check out http://www.twitter.com/realworlddesign or the links at the bottom of the page to find out the latest topics of the conversation.

We realise we’ve been quiet for a little while – we’ve been busy working on plans for the exhibition, but we’ll be elaborating some of the discussions from the conference on the blog over the next couple of weeks. Please check back in again soon and use our new Facebook Connect feature to join in the discussion or point your friends in the direction of the site!

We Love Your Feedback

Fergus Bisset — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:20:42 +0000

Thanks to all of you out there who have given us feedback as part of our early user testing of the website, as you might have noticed we have implemented many of your ideas and suggestions already. This was always the plan with this site, for it to grow with the project and be directly influenced by feedback provided by you the users.

We're growing the Real World Design Site With Your Help

As advocates of human centred design, we are passionate about hearing your views on both site content and design. We truly want this site to be pleasurable and interesting to use and navigate. We also hope that these values will be reflected in the exhibition we are designing for you and which will open in November 2009 at the Design Museum. If at any time you see that we are not fulfilling these aims for you then we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Changes in the site that we have implemented today in response to your feedback:

Reduced the size of the logo image at the top of the page.
Injected some more colour into the site, specifically into the navigation bar on the left.
Restructured the navigation bar and moved it up to the top of the page to make it easier to use.
Introduced the ‘tag-cloud’ to allow you search for posts by keyword simply by clicking one of them, this feature also allows you a quick overview of the emergent themes of the site.
Renewed commitment to include more pictures in the posts and make our writing ever more incisive.
More external links, which we will continue to include to sites that we think will help you understand more about Ergonomics and Human-Centred Design. If you know of any good links you think we should include or you have a site that is about Ergonomics and Human Factors and you want us to link to it just get in touch.

Thanks very much again for your help in making this site better!

“Examples of Poor Design…are occasions to learn”

Fergus Bisset — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:14:04 +0000

Really interesting post here from Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen Blog if you have seen any similar case studies of poor design or Ergonomics please let us know via the comments links on this site, we’re on the hunt for inspiration and your stories that could become exhibits in our exhibition at the Design Museum in a year’s time.

An example of a poor consideration of Ergonomics courtesy of Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen Blog

The obvious question is how could the designer have used Ergonomics or a Human Centred Design Process to prevent the confusion that this key card clearly caused on numerous occasions?

Make sure that the text was suitably legible for all the likely users of the product.
That there was a legible instruction on the ‘wrong side’ of the key to turn it over.
And perhaps even an indication on the lock itself of which side up the key should be entered.

In an ideal world and to eliminate the likelihood of human error there should only be one way of inserting the key into the door and that is the right way. (For more on this visit Dan Lockton’s excellent Architectures of Control Blog)

Alternative Human Centred Design of Hotel Door Lock

It is our contention that a true Human Centred Design process would be asking why use a key card in the first place when users have a very clear mental picture of how to use a conventional key? The above very quick concept shows that by designing the key card to be more representative of a users mental image of what a key should look like, it might help eliminate some of the potential for error. The design process should also have involved extensive user testing of the design to highlight any misunderstandings before the product was released to market.

Are you a designer or an ergonomist with some ideas about this? Get in touch and lets start a discussion on the subject…

Over the next few weeks we are going to be running a series of posts explaining a bit more about the different facets of ergonomics and how the various sub-disciplines and practitioners of Ergonomics work together to make things better. So if there are any examples of products or systems out there and you want to know how or why Ergonomists and Designers have made them the way they are or how they might make them better, send them in via the comments link on this page and we’ll use them as case studies.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Did Ergonomics Let Down The License Payer?

Fergus Bisset — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:31:17 +0000

An interesting observation upon reading the BBC Trust findings on the Brand/Ross incident which has been filling column inches in the UK over the past few weeks:

“At 12:22 on Friday the [BBC Radio 2 Controller] Controller sent a one word reply from her BlackBerry authorising inclusion of the [controversial] material ‘Yes’ “

I’m sure most of us can empathise with having to simplify or hurry our response to something either by text message or email, or in fact misunderstanding something completely that we might perhaps have preferred to communicate in more detail in person or over the phone.

To our mind this is a similar symptom of poor ergonomics to that of “User Self Blame” discussed in our last post: In this case the issue is of users being held responsible for how they communicate when how they communicate may have been heavily influenced by limitations in the product or system they were using. Or limitations imposed by their ability or inability to use that product or system. Those limitations could most likely have occurred as a result of poor consideration of the user’s ergonomic requirements, such as how easy the original message was to read on the phone and thus how well it was understood. Or how easy it was to write a reply to the message which might have led to a short and nondescript response.

The reality is that it may have been a combination of factors entirely independent of the BBC Radio Controller receiving and responding to an email on her mobile phone, that led to all the problems. What was revealing however, was how the report from the BBC Trust made reference to that fact that she had used a Blackberry to do so. Perhaps implying that this was a contributing factor in her making the decision that she did.

Have you ever felt limited by technology?

Have you experienced any situations where there was a breakdown in communication or an unintended consequence of you using technology?

Do you think this might have been caused by the technology not allowing you to behave or communicate in the way you really wanted to?

We’d love to hear about stories like this as we think very often they occur as a result of a poor consideration of the Ergonomics of the user and could therefore be great additions to our exhibition at the Design Museum.