Posts Tagged ‘User Centred Design’

Ergonomically Designed!

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

The title says it all for the point of this post – the use of the phrase ‘ergonomically designed’ in adverts. It’s one of my big bugbears, and I’m sure it’ll crop up time and again in this blog. Typically associated with consumer products, what we usually find is that it’s got a rubberised grip or somesuch, but more often than not you could put safe money on there never having been an ergonomist within a hundred yards of it.

But if I’m taking issue over whether there’s been any ‘proper’ ergonomics on the product, I should say what it means to be ‘properly’ ergonomically designed. Really, it can be anything from a relatively small focus group or user testing trials, right the way through to structured scientific studies and full-on analyses. It all depends on the context (you might not want to spend a huge amount of money and time on a tape measure, but if it’s a complex safety-critical system you’ll probably be more inclined to invest in it), the key point being that it has been designed with users, or with users in mind.

The latest one I’ve seen is the JML ‘Ped-egg’, essentially a cheese grater but for getting dead skin off your feet (charming, of course). Halfway through the TV ad (which streams on their website) they show off how it’s ‘ergonomically designed’, with someone showcasing how it fits in their hand (ironically, their hand actually looks rather big for it).

Now, before the JML legal eagles come down on me, or I unknowingly upset the chief ergonomist at JML, I’m not necessarily saying this is a false claim – they may well have done some ‘proper’ ergonomics on it (make your own mind up). But, to step away from the Ped-egg and return to the general case, there are two things going on with this kind of advert. First, there’s the potential abuse of the term – it’s like ‘knock-off ergonomics’. That’s not just us being precious as ergonomists – it’s the kind of thing that can give the whole field a bad name, if such an ‘ergonomically designed’ product ends up giving someone RSI or something. All our hard work to convince people of the cost-benefit equation in ergonomics down the drain.

But on the other hand, there’s something of a silver lining here. For manufacturers to be making these claims in such a high-profile way suggests that they see it as adding value to their product. Ergonomics as a marketing tool – fancy that! Naturally I’m biased, but I think that should be the case for anything. Ergonomics should add value, and it should be a selling point – but only if it’s done properly.

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Ergonomics is 60!

Friday, February 13th, 2009

On BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme this morning, there was a piece on the 60th anniversary of Murphy’s law – the law of physics which states that “everything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. It was prefaced as one of the year’s anniversaries that will affect us more on a day-to-day basis than, say, Darwin or Galileo’s discoveries.

I’ve got another one. This year coincidentally marks the 60th anniversary of ergonomics in the UK – as it was in 1949 that the Ergonomics Research Society first formed. Now known as The Ergonomics Society (and changing its name this year to the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors) the Society is the UK’s professional body for this field, with some 1500 members.

I’m involved with The Ergonomics Society as its Chair of External Relations, and we’re planning a host of events throughout the year to mark the anniversary. There is a series of breakfast meetings for industry practitioners, there’s an historical Society lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in May, a prestigious anniversary conference at the Royal College of Physicians in April, and we’re culminating with an ergonomics exhibition at the Design Museum opening in November.

The exhibition, which we’ve called Real World Design, is being run in partnership between Brunel University (myself and Fergus Bisset),Loughborough University (Prof Roger Haslam), the Design Museum and Laura Grant Associates, with support from The Ergonomics Society and the Office of the Rail Regulator. The project is funded by the EPSRC, and I dare say I’ll be keeping you updated on it here as it progresses.

I like the synergy with the Murphy’s law anniversary – ergonomics affects us all at an everyday level, and in many cases it is also about things going wrong. That is, a good application of ergonomics can stop (human-made) things going wrong in the first place. Maybe then, some years in the future, we could be celebrating another big milestone for ergonomics and everyone will have forgotten about Murphy’s law…

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Did Ergonomics Let Down The License Payer?

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

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 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.

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