October 17, 2014

UX special event on Human Factors in Product Design – 14th October 2014 at Hotel du Vin – Brighton

What a venue (main picture thanks to Danny Hope –http://dannyhope.co.uk), what an event! This month’s UX event in the Hotel du Vin here in Brighton was a pearler! Tim Minor was kind enough to invite Dr Eddy Elton, Cathy Grundy and myself to give a series of talks surrounding the use of Human Factors in Product Design. Eddy gave a great comparison between UX and HF, and how HF has been used to develop successful products. Cathy presented some of her recent research into using interaction principles to help understand how perception mechanisms can be used to develop usable artefacts. I on the other hand, discussed some current challenges with 3D printing, and gave an overview of the present state of bicycle design from a human factors perspective. The event went down a treat, with a full house under a glamorous chandelier made of wine glasses – and some lovely beer in the bar afterwards. It’s always great to present in these kinds of events, where you get to meet a range of people from varied backgrounds who are all enthusiastic. The conversations moved from human factors and the overlaps with UX, to spacial awareness and the links between creative thinking, sketching, physics, psychology. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening (for me anyway), and it was great to see so many of our own students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) there too. Many thanks to Tim and Danny and all the UX crew for such a professional, stimulating evening. For a full breakdown of the event, and with videos of the talks coming soon, visit: http://lanyrd.com/2014/ux-human-factors-and-ergonomics/. There’s also the upcoming UX conference in Brighton, and student tickets are only £50! http://lanyrd.com/2014/uxbri/

Photo: Danny Hope (http://dannyhope.co.uk )

April 22, 2013

Designing for People – Part 2

A wealth of presentations were given at the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors annual conference last week, and I wanted to share just some of the key snippets of knowledge from the conference:
– British Standards are about knowledge – knowledge about what ‘good’ looks like. They are devised to be best practice enablers – they help people to deliver better. Standards are not regulations; regulations detail the minimum legal requirement, complying with standards is not a legal requirement (note: some regulations are called standards which creates confusion in this area).

– Good design requires the consideration of the three P’s – People (the benefit the product delivers to the users, how usable and desirable it is), Profit (commercial viability, technical viability and compatibility), and Planet (resource consumption, waste control, energy efficiency).

– In order to develop inclusive technologies there is a need to understand past experiences with technology and draw on the forms of interactions they demanded of their users, e.g., single action single response for today’s elders.

– Usability and sustainability can be thought of as mutually inclusive and complementary components. This insight was gained from a tap design study that subjectively measured the usability of three taps in public toilets; usability scores were then compared to the amount of water used when people washed their hands.

Eddy Elton