Federal Benefits Website: Basic human factors error
Posted by jasonwong in perception on June 29th, 2009
FEDVIP is the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, and there is an online signup form. You sign up for Vision and Dental separately, and here is the status page that I got after signing up for a Vision plan:
I am Not Enrolled in dental, and this is in red. Red is the generally symbolic of something negative, and Not Enrolled could certainly be considered Not Enrolled.
However, I Am Enrolled in vision, and even though the message is “I am Enrolled” – a positive thing – this text is still in red. It should definitely be in green.
The major issue is that someone could log on to check their enrollment status and think that, by seeing two red lines, something is in error. But it’s not, and it’s a moment of minor panic that can certainly be avoided.
Suggestions made to the right ear are more likely to be followed
Posted by jasonwong in audition, neuroscience, perception on June 28th, 2009
Generally speaking, the left side of the brain processes language and is more logical, whereas the right side of the brain is more impulsive and creative. In the laboratory, it has been shown that when subjects are given verbal streams in the left and right ear, the stream in the right ear tends to take precedence – presumably demonstrating the preference for the language processing in the left hemisphere (which is where right ear auditory input goes for processing). However, laboratory conditions are rarely representative of the real world.
A group of Italian scientists, however, took this research into the real world.
You’re in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, “Hai una sigaretta?”
If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left.
“The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior,” write psychologists Daniele Marzoli and Luca Tommasi of the University G. d’Annunzio in Italy in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
So now we know – not just in the lab, but in a nightclub! The right ear is more open to processing speech, so for something like a request, it is the ear to use.
Recession to reduce number of consumer choices
Posted by jasonwong in decision making, marketing on June 20th, 2009
First: I am finally settled in Rhode Island and mostly unpacked. My job with the Navy as a Human Factors Scientist begins this Monday, June 22. Now that I’m mostly back to normal, hopefully I will be able to post here more often. Thanks for your patience and continuing to read this blog. And now, to the content.
The recession has hit everyone hard, of course, and the New York Times has an article detailing how big chain stores (Wal-Mart and Target, of course, but also Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s) may drastically change the way they operate in order to respond to how consumers shop these days.
This is a human factors blog, so a majority of the article (while interesting) does not apply here. Except for one snippet that has to do with too much choice, which has been dealt with on this blog here and is the subject of an entire book by Barry Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice). It all boils down to decision making, and anyone who has been overwhelmed by the number of cereal, laundry detergent, or new car choices has experienced this crippling cognitive/decision-making process.
However, due to the recession and the fact that stores cannot keep as much stock on hand at any given time (because money is tied up in unsold products), soon consumers will have less choice. From the article:
Another change is that consumers will have fewer brands from which to choose. Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, and PetSmart are just a few of the chains winnowing their brands. As Home Depot’s executive vice president for merchandising, Craig Menear, put it: consumers are “time-starved” and “looking for simplification in the entire shopping experience.”
That may delight minimalists, because it will be easier to find items on the shelves. But it also limits choice.
In the case of the cereal aisle, fewer choices may not be a bad thing.
Summer Reading List
Posted by jasonwong in consciousness, decision making, robots on June 3rd, 2009
It has been an insane few weeks with moving from Virginia to Rhode Island, and then travel to the Midwest for family events, which is why there have been no new posts. However, I have been doing a lot of reading since I have not had much Internet access recently either.
Wired for War
Wired for War by P.W. Singer is a book about the coming robotic revolution in warfare. The author is a young analyst at the Brookings Institute, which is a political think tank. I was pleasantly surprised that the author was not a gung-ho military man nor was he an anti-military hippie. He is, however, a geek. The first part of the book details all the current and up and coming robots used by the military, and there is a sense of awe as he describes these military machines that, for a science fiction geek like myself, are really cool.
The second part of the book is also a fascinating read, but not in the same way as the first. Here, Singer discusses the implications of the robotic revolution, and there are many. A section of the book is dedicated to traditional human factors, discussing usability issues and the like. The discussion of who should be held responsible if a flying drone fired a missle on the wrong target is especially chilling. If the pilot entered the right coordinates and the machine messed up, should the programmers and engineers be held responsible? In a military trial?
There are also discussions of how drone pilots live in Nevada, work a shift where they kill enemy combatants, then make it home in time for family dinner and a PTA meeting. It is a totally different experience from a Marine actually on the ground, but they are both soldiers, right?
All in all, the book is a great read. From whiz-bang technology to psychological and societal implications, this book is well-researched and considers all facets of the issues. The second half of the book could have used a more thorough editor, in my opinion, as I felt that the author repeated points across chapters and lost a natural flow of ideas because ideas where not contained in their own chapters.
If you can get past a mildly sloppy second half, however, the entire book is worth reading for anyone in the military (like myself as a civilian Human Factors Scientist) or anyone who has interests in military technology or even technologically-oriented science fiction buffs.
Blink
Blink by Malcom Gladwell has been out for a while, so I will keep my review short. The book is fantastic. Gladwell focuses on the idea of rapid cognition. He is careful to not call this intuition, which he feels is more emotional. Rapid cognition is more about near-instant unconscious thought. That split second decision that something is not quite right bit you are not sure what. Or what love at first sight is. Or how unconscious prejudices can affect our social interactions despite our conscious attitudes on race.
The topic itself is interesting, and so is Gladwell’s writing style. He weaves in appropriate and engaging stories that introduce his point and then often goes into psychological research the further illustrates his points. Finally, he talks about how these ideas have real-world implications for how to better live our lives.
In short, the book argues that our rapid cognition is a useful tool as long as we know where it can go wrong. Blink is the perfect example of an engaging pedagogy, and I definitely plan to incorporate this book the next time I teach my Cognitive Psychology class.
Books Still on the List
I also plan on reading the human factors design classic The Design of Everyday Things. Donald Norman, the author, is a giant in the field (especially with regards to design) and this book is one of his earlier writings but remains one of the best. Considering I have my PhD in human factors, it is one of those books that I should read.
Elsevier and Merck: A dispicable combination
It’s a busy time here, with George Mason University graduation and also moving to Rhode Island soon, but I had to share this shocking story.
The Scientist article (free registration required)
The Bioethics Blog post
Nature.com Writeup of the incident
Scientific publishing giant Elsevier put out a total of six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored by unnamed pharmaceutical companies and looked like peer reviewed medical journals, but did not disclose sponsorship, the company has admitted.
Elsevier is conducting an “internal review” of its publishing practices after allegations came to light that the company produced a pharmaceutical company-funded publication in the early 2000s without disclosing that the “journal” was corporate sponsored.
The allegations involve the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a publication paid for by pharmaceutical company Merck that amounted to a compendium of reprinted scientific articles and one-source reviews, most of which presented data favorable to Merck’s products. The Scientist obtained two 2003 issues of the journal — which bore the imprint of Elsevier’s Excerpta Medica — neither of which carried a statement obviating Merck’s sponsorship of the publication.
So Merck, a pharmaceutical company, paid Elsevier, a huge publisher of legitimate peer-reviewed journals, to publish what essentially was an advertisement in the form of a real journal. The only possible goal in doing that would be to sell more Merck drugs. Which is the job of Merck’s marketing department.
Elsevier, however, has a reputation to maintain as a publisher of rigorous research. They are already disliked for keeping copyright on the articles they publish and making it expensive to access those articles, and now this just exemplifies their greed.
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This news is extremely disappointing for all parties involved, and certain casts a pall on Elsevier’s reputation. Which is disappointing because one of my journal articles is published in an Elsevier journal It also does no favors for Big Pharma either. |
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