human factors in election news coverage

As most of you know by now, I am a big advocate of understanding what users want before designing a system so you can best meet their needs and expectations. The news coverage of this critical election sucked in this regard.

What most people wanted to know in this situation, besides the results of a particular race, is what the democrats' chances of taking the House and/or Senate were. So what we would have liked to know during the coverage is "of the races that are still too close to call, the dems need 4 out of 5 in the Senate and 3 out of 10 in the House" or something to that effect. That would help us to estimate they have a 70% chance of taking the House and a 20% chance of taking the Senate.

Instead, the news said "The democrats need to take 3 more seats from Senate Republicans and 20 more from House Republicans." But this is totally not helpful because some of those races could be easy to call (for either party), and some of the democrat encumbents could also be in close races. And we don't know how many close races are left. From this information, it is impossible to even estimate the odds. There is too much missing information.

So news guys, listen up. Think about what the viewers need and present information in a way that helps!!!

Good information supports retail usability

I haven't decided yet if this constitutes really good information or just enough to make a decision even more confusing, but this article about Hannaford Brothers grocery chain in New England brings up some interesting thoughts.

In order for consumers to make good retail decisions, we need good information. Whether we like it or not, nutritional information is important. Too many of us are obese, diabetic, and getting worse. And the current standard practice for labeling food is confusing to many. I did some research on these labels (send me an email if you want a copy) and it shows most people don't really pay attention to details and just trust a generic claim like "reduced fat" to indicate the product is healthy. This is not true.

In Hannaford's system, all important criteria (transfat, total fat, sodium, sugar, calories) must be at reasonable levels to get three stars (on a zero to three star scale). Even otherwise healthful products (V8 vegetable juice) get zero stars when something is too high (sodium). This is why it is a little confusing because for those of us who are not diabetic and don't get too much salt, V8 is very good for us. But the idea is good, because labels like "antioxidant rich" "zero fat" etc can make someone think it is a great food choice when it may not be.

So I applaud Hannaford's strategy, but maybe they need to update the implementation a little bit.

HF drives the politics of religious fundamentalism

Here is a really interesting one.

Originally, religious fundamentalism included values such as fighting poverty, creating world peace, ending hunger as well as outlawing abortion and gay marriage.

But those first few are very difficult to do, can't be done 100% or permanently.
On the other hand, outlawing abortion and gay marriage are binary laws or Supreme Court decisions. They are easier to accomplish and certainly easier to talk about in sound bites.

So abortion and gay marriage got more repetitions in ads and speeches. They therefore became stronger connections in the schema of both the population listening and the fundamentalists and politicians speaking. So eventually, these issues dominated the agenda at the virtual exclusion of the rest.

So the human factors of the process drove the setting of the fundamentalist agenda.

media effects on schema

A study by Pew found that the approval rating of the US in Turkey has been really low. At first, they hypothesized it was related to the Iraq war. But further analysis discovered that some recent very popular movies in Turkey are shoot-em-up action movies where the bad guys are Americans. This led to the lower approval ratings.

It is not surprising that media, even though we know they are fictional, can impact the affective connections of real schema. These movies were very salient because they were fun, violent, action-filled, loud, etc. So it didn't matter that they were also tagged as fictional, they can't help but influence the development of ethnic schema of Americans.

The same thing happens in the US when communities with few minorities see our movies that depict African-American and Hispanic characters as drug dealers, criminals, etc. Because the movies are salient, they are the only experience some people have with minorities, and they are repetitive (most movies do this), they strongly impact schema. It is a shame that the media have such a deleterious affect on so many people. And we do know that they are fictional, so it is hard to argue for any kind of regulation.

bias in surveys

It is easy to get the answers you want from a survey. All you have to do is write the questions to 'encourage' the answers you want. Of course, the purpose of a survey is NOT to get the answers you want, so this is more of an example of what NOT to do.

Here is a good example. This is a survey to see if the respondent has libertarian views.

Question 1a) Do you believe in free speech? Answer 1a) Of course!!!
Question 1b) Do you believe that terrorists should be able to promote hatred of the United States on college campuses and in town centers? Answer 1b) Well . . . .

Question 2a) Do you believe that the government should end corporate welfare and stop giving handouts to companies? Answer 2a) Strongly!!!
Question 2b) Do you believe the government should provide R&D support for alternative energy and other promising new technologies? Of course they should!!

As you can see, the average person would come out as a libertarian using survey a) but not in survey b).

This also shows the importance of using examples. When you use an example, the question's implication becomes much clearer. But what you have to do to ensure objectivity is to provide an example on both sides so that you don't bias the answer.

negative political ads

This week, the Virginia Senate race really heated up (article). The Republican incumbent George Allen read a passage from a novel written by Democratic challenger James Webb about 30 years ago. The novels are historical and based on experiences that Webb had as a journalist in Bangkok. But the scenes in question are very sexually explicit and I can see how they would offend the conservative voter.

But what I want to blog about today is Webb's response. I think he did it exactly the wrong way. From a Human Factors point of view, what Allen did was create connections in voters' minds from Webb to sexually explicit scenes. Anyone against explicitness will have connections to negative affect from this. And no one will really have positive connections, because while many people are in favor of free speech, no one is really in favor of explicitness in itself.

But Webb's response just magnified this. He talked about how legitimate these scenes are because they come from his real experiences. But all this does is create salient repetition in voters' minds from Webb to the sexual explicitness. For those who are offended, his logic wouldn't sway them at all, and may make it worse. And for those who aren't offended, it strengthens connections that have no effect. Either way, he doesn't accomplish anything positive for his campaign.

What he should have done is create brand new connections that would appeal to different kinds of voters while ignoring the specifics of the explicit scenes. For example he could have said something like:

"This is clearly a desperate attempt by my opponent to bring up 30-year old news that has nothing to do with the real issues of this Senate race. I am sure that the citizens of the great state of Virginia can see through this ploy and will vote based on the issues on November 7th."

By avoiding any mention of the sex, he avoids strengthening these connections. And he creates several beneficial connections of his own: That Allen is desperate, that he has a high opinion of Virginia voters' intelligence, that the novel is from many years ago, and that it is irrelevant (whether it really is or not).

Whoever advised Webb on his response needs to study his/her human factors.

conflicts of interest

Disclosure is clearly not the answer to conflicts of interest. A 2005 study in the Journal of Legal Studies (recently cited at Business Week) found that when someone discloses a conflict of interest, they are more likely to exaggerate their position. And those who receive the disclosure do not add the grain of salt they should. So the practical implication is that you should admit to any conflicts without worrying about consequences and then feel free to make up whatever you want (yes, I am exaggerating here !!!).

So what does human factors say about this? My sense is that when making any point, there are two competing incentives - personal payoff, which has high salience and strong low-brain instinctive connections, and ethics, which is more deep-brain connected. And recent studies have shown that short term decisions are made more by the emotional than the rational brain areas. So when speaking or presenting, the payoff connections will be activated first and any excuse to use them will overcome the rational ethics of being completely honest. Not that experts would lie, but exaggerating is easy to rationalize when it is based on truth.

But perhaps for long term discussion with long term payoff (writing journal papers) we are better at being rational and can be more honest. That is a study that still needs to be done.

human factors of sleep

The following was just reported in the Harvard Business Review. The authors discussed the results in terms of how the workforce is hurting productivity, but it applies pretty generally. All of these findings can be explained easily with basic cognitive science as global fatigue of activation, particularly inhibitory connections. But we often don't account for them in design, either of products that people use when they are sleepy or work systems where employees may be sleepy.

• Stay awake longer than 18 consecutive hours and your reaction speed, memory, attention-span and decision-making all start to suffer.
• Five or six hours of sleep a night for several days in a row has a cumulative effect that magnifies these negatives.
• Throughout the waking day, humans build up a stronger and stronger drive for sleep.
• Most people can't get to sleep without some wind-down time, even if they are very tired.
• There is a transitional phase between when you wake up and the time your brain becomes fully functioning. This is why making key decisions at the crack of dawn is never a good idea.
• A person who is sleep deprived has no idea how functionally impaired he or she actually is.

Source: "Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer," Harvard Business Review, October, 2006, Vol. 84, No. 10. Pages 53-59.

netflix movie recommendations

Netflix is offerring $1 million to anyone who can improve their system for making recommendations by 10% or more. Why is this human factors? Because Netflix's business model is based on getting people to rent many movies. If the customer already knows what movies they want, this is easy. But what happens when he/she runs out of ideas? If they stop renting, Netflix loses. So they need a way to get people to rent movies they didn't know about. Random recommendations would never work, so they need some way to predict their customers' schemas for "good movie." But everyone has a different set of attributes for this. So they need to be able to model their customers' individual schemas of "good movie" based on the limited information they collect about each one, which includes:
1. some basic demographics they collect during registration
2. a list of the movies they have renting so far and when (more recent is more relevant)
3. a list of movies they have browsed but not rented
4. lists of favorite movies or wish lists
5. ratings of movies they have seen in the past

Then they develop algorithms that can include:

1. Movies that people who liked the same movies also liked
2. Movies that people with similar demographics also liked
3. Movies that share attributes with movies that this customer liked.

If you are interested in trying to win the $1 million, let me know. I would be happy to share with you the research I have done in this area.

information architecture in the real world

Neiman Marcus just created a new boutique style store (not a web site - a real store) that is organized differently from its traditional department stores (and different from the usual model). The main difference is the information (or in this case content) organization.

Usually, department stores are organized by product. Shirts are in one place, pants in another, jewelry in another, etc. But in this new store, called CUSP, it is organized by user profile. So for the 20-something trendster, there will be all of the products that this person may want to buy: shirts, pants, suits, accessories, etc. So to check out multiple items, the person stays in the same place. This makes it easier to create matching outfits, try on items from multiple product categories etc.

Is this a great idea or what !! It shows simple attention to human factors. It significantly reduces navigation (which I would claim is even more important in a bricks and mortar store because real travel is required). And it increases the chance of impulse purchases because everything is in view, including that cute purse that would go great with the new pant suit.

But what I would really like to know is what took them so long??? Department stores have been around for decades!!!

HF of trans fat

Human factors can have a huge impact on the design of systems. Take for example how we choose the food to eat. Two years ago, no one had heard of trans fat. We happily ate oreo cookies and other baked goods oblivious to the damage we were doing to our health.

Then we learned how bad it was for us. But still, it didn't affect our eating because we didn't realize how much of it was in certain foods. So only after the nutrition labels were changed to include trans fat did behavior change. Adding it to the label made the amounts VISIBLE to the user. As soon as it did, there were huge effects. All of a sudden, companies starting making their products with no (or less) trans fat so that people would buy them. We now have trans fat free cookies, cakes, etc.

But we still get lots of trans fat in our foods - because restaurants don't have to have labels, so they can put as much in as they want. And they do. So Americans, Europeans, and most other people continue to get obese in record numbers. If we want to solve the problem, we don't need government to ban trans fat. We value our freedom of choice (trans fat isn't addictive like smoking where we have to be protected). What we need is simply good human factors design. We need the content of the foods we eat to be VISIBLE and then we can make intelligent choices all on our own.

Muslim head scarfs

This is an interesting topic for human factors. I am addressing this more as a cognitive analysis rather than a usability issue. There was an interview on NPR this morning with two teenagers who wear headscarves. They constantly were asked if wearing these scarves made them feel less free. But they replied that because it is their choice to wear the scarf, they feel more freedom. They can either wear them or not, but non-muslims only have the option not to wear them. Interesting point of view.

The reason I think this is a good human factors issue is because of the development of the schema in the girls' feelings about the scarf. I guess you can associate just about any attributes you want to an object if you have the right attitude. That shows you why optimists live longer than pessimists and satisficers live longer than maximizers.

fortune cookies

Many people are familiar with the story that buildings put mirrors in front of elevators as a way to keep people busy while waiting for the elevator to arrive. It is cheaper to do this than to speed up the elevator.

Well, I just learned that the fortune cookie was invented by a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles to accomplish the same thing. They were served at the beginning of the meal to keep diners busy while they were waiting for their food to arrive.

It is amazing what user requirements can be accomplished through innovative design, rather than solving the most obvious problem. We can design web pages with lots of high resolution graphics as long as we force something that will keep users busy to download first and fast.

In the interest of adding our gender topic to this post, I wonder how much of this is gender-based. I have always heard that men are more impatient than women. It could also be cultural, with Americans being more impatient than Asians.

think big at business week

I love it when major business pubs have articles on human factors. Business Week is the latest (article here). The best thing is that it is short and to the point (i.e. the article is usable itself :-D).

This particular article is about Enterprise Usability (although that is my term, so they don't use it). The idea is that the whole business has to provide a good user experience, from brand image to customer service, with the actual product only being one part.

Go BWeek!!!

gaming table from Phillips

Here is a good example of a product that is predicted to attract more males than females. It is a gaming table from Philips (brief article and photos). But since I am not a gamer, I thought I should ask. Are the women out there interested in taking their board games electronic?

How is this better than the regular cardboard game? You still need to game pieces, so you have to store some physical objects. Does it add convenience? Or is it just the cool factor?

welcome HF class

Today is the first day of my undergraduate human factors course at FIU. Since I will tell them about the blog, I expect a few of them to visit between now and winter break. Please comment anytime you like (and get bonus class participation points!).

Also, I joined a research project that wants to know what people think about gender issues - specifically masculinity. I don't know much about it yet, but if anyone sees any important gender issues in the subjects I cover in the blog, feel free to comment on them.

calming fear

There was a study a saw abstracted that suggests that cartoons are better than mothers at calming childrens' fears. I thought about it for a few minutes, and it made perfect sense:

Cartoons distract the child from the fear. Basically, it activates a completely different area of the brain. If the cartoon is salient enough, it can attract all of the child's attentive capacity, thus reducing the fear to zero.

Mothers soothe the child. They assure them that the fear is not real and that they are OK. Essentially, they are inhibiting the fear and associating the current state with the "things are OK" schema. This may solve the problem, but does not eliminate the fear activation completely.

So a good cartoon will always be better than a good mother for this kind of need. As long as the fear is not based on some real-world situation that must be addressed by the child, ignorance is bliss.

expert v novice

In-N-Out Burger has a great approach to supporting expert and novices and they do it in a way that creates community as well. They have a very short/simple menu that is perfect for novices. But for experts that want something different, they have an unlisted expert menu. This also supports maximizers because they can have the exact combination they want.

What makes the community - the hidden menu has its own language. People who want to feel 'cool' can use the language so that other customers realize they are an expert customer.


From a pure human factors point of view, the hidden language has great visibility and mapping. For the basic criteria, which compose most of the customization customers will want (my prediction based on no data :-D), the customer simply provides two numbers in the format x by y. X refers to the number of burgers and y to the number of cheese slices. So you can get 5 patties and 3 slices of cheese by saying "5 by 3" Very intuitive, easy to recall, short - all the good usability principles.


But the key question is - "how does one convert from a novice to an expert. If you have friends, that would work. Or is you happen on it on Wikipedia. But in general, there is a whole bunch of service functionality that is invisible.

retrospective protocols

I just experienced a great example of why retrospective protocols are fraught with error. I was walking down the hall and asked a colleague how he was doing. I thought he said "hot" but I wasn't sure. I asked him what he said. He had no idea. He guessed that he said "I'm fine thank you." Clearly, this could not have been it - it sounds nothing like "hot."

What he did, according to retrospective protocol studies, is search his schema for a logical or typical way to answer the question, rather than his memory of what he really said. This happens a lot in retrospective protocols. Instead of reported what they were thinking at the time, users develop rational explanations that often do not correspond with reality. Often, what they were really thinking is not logical or easy to articulate. And also hard to remember, even soon after.

Cleanflicks

Wow, two in one day. Are you guys lucky!!!

I just read about a Federal Court decision that ruled against Cleanflicks et al. They are no longer allowed to edit DVDs of movies to remove the sex and violence. One of the key issues was whether the modified movies were transformative (added in value) or derivative (just different). The court found that removing content can not add value.

From a Human Factors point of view, I find these totally against everything I know. How many web sites have you improved by removing clutter, outdated content, superfluous animation or graphics, etc? The judges need a good HF course!!!!