unintended consequences

Here is a good one about unintended consequences and multi-functional devices. The obvious benefit of multi-functional devices is that you only have to carry around one device instead of several. So in theory, you are more likely to use a function because you are more likely to have it with you when you feel like using it.

But companies have discovered there is leverage involved in this relationship. Sometimes, people use the device just because they have it, even if they don't really have a specific desire for the function. The cliche is that when you are holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Another product use insight is the risk curve. People are comfortable with a certain level of risk. So if you reduce the risk associated with a product, it does not make users safer. Instead, they use the product more aggressively or more often so that the experienced risk stays the same. This was seen in tests of non-lethal weapons given to soldiers and police. Because the person being shot was not killed, users lowered their threshold for use. In other words, they didn't need to be quite as sure an adversary deserved to be shot in order to use the weapon because they didn't have to worry that an innocent person would die. They would just be hurt/inconvenienced. This occurred with weapons such as stun guns, laser guns (that shoot bursts of intense heat that don't actually burn the skin), etc.

So here is a new proposal that I think would do wonders for public civility. A company proposed combining a taser with a cell phone. Imagine if everyone not only had a taser with them, but it was often right in their hand. Want to shut up that annoying person on the subway? Taser them. Your friend giving you a hard time across the table at the restaurant? Taser them under the table. How long would it take for us to start being really nice to each other????

fictional schema

One of the challenges that we face when working in the real world is that people have all kinds of experiences in a variety of contexts. Because schema develop unconsciously in a non-differentiated way, except when there is a specific reason to differentiate them. So if we think of a reason to differentiate after the fact, it is too late, even when the aggregation directly violates a task objective.

That is a complicated way to describe the following example. When people watch Law and Order, the develop an opinion of Fred Thompson's character. On the show, he is strong, tough on crime, and several other good qualities. But of course, these are written by the scriptwriters and director, not Fred himself. But since viewers only know him as the character, they have no reason to have two schemas of him, one of the character's attributes and one of his real attributes.

But now that he is running for president (his real person), it is too late for people to associate the older episodic memories with "fictional" and the new ones with "presidential candidates." They can when they concentrate on it, but most people generate gut instincts without this kind of concentration. In fact, that's what makes it a gut instinct.

In studies of this kind of situation, people will attribute the fake qualities to the real person when asked to describe the real person. When pushed to report how they know, they will try hard to think of real events, and failing this, stretch the truth until something matches. This is not an intentional deception, but a natural, unconscious, brain function.

So in effect, people will be evaluating his qualifications for president based on his Law and Order characteristics.

I even find myself doing that. I like the show and I like his character on it. On the other hand, I don't like his real politics (he actually was a Senator from Tennessee for 8 years). But when I see him, I can't help but like him because of his character. Even though I know the difference.

I guess it doesn't really matter though. People get elected for a lot worse reasons than that.

Easy and simple

There have been a ton of articles lately in all of the business magazines, newspapers etc that discuss how products that have tons of features and are complicated to use are losing out to simpler products with fewer features but that do a few things well.

There are examples in video games (the Wii), cell phones, portable word processors (the Neo), and many others. I love reading stories like these because it shows that usability beats sexy technology every time (at least as soon as customers figure out which models are the usable ones).
The research studies that look in more detail into this phenomenon find that new customers make their first purchase based on the number of features because they don't know what is usable and what isn't. This is especially true for "early adopters" who care more about bragging rights than use anyway. But the bulk of the customer base cares more about usability because they need to use the core functions on a regular basis. If they were unlucky and purchased an unusable model, they switch on their next purchase. So new customers get suckered, which explains the popularity of the sexy models at first, but the usable ones win out in the end.

Go Team!!!

Bad bets in health care

I hope this link stays active long enough for anyone interested to read it. It makes an interesting point about public policies that are "bad bets" that have a strong human factors component.

Consider this example: There are two people who are very sick and require medical care that costs $25,000 to treat. Person A has a 50% chance of getting better with treatment. Person B has a 5% chance of getting better with treatment. You can either:
1) give Person B the treatment
2) give Person A the treatment
3) split the money and half treat them both, which reduces their chance of improving by 90% (so it would be 5% and 0.5% respectively.

Most people would select option 2. It gives the best bang for the buck. But what if there is no Person A. We can either:
1) treat person B and have a 5% chance of having an effect
2) distribute the $25,000 in medical care to other people in general, who have an average chance of improving of 50%.
3) distribute the $25,000 to the entire population to spend however they want.

Now which one should we do? Option 2) in the second situation is identical to option 2) in the first example in its effect. So if you preferred option 2) in the first example, you can't choose option 1) in the second. But the problem faced in our health care system is that when we are faced with a real Person B on one hand and a vague, unseen population on the other, we find it very hard not to treat person B and hope for the best. And the when we have a lucky 5%-er, it makes the news and makes it even harder to choose option 2) the next time.

This is why our health care system is so wasteful. We keep funding the bad bets because we can't look at a sick person and say no.

after a big error

When is the best time to be a patient? Ironically, it is immediately after your doctor makes a salient error. The reason is simple - that is when he/she is going to be paying the closest attention and double checking everything. If the error was a slip (insufficient attention) then the doctor will be paying extra attention. If the error was a mistake (incorrect situation schema) then the doctor will be double checking and studying the situation. If the doctor doesn't know why the error was made, he/she will probably be doing both.

Ironically, the way most organizations deal with big errors is to suspend the person from doing the activity. Quarterbacks are taken out of the game, employees are suspended, children are grounded, etc.

The better thing to do is to send them right back out with maximum repetitions so that the extra carefulness gets cemented into their normal routine. At the same time, the system needs to be evaluated to identify the root cause of the error. Are employees not sufficiently trained to recognize situation schema? Are there distractions that hide important information? Is the information not readily available?

Of course, this is when it was an error. If the person intentionally violated a rule, then the correct response is punishment. But people violate rules for many reasons. It may be that the rule was not presented with sufficient importance and consequence. Or the person was trying to satisfy one requirement by violating another. Even intention does not 100% indicate that the root cause is the violator him/herself.

This is a subject for a different post. Or you can take my upcoming summer course at FIU on performance management. It is available by Internet if you don't live in Miami.

speech fire alarms

I heard today about a new product that claims to be a more effective smoke/fire alarm. Instead of a siren, the alarm is a recorded voice. The idea is that when little kids wake up to an alarm, they are disoriented and confused. To hear specific instructions coming from their mom's voice is supposed to be helpful. The recording can be more than just "wake up." It can have detailed instructions like "There is a fire!! Get up and go out the back door right away!!!"

But I am conflicted on whether this is really better. I think that from a pure sensory salience perspective, there is not way that a voice is as loud or alarming as a siren. Also, the mom's voice is a common thing, so they won't instinctively associate it with an emergency. If they are sleeping, they may not hear enough of the voice to know it is the fire alarm. Also, as early as 10 years old, I am sure kids are trained to ignore their mom's voice waking them up: "Mom, I don't want to go to school today."

So the tradeoff is that a siren is better to wake them up and the voice is better to remind them of where to go. So which is more likely, that they fail to wake up or that they panic and forget where to go? I don't know this answer, but I suspect that the designers did not do the study to find out either. They guessed that this would be better and the lives of thousands of children will depend on them being correct. I hope they are.

airline pilot pay

The salaries of airline pilots is a great example of a way to structure pay that is misaligned with performance. The hardest part of flying is takeoff and landing. So if salaries is based on the task difficulty, then short haul pilots would get paid more. But in fact it is the opposite.

I suspect that these salaries are based on the size of the plane. Long haul flights generally have bigger planes. This could make a little sense if it is based on responsibility - more people in the plane = more people relying on the pilot's skills. But if takeoff and landing are really the hard parts, then many smaller flights still has more responsibility.

Or, they are influenced by seniority. Since longer flights are easier (the plane mostly flies itself), more senior pilots get them. Basing pay on seniority is somewhat controversial. It is common in unionized organizations. It makes sense to reward employees for staying at the company, especially in industries where there is tacit knowledge that makes the employee better at his/her job. But I personally think it is better to link the salary to this tacit knowledge directly - not the predictor of job tenure.

But this is a good example of the complexity of the real world. If pay were structured based on what really motivates performance (long term and short term), seniority would have some impact, but not nearly as much as it does. Politics and other non-engineering factors still play a large role.

Business Week on Usability

Another plug for Business Week. In their brief "Up Front" section last week they had an item saying that technology companies should stop adding features to their gadgets as a competitive advantage, and instead focus on the "wow factor." But then they described what they meant by the "wow factor" and it turns out to be simple usability. It is pretty sad that something so obvious, well-established among design professionals, and universally beneficial is so rare that is elicits a "wow" reaction among users.

But thanks to Business Week for pointing that out - although they didn't mention how sad it is.

Business Week on Work Design

Last week's Business Week had a great article on Danaher Corp. Much of the article promotes the business side, discussing the great way that Danaher has built a conglomerate of industrial companies that has outperformed GE, Berkshire Hathaway, and 3M. But they also have a pretty strong argument that the reason for this outperformance is the Danaher Business System, which is modeling on the Toyota Production System. According to the article, Danaher was among the first companies to promote lean process design. Key points include: "every employee, from the janitor to the president, to find ways every day to improve the way work gets done" and "a Danaher manager clutching a clipboard, a tape measure, and a stopwatch, in search of wasted motion, to tick off how many steps a data analyst has to take to get to the copier." They even use 5S: "floors are covered with strips of tape indicating where everything should be" . . . "managers determine the most efficient place for everything so a worker won't have to walk a few extra yards to pick up a tool."

But why haven't we heard of Danaher before? Because they "worried others would notice their results and copy the strategy" and "they didn't want to be raided for talent."

But that's Ok - because we are creating the talent and promoting the strategy in the Florida International University Industrial and Systems Engineering Department. For those readers in my class, prepare to read this article next week :-D.

New technologies always take a while to catch on

Thanks to Businessweek's Nussbaum on Design blog for this YouTube link. It is 2.5 minutes long, but had me laughing for hours (I still am).

The scary thing is that it is so true!!!

user requirements magnified

I was reading The Economist (recommended for anyone interested in how the world works) and I came across an insight that I hadn't really thought about before. From an economics perspective, the younger you are, the more benefit you get from discovering something new that you like and therefore the more willing you should be to try something new. This would be true of a new technology, new food, or really whatever.

So what does this have to do with human factors? Think about who you are designing a system for. If it includes a large population of young people, you can sell the fact that if they like it, they will gain many years of enjoyment. If you have many older people, you want to sell the conservative aspect of the design - it takes little learning so they can start enjoying it right away, or something like that. So when you are collecting user requirements in general, you want to think about your population age and customize the requirements specification along these lines. When you design the system, make sure it is either easy to learn for old people or adding new functionality for young people.

Of course some young people are conservative and some old people are willing to experiment, but in general this wisdom should hold up. The example in this post was a coffee frothing wand. Ironically, it is what I got my dad for Father's Day last year, only I spent a whole lot more than $1.99. Where was IKEA when I needed it ;-D.

Consider the user supply chain too

I am doing some research for an entrepreneur in Salt Lake City for which I need to purchase three back belts. Because of the purchasing system at the university (a design challenge for another time), I would like to order the belts online or by phone, but pick them up in the store (to eliminate the delay and cost of shipping).

Home Depot does not support this. Lowe's does. And so even because Lowe's is 20% more expensive, they got my business. They understand my supply chain process and support it. Even though Home Depot has a reputation for having a very efficient supply chain of their own, they apparently have not considered their users'. Their loss!!

which requirements are worth supporting??

There are many features that would be nice to have. For example, how many people press the wrong button in elevators once in a while, and then have to wait while the elevator stops at the wrong floor? It would be nice if there were some kind of undo function. Maybe you could press the wrong button a second time to turn it off.

But here is the question. How important is this to the user experience? And are there consequences to adding it that could take away from its value? For example, would it add to the cost of the design? Would there be a learning curve during which other errors would occur (hitting the button twice on purpose to "make sure" we pressed it). Would there be other permanent errors that could be introduced (someone intentionally turning off other passengers' floors because they are in a rush).

It is this set of tradeoffs that are necessary to decide when a design feature really makes the system more effective.

Interesting design challenge

When experts smoke ribs, one of the ways they know (and educated customers know) that it was smoked properly is that the meat gets a pink color. But pink is also the color associated with meat that is undercooked. So uneducated customers often think that it is not well cooked, even though it is perfect. This is a function visibility and population stereotype error. Most people associate pink meat with undercooked. But smoked ribs is a special case that violates the general rule.

I saw an interview with the owner of a high quality restaurant that specialized in smoked ribs. He was joking that the most common complaint he gets from customers is that their meat is undercooked and they ask for a new piece. He has to tell them that the meat is supposed to look that way. Sometimes, they aren't convinced that he is being honest, and may leave dissatisfied with the service. How can a company overcome this problem?

In this case, they put a label on the menu next to the smoked ribs warning customers that it will be pink, even when properly cooked.

great design idea to help customers be faster and better

I ate at a Thai restaurant last week and the credit card receipt was annotated with some hints for what to use for a tip. The numbers were automatically calculated, so that it was customized for the amount of the bill. Just below where the customer writes the tip, it had:

15%=$5.00 18%=$6.00 20%=$6.67

This is great because most people probably give between 15 and 20% but can't calculate it quickly in their head. So with this receipt, the customer saves time, effort, and is more likely to put down the correct amount for the tip. Great idea, yet so simple.

user requirements

What would you say about a company that left a key piece of information on its web site in the wrong language? It is clearly a user requirements mistake - how can spanish speakers benefit from the information if they can't understand it? This seems like a silly argument (but see below), but in fact many companies do this with technical terminology and company jargon. In both cases, the customer can't use the information.

But in this case, it was likely an intentional effort to confuse users. The company sells generic versions of pharmaceuticals and was forced by a lawsuit to put a disclosure on its web site that its product was not the same as the brand name and in fact had never been tested for effectiveness. They didn't want potential customers to know this, so they used the wrong language. Unfortunately, we can use Human Factors for evil purposes as well.

irrational optimism or statistical ambiguity???

I recent survey from Greenberg, Quinian, and Rosner found that 80% of Americans believe they will be in top half of the population in income in the next 5 years. Of course, it is impossible for 80% of the people to be in the top half, right? Is this an optimism bias where people foolishly think their prospects are better than they really are?

Maybe not. If we look at the income distribution, it is severely skewed, but still has a big mass near the mode. So if we take the mode as what the average American sees as the average, and use a +/- 20% as the precision that most people attribute to their perceptions of other peoples' income, the belief may not be incorrect. Think of the simple example where:

10% of Americans make less than $10k/year
10% make between $10k and $20k
60% make between $20k and $50k
10% make between $50k and $100k
10% make over $100k

If the typical person does not have the precision to discriminate within the $20-50 group, then anyone making more that $20k is already in the top "half." So 80% (10+10+60) are in the top half. I just made up these numbers, but you can see that any distribution with a big center would have this same effect. So maybe the average American is not as irrationally optimistic as we think (not that optimism is bad thing, of course).

customer experience v total process time

If you had a choice between faster service and a good customer experience which would you choose? Of course, it depends on how much time and how much better the experience could be. This is important because the discipline of work design looks at how to reduce total process time through lean process design, time study, and other largely quantitative techniques. The discipline of cognitive engineering looks at making activities easy and enjoyable. Companies really need to consider them both, either finding solutions that achieve both or making the compromises that best meet customer desires.

So here is my example. I was in a pharmacy, where I went to buy a gallon of milk. It had just opened, so there were very few customers in the store. I picked out the milk and looked over at the cash register and didn't see anyone. So I went to the jewelry area where there is also a register and there was a cashier. Another customer asked her if the bands on the watches were interchangeable. I was standing right behind him, clearly waiting to check out. She told him yes and then left me standing there to go into the camera developing area for a reason I do not know. If it was more time critical to do that task than spend 1-minute with me, then I accept her action. But she could have at least said something to me, instead of ignoring me completely. The amount she gained in total process time (if any) was doubtfully worth more than my decrease in customer experience.

With her gone, I looked back over at the regular cash register. I realized that there was a cashier there, but she was bending down to stock the cigarette shelf, which was behind the counter. So I walked over there to pay for my milk. I said "good morning" in a very friendly voice to attract her attention. She looked up at me with a very annoyed look on her face (as if stocking the cigarettes is so much more important to the cashier's job than checking out a customer) and slooooowly got up. Then she checked me out with such lightning speed I was truly impressed. Her hands hit the cash register buttons faster than anyone I had ever seen and the milk was double bagged before I even saw her touch it. Wow!!! But then she shoved it towards me in a way that tangled up the plastic handles so it took me 5 seconds to pick it up. By that time, another customer was waiting behind me in line and had to wait those 5 seconds. So her checking out speed was wasted by actions and attitude. It also again decreased my customer experience.

In this case, both time and experience were hurt by poor employee attitudes. And in theory, this job could have easily been designed to achieve both, by having her smile a little. But I can envision many similar examples where it would have to be one or the other.

So two lessons here. In the actual situation, I think the pharmacy should train/motivate its employees a little more on customer experience even at the expense of a little speed on cash register and bagging skills. Its not too hard. I cover this in the last month of my work design course.

In the case where experience and speed conflict, I think the pharmacy could have easily determined that in an empty store, a smile adds much more to experience - and therefore to customer loyalty and eventual profit than 5 seconds at the register (they didn't have THAT many cigarettes that she needed to use all of her slack time stocking them). I cover this in the first month of my human factors engineering course.


Thoughts???

convince yourself you are a leader

There is research showing that people of lower status or authority speak up less during discussion and have less credibility. So these people have little influence on group decisions. They internalize this too. They belief less in their own ideas and are more likely to let themselves be convinced by weak evidence.

So you need to do two things to be successful. You need to convince yourself that you are a leader. This will allow you to be more confident, speak up more, and be more willing to stick to your convictions.

Then you need to convince others you are a leader. This will cause them to listen more to you, and be more convinced by what you say. This research also shows that they will like and respect you more.

And none of this depends on the quality of your opinions or evidence. All it takes is a little confidence, both internally and externally.

Why is this fodder for a blog on Human Factors? Think about it and let me know what you come up with. Hint - there are some pretty common decision making biases that are based on confidence and perceived confidence.

Another funny cost/benefit example

This one would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. In some states, teen drivers are not allowed to have more than 1 or 2 passengers in the car. So to get around this rule, they have their friends ride in the trunk. Doing this at 5 mph to sneak into a drive-in movie is one thing, but doing it during normal driving, especially 65 mph on the highway, is very dangerous. But the teens do it because their perception of the risk is lower than the perceived benefit of transporting their friends.

So California passed a law making it illegal for anyone to ride in the trunk of a car. On its surface, it sounds like a funny law. But when you think of why they had to do it (increase the costs of this behavior), it makes perfect sense.