There was news last month that some supermarkets are reviewing the use of self-service checkouts. Research has suggested that they do not save time for customers and that they maybe contributing to an increase in theft. There had previously been an expectation that we would see increasing amounts of self-service in supermarkets because they save on staff costs and were expected to reduce queue lengths....
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As user-centered designers, we value the functionality of something highly: it has to deliver on being useful and understandable. We know that we need also to value the aesthetic and its contribution to our feelings of well-being. But perhaps sometimes it is harder to tap into those other little parts of the experience of using a product or moving through an environment. On the BBC...
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Sometimes to get people to make different choices about how they travel you have to make things easy for passengers. This usually means think about transport in a connected way and looking at what people need and want and what might be barriers. So great example here from Germany. Cyclists often use another mode of transport as part of their journey – interaction with trams...
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A great article in The Guardian on Saturday about online passwords, what a nightmare they have become for all of us and how our natural response is making the job of the hacker easier – http://gu.com/p/3aptz The interesting point it makes is how the requirements placed on users to have more complex passwords (mix of cases, including non-alphanumerics, etc) means that most of us, in a...
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Just a bit of news that CCD staff are presenting at four conferences in the next few months First of all, Adam Parkes is presenting on our SAMMIE work at a seminar at IMechE titled “Human factors in 3D – humans in engineering design“. If you want to go, get your skates on as it is next week (2nd October). Then David Watts will be...
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The 2013 Ergonomics Design Award has launched, with entries being accepted until November 30th. This is the third year the Award has run and the Institute of Ergonomics And Human Factors is expecting an even greater number of high quality entries than in previous years – last year entries increased by almost 50%. CCD design and Ergonomics Chairman and lead judge John Wood says, “In...
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