E304 - Click to Cancel, Big Trucks, Hotel Accessibility and Starships, oh my!

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Hello everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Human Factors Cast. This is episode 304. We're recording this live on October 17th, 2024. I'm your host, Nick Rome, and I'm joined today by Megan Michaels, who's a new face to the show. Welcome to the show, Megan.

[00:00:19] Meghan Michaels: I thank you very much. It's nice to be here.

[00:00:22] Nick Roome: Such a pleasure to have you. We have an awesome show for you lined up today. We're going to be talking about the FTC's new click to cancel mandate rule. I don't know what to call it, but we're going to be talking about that. There's also some updated pedestrian safety rules that are Aimed at the massive SUVs and pickup trucks on American streets.

We're going to be taking a look into some accessibility within a Hilton partnering with be my eyes. And lastly, we'll touch on the space X catching the super heavy booster after starships fifth flight. But first we have some programming notes for y'all. Usually this is the part of the show where Barry would come through and talk through some of the stuff over at 1202, but since he's not here, I'm going to plug another podcast for you.

If you haven't been keeping up to date with safe and effective, Heidi just put out a latest episode and you might know the guest on there it's me. I'm the guest. And what we talked about is integrating some agile methodologies into research and research operations and how you do all that and talk about agile scrum.

A bunch of boring stuff if you're not into it, but super nerdy if you're into it, like me. So it's episode 10, it's out now across both safe and effective and human factors, cast feeds. I did Simon launch them for you so you can get to it on either platform. With all that being said. I think it's time that we dig into some human factors news.

That's right. This is the part of the show all about human factors news. You're not Barry. Megan, what is the news story this week? What's the first?

[00:01:54] Meghan Michaels: No, I am not Barry. First up, we have FTC click to cancel. So this week the FTC has put in a new rule that requires companies to have a click to cancel option.

So this comes from customer complaints about the complex cancellation process that have been on the rise all over the place. We've all experienced it. Justifying this regulatory action. So huge deal, huge win for customers. The FTC has been actively targeting these practices across multiple industries, including streaming services and subscription boxes.

Let's see. What else do we have about this? Small, seemingly trivial user interface decisions, like hiding a cancel button can have massive impacts on customer trust. They acknowledge the frustration of users with dark patterns, which is a design techniques used to trick our users into staying subscribed.

I have a lot of thoughts on this, Nick.

Yeah.

[00:02:56] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, a lot. I don't, I'm happy to share it, but I definitely want to hear what you have to say about this as well.

[00:03:03] Nick Roome: So I have some strong language in here directed at Spectrum. And and this is I'm happy for this. Because you're right, this is very needed and I'm glad when government regulation steps in and says, Hey, this is, you need to make things easier for people.

Because that means that you need more people like us to come in and say, How do you make that easier for people? And click to cancel is a very, it's slogan y, and I really like the fact that it's slogan y. So let me tell you a little bit about my experience with With Spectrum, and then I'll get your initial thoughts here, but with Spectrum, they are infamous for having this long, convoluted process for canceling your service.

And when I needed to cancel my internet service with them I didn't want to deal with the, Hey, are you sure we're going to update, we're going to lower the price for you and do all this stuff. So instead the workaround that I did was I'm moving out to the middle of nowhere, I didn't move, but you look for a random house on Google maps that is not within their coverage.

And you say, I'm moving here and I go, Oh, sorry. Okay. We'll cancel your service. When are you leaving tomorrow? So that's what I had to do to get out of that internet service where I think if this regulation was in place, then that's not something that I would have to do, I would have just been able to literally click to cancel, but I'm curious on your thoughts.

So you had, you said you have a lot to say, what do you have to say?

[00:04:25] Meghan Michaels: Okay. So I find this super interesting because I am at this stage in my life right now. I have two teenagers, but I also have parents that are in their seventies. So I've got this interesting juxtaposition of also I'm right in the center.

And I work in tech, so I'm fairly techie. Like I, I am a person who like, likes to try and figure things out. A basic obstacle for me is not a typical obstacle. I just keep trying until I get it. That is not how my kids. Generation or how my parents generation works, especially as it comes to technology.

And so the things that I see happening for both of them is this piling up of things that they have subscribed to, whether it's something they've paid for or not. And that is where the frustration builds up. So even literally. Literally, two weeks ago, I sat on the couch with my daughter who she just turned 18 in the process of, preparing for that change over to adulthood.

1 of the things that we've been looking at are. Like, what are the types of things to do to begin building a credit history for her? So we did our research, we found a card that's perfect for, young students that are getting ready to join into the world. We go through the process of creating the account.

And this particular one is great because it's the kind of card where it's a secured card. So like you're responsible for the balance in it. You're not lending from, a company. What it you have to pay a monthly fee to maintain this. So it takes your information to your bank and you create the account.

And then after it does that, it says. Put in your birthday nowhere until that point. And only in the fine print does it say you can create an account 18 years and older only.

She

[00:06:30] Meghan Michaels: was 17 when she was trying to do this and guess what? There's no way to cancel it. So for the last three months.

She has on her

[00:06:40] Meghan Michaels: bank account for a card that she cannot even that she doesn't have, and that she cannot create, and we have no way of canceling it.

[00:06:50] Nick Roome: That's ridiculous.

[00:06:50] Meghan Michaels: And that's totally taking advantage of a, like a young kid who's trying to go through, like normal adulting learning life steps. That's ridiculous. Those are like that super sucked for her. So there was that. And then on the other side, like I have my parents who just this week, like issues with my dad and Facebook and someone hacking his account and he's all up in arms and literally it's, I just want to cancel it.

How do I just cancel it? How do I get my, and he cannot it's just, it's that kind of stuff. Like it's so it's. It's hard to watch people that you care about be frustrated over something that shouldn't be challenging. And I think that is what is so powerful about what the FTC is doing in this whole process is that they have recognized the critical component of trust.

Yeah. In all

[00:07:50] Meghan Michaels: of this. It's not just about having a really easy point of access. That's a huge bonus, but they have zoned in on the importance of people's inherent need to be heard and know that when they are, Joining a company of some sort in some way that there is value to that.

And if they want to leave, they can leave there's trust in being able to leave just as much as there is trust being able to join. So

[00:08:21] Nick Roome: let's talk a little bit about that because they call this negative option marketing programs. And. Basically what that boils down to is dark patterns of trying to hide a way to cancel a service.

And I'm just going to read off some stats here. The number of complaints steadily increased over the last five years. And in 2024 the federal trade commission received nearly 70 consumer complaints a day on average, up from 42 per two per day on in 2021. So we've seen an increase. And. They cite that this is, largely convenient for sellers but not so much for the consumers.

And the final rule, they say, will have some framework prohibiting the sellers, in this instance, from, so here are the four quotes. Misrep, misrepresenting any material fact made while marketing goods or service with a negative option feature. Failing to clearly and conspicuously conspicuously disclose material terms prior to obtaining a consumer's billing information in connection with a negative option feature.

So there you go. That would have protected your child there in that case you have failing to obtain a. Consumers express informed consent to the negative option feature before charging the customer or consumer. And lastly, failing to provide a simple mechanism to cancel the negative option feature and immediately halt charges.

So you're this, we call this click to cancel, but really this is looking at. More than click to cancel. And so thank you for bringing up, some of the other stuff around it. I think yeah, this I'm excited for this. I really love that. That this is happening. And one thing that I think.

He's surprised Frank and I, when we were at HFES, is that HFES lobbies a lot. They spend a lot of money on lobbying for human factors in government. And I wonder if they had anything to do with this. That's all I'll say, that the lobbying firm.

[00:10:22] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, that would be incredible to know. Yeah, I just, I was surprised at the visceral reaction that I had to read this it's it's about time, but again, it goes, goes back to what I was saying earlier, sometimes you don't need what you need until it's there. And it's this is that nobody really knew that this was something that needed to be asked for because it's an assumed thing, right?

Like I want to leave. How do I leave? Oh, I can't figure out how to call.

[00:10:49] Nick Roome: You have to call.

[00:10:54] Meghan Michaels: It's nuts. Or you have to send a message by carrier pigeon or, and hop on one foot and sprinkle confetti behind you. Standing backwards. I don't know.

[00:11:05] Nick Roome: And post a video online and call it all that. All right. Why don't we go ahead and get into the next story?

What do you got for us?

[00:11:14] Meghan Michaels: Okay, next story. The U. S. seeks new pedestrian safety rules aimed at increasingly massive SUVs and pickup trucks. So SUVs and trucks account for nearly 79 percent of new vehicle sales in the U. S. That's a lot. Hood heights of pickups have risen significantly with the 2017 Ford F 250's hood as tall as some car roofs.

Now, I'm a pretty tall person. And that is tall. That's real tall. The proposed rule aims to minimize pedestrian head injuries by addressing the increased risks posed by the size and design of modern SUV trucks. It's highlighted or it's highlights the importance of accounting for external safety features, not just internal, especially for vulnerable road users like pedestrians, bike riders.

Nice people. Um, one of the things that you and I have touched on, Nick, is that, big trucks like that is so American, like flyer flag on the end, that is a uniquely American thing. Americans love their vehicles when they are loud and proud and big and take up a lot of space on the road.

I am

[00:12:32] Nick Roome: curious, like I'm sad that Barry's not here to talk about it from an international perspective, but maybe he's, I see him in chat. So maybe Barry, if you have thoughts on big trucks and want to let us know. About pedestrian safety, please chime in, but this is interesting because it's the rule specifically that they're calling for here is looking at all passenger vehicles weighing 10, 000 pounds or less but aimed largely at SUVs and pickups and it's looking at Testing and performance requirements to minimize those risks of pedestrian industries or injuries.

And so basically when you limit it in that way or the way that These I guess these rules for testing and performance are going to be implemented. It's specifically targeted at the trucks because cars would be in there too, but I think there's a lot of interesting things that happen with cars that don't necessarily happen with trucks.

And we're talking about specifically those hood heights. You can imagine some very. Different gruesome scenarios that would happen if you have a hood height that's as tall as a pedestrian versus a hood height that is, at a pedestrian's waist. In a car. . And so I think that is why they're calling specific attention to some of the pedestrian heights.

And I do know that there are, large differences in the type of trucks that are out there. You said big trucks are a uniquely American thing. And then there's the opposite side of things, which. Like you have the small trucks in Japan and a lot of people have been importing those.

And there's been a lot of talk about what do you actually get with a big truck? Cause the, if you look at

the

[00:14:02] Nick Roome: bed size in these trucks, the big ones versus the small ones is comparable in a lot of cases. What do you need that much space for? And I think some of the arguments come down to horsepower.

I am not a big truck owner. But I, I can imagine that there's a lot of people who would be upset by some of these rules in place that would change the way trucks and feel maybe, but ultimately it's in the guise of safety. So I'm all for it.

[00:14:30] Meghan Michaels: Oh, yeah I agree. I I think it's interesting, I think about, my own experiences growing up in a small rural community, right?

Everybody had trucks and like the big ones, like the F two fifties of three fifties. But those trucks had purpose. They were pulling equipment behind them. They were out on farms. They were pulling horses. And then, you also have a huge section of the population, that's a Pulling campers and RVs and, using it for more recreational purposes rather than rather than, occupational purposes.

Yeah. So then that leaves the last section of the population that just likes to have a big truck. So that question, that's a why question for me. Like I can understand having a larger vehicle for one of those. Those other reasons, but if you just like to have a big truck, like why? And, that's where the safety piece comes into play.

Cause if you want to buy, drive a large vehicle, are you also taking into consideration all of those external factors for what happens if you're in an accident?

[00:15:42] Nick Roome: Yeah, there's some interesting and sad statistics here. I'm going to read but the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said that whatever the nose shape pickups, SUVs and vans with hood height greater than 40 inches are about 45 percent more likely to cause fatalities and pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less.

So really looking at that hood height here in the, in this statistics and then, so you'll notice that there's about. 10 inches between those 2 statistics between 30 and 40 inches. Um, and it's really in that range where you're looking between 30 and 40 inches that a blunt or more vertical front end is reducing the risk to pedestrians.

And so if it seems like if you have something that's greater than 40 inches of a hood height. Then you might need to, I don't know if it necessarily make a difference, but it seems like that critical range is between 30 and 40 inches. And so will this transform the way that us trucks look? Cause I'm sure you've seen that Japanese truck, that small Japanese.

Truck that has the like front flat forward, and I wonder if we have something similar here in the States, we start to see these big trucks, but just with a flat front that sort of reduce some of the risk to pedestrians. And it's in some ways about marketing, right?

You got to make it look cool. And I think there's a way to do that. And to be safe about it, and I am just curious about what this actually means for the industry, because I don't know,

[00:17:21] Meghan Michaels: it's gonna be really interesting. Especially if you consider the structure determines function ideology.

What what does this do in terms of the various industries that, that use trucks for, the important purposes, truly like farming and transportation of really heavy, difficult equipment. Cause if you change the engine, you change its capability. To do the job that it needs to do, but then it begs the question, do you need to have a truck that's, that is that big also, I want to be able to pull out of a driveway and be able to see, and if there's a, if there is a truck, I live in a city.

So if there's a truck parked at the end of my driveway, With its nose close to my driveway. I cannot see past it when I'm pulling out.

[00:18:11] Nick Roome: Yeah. Yeah. And I do wonder, you bring up some the form defining function, and I wonder if. Some of these rules will impact other things like performance when it comes to these vehicles.

You can imagine there's a likely some fuel consumption differences that happen between the shape of the hood and the shape of the front of the truck. There's likely some driver safety things that will be impacted too. If the drivers, the. The front of a car has largely been seen as a crumple zone.

And so if they crash into something, then there's a buffer there between the driver and the object that they have crashed into. And if you are now needing to put the driver up closer to the front I'm imagining like the front of a bus, is now what the, what these trucks are looking like. And if you do that, then there's less of a There's less safety for the driver, but more safety for the pedestrians.

And so it becomes this equation of a trolley problem where you have, do you save the life of the driver or do you save the life of the pedestrians on the street? And it's impossible to calculate these things because it's possible that the driver's not at fault in most of the cases where they would be impacted from the front.

If they have a head on collision with somebody who wasn't paying attention, that's not their fault, but you can also see where, if there's a pedestrian accident, that the driver is probably more likely to be at fault for something like that. And so what is the true tradeoff here between I'm sure there's probably some compromise you could have just a large front that extends out a little bit to serve as a crumple zone, but then you have a high up seat.

So that way they're not really impacted by. Anything. I think there's ways around it, but it will significantly transform the industry for sure.

[00:19:57] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. I there are so many different risk assessments to do in so many different directions. It's just gonna be really interesting to see how this affects both the car industry, but then the domino effect that it will have for All right,

[00:20:18] Nick Roome: Let's move on to our next story.

This one's cool. What do we have next?

[00:20:21] Meghan Michaels: This is super cool. So Hilton has partnered with the app. Be my eyes. So be my eyes is this partnership is designed to improve the hotel accessibility for blind and low vision guests. This collaboration is designed to enhance the guest experience through better navigation and interaction with hotel services.

So cool. Way more inclusive than just. Flashing, like the flashing light on the doorbell of a hotel room. What a level of just upping the game for our friends who, who need this level of support. This is just awesome.

[00:21:01] Nick Roome: I love it. I have to admit that I was initially very critical of this because my first thought was, ah, geez, are they just outsourcing their accessibility to this app?

Are they just giving, are they just waving away accessibility and saying, yeah, here you can use. Be my eyes within the Hilton app. And I was glad to see that the answer to that was no. The answer to that is that they're using it as a way to integrate with their own app. And the concept here is that they're actually talking to a Hilton employee through the be my eyes app through the Hilton phone or through the Hilton phone app.

And It connects you directly with a staff member who is familiar with Hilton facilities is familiar with how things are. And so that's really cool. And there's a there's a video you all can go watch it. It's on the news article that we'll put in the description of this episode from Engadget.

But. There's a really cool video that walks through this guy's experience. He's a business person and he travels a lot for work, but he's vision impaired. He's fully blind. And he was walking through some of the use cases that he might use this for, and for lack of a better phrase, it was really eye opening to, to just, get a perspective on how many of these things that you take for granted with vision.

And so I'll walk through some of these use cases, but just, the difference between a shampoo conditioner and a body wash bottles in the bathroom. And he's asking which one is which. So that way I know when I take a shower, which, which one do I reach for finding outlets to charge your devices, adjusting a thermostat.

Because you can't tell what it's at finding a vending machine on the facility, finding a gym or amenities within the facility, picking out clothes like he actually, brought out his his suitcase and he got the app and he said, is this my brown shoes? And he's Nope. These are my black shoes.

And then, okay, great. And he looked first and then even ordering from a menu. You can imagine all these things there's likely apps or even be my eyes itself would be would be a good service for this. And I don't know if anyone has ever used this, but it's a really cool service that traditionally connects you to someone else who is volunteering the concept here.

Should have done this at the start, but the concept here is that you open up your phone, you open up the app and it will connect you to an individual, a sighted individual who is able to use your phone on your device as you look around and they'll be able to describe what's around you like, Oh, I need help finding my medicine, where is it?

And they use the phone and they say, Oh, it's to your left. Okay, great. And then you're helping somebody who's vision impaired navigate through the world. And so that's why I was critical of this, is, are they outsourcing this, but no one, they connect you to the Hilton person. And because of a lot of these like on site things, I think that's going to be the difference because now they can, pull up a map on their end.

And it sounds like there might be dedicated staff to do this. They can actually bring that stuff up on their end and say, Hey, go down the hallway. And, once you feel an opening, that's going to be your left and then your gym's going to be right there, so I think this is so cool.

Yeah. What are your thoughts on it?

[00:24:16] Meghan Michaels: I just I love anything that can open up the world in a way that is, is safe and guided for those who need extra support in doing so. I think the, there are a few assumptions that occur when when you do see someone who is, for instance, vision impaired, and it's that they have everything that they need to navigate their space, whether it's a cane, or they have a guide dog, or, maybe they.

They've labeled things in braille or they've put things on it like various clips in order to understand. But the reality is, number 1, you don't know where someone is in their journey of vision impairment, there are a lot of, there are a lot of people that become vision impaired.

In adulthood, they didn't grow up learning how to read braille. Those are, and that is hard to learn how to do when you're already past, like you're learning. Phase as a grownup so to be able to provide multiple forms of access to support for just basic living needs to navigate a space while, whether you're, there for work or whether you're there with your family for a vacation, that's just, that is kind and it is loving and it says, we welcome you regardless of, Who you are and where you come from and where you are in your station of life.

And I just love that.

[00:25:48] Nick Roome: Yeah. It there's a few other use cases that I didn't mention, but even finding the entrance to the hotel, finding the elevators within the hotel, finding your specific room in the hotel. And if you're with somebody, those things are fairly trivial because you have somebody there in your.

vicinity who can walk you through and do all that. But this is truly just for the person. It empowers these vision impaired people to actually do all this stuff themselves or with assistance by themselves, which can be it, you really don't understand how dependent on others you are in a lot of cases for some of these impairments.

And it. It has to be really freeing from their perspective to be able to do this on their own with, and to be fair the promotional videos put together by Hilton, and there's probably like a lot of rosy language being used and it's probably like the ideal scenario, but I can't.

can't imagine a world where this is not a positive addition to having this ability to do this. I think there's it sounds like a true partnership. And even in some cases, there's a, there's like an AI language model that uses GPT to or GPT for to look at sort of the things around you. And they did a Demo of that, but it sounds like it's not just let's rely on AI to do this thing.

They are truly connecting you with another human that is, going to walk you through the stuff. And so I think, and having it built into the app itself is just awesome.

[00:27:24] Meghan Michaels: That's really cool. Also. So it is hard enough sometimes to find your way around a hotel, being able to have, yeah. I keep thinking about, okay, are they ruling this out in Europe?

Because I've been to some European hotels that are like, a labyrinth to get through. So to be able to have someone directly guide you who is intimately familiar with that property, oh my gosh. That's amazing.

[00:27:48] Nick Roome: Yeah. It says just for awareness, the partnership covers brands, including Waldorf, Astoria, Conrad, Doubletree by Hilton and Hampton by Hilton through though only in the U S and Canada for right now.

[00:27:59] Meghan Michaels: So no, that pilot gets used immensely here in the U S because that would have a huge benefit. Yeah. Elsewhere

[00:28:08] Nick Roome: and

[00:28:08] Meghan Michaels: here, but

[00:28:10] Nick Roome: that's a

[00:28:10] Meghan Michaels: big win. I love it.

[00:28:13] Nick Roome: Okay. You want to talk about the toddler arms? Let's talk about the toddler arms.

[00:28:16] Meghan Michaels: I'm so excited about this one. Okay. So SpaceX they had another win they successfully.

SpaceX successfully catches the Super Heavy Booster after launching Starship's fifth flight. We're calling it the Toddler Arms because it was cracking us up to watch the video. SpaceX Super Heavy Booster successfully returned to the pad after liftoff to be caught by the launch tower's mechanical arms in an incredible feat on Sunday morning.

And if you happen to watch it You didn't happen to see it. You need to go watch a video. It's the coolest thing ever. The milestone came during the fifth flight of the company's Starship and is a huge step for the rockets planned reusability. And I honestly, I think this is one of the coolest things that, that SpaceX has figured out it's the reusability of their technology.

The ships and boosters you for real? And also when it landed, it did, it looked like a toddler in the backyard trying to catch a balloon with their arms straight out in front, their fingers locked, we've all seen it. It's hilarious. But yeah,

[00:29:26] Nick Roome: so huge feet of engineering.

Barry is not here with us today because he's not feeling too well. But he does say seeing space X catching the booster was awesome. I'll agree. This is, if you haven't seen the video, go see the video. It is a true feat of engineering Marvel to watch this thing. You're like, how is it, how are they doing all this?

It literally does look like toddler arms coming out to catch this rocket that's coming in. And it truly is this magnificent moment in. In human achievement. And why are we talking about this? Because it's a lot of automation. As promised last week, we started posting these stories in in our discord.

So if you're not on our discord, please come join us. We can chat about these stories. One person who did comment on this on our discord was the Annie. And she brought up the issue of. Safety. So what if this thing falls and you have to imagine that there's a lot of human factors engineering that goes into this process with not just the automation piece, but the safety protocols going on behind the scenes.

How do clear the space, make sure no one's around that area when this thing is attempting to be caught, make sure that the crew and the systems execute these Launch and landing sequences appropriately. There's likely some human monitoring going on involved. And when do you jump in and help it do all these things?

It seems largely automated and it probably is automated in most cases, but you have to imagine there can be some human intervention when it makes sense to do and when you have this sort of automation for these remote operations, there's a, it can minimize human error. When you have systems that talk to each other and self regulate, especially when it comes to catching these large space, SpaceX booster rockets

[00:31:14] Meghan Michaels: chopsticks,

[00:31:15] Nick Roome: It's probably really hard for a human operator to do that.

Imagine sitting at a control going, pulling in the joysticks to try to catch this thing as it comes in. Probably not something that humans can. Without a lot of error involved. And so you have these automated processes. But when it comes to humans, what does that recovery look like?

How do you establish the processes for actually going up to that thing and taking the booster off of those chopsticks and putting it back on the floor and linking it back up? And there's a lot of human elements that are not talked about because this main story is all about the automation. I just it's it's super cool to me that there's so many different parts and pieces where when you just look at the automation, cool.

There's a lot of stuff that isn't necessarily immediately apparent when you do just look at this feat of engineering and automation.

[00:32:06] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, for sure. And it definitely opens the door to all of the questions of what's next. How does this translate into other aeronautic. Efforts that are going to be occurring, like watching that booster.

I immediately thought of all of the star Wars movies and the way that, all of the jets would take off and then they land and there's no, they just. They just do, that's what that looked like. That's what it looks, it doesn't look real.

[00:32:39] Nick Roome: It's futuristic.

[00:32:41] Meghan Michaels: I know it's the kind of thing, again, like going back to being a kid, it's the kind of thing I would watch in a movie and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so cool.

Maybe in the year 2020, because that seems so far away it's

[00:32:55] Nick Roome: and instead we got a pandemic. Yeah, I think there, there's a quote here. The move risked destroying the tower if super head and pull it off correctly. And that I think you think about the safety involved with that.

There's. A ton of safety protocols that go on with planned demolition of large structures like buildings. You can, with all the safety, you got to get a crowd cleared out of the way for all the debris. So that way it doesn't hit you. And I imagine they had all those safety protocols in place as well here, just in case something didn't go to plan.

Um, and I just there's mad respect for the people who have thought about all that stuff and like, how could this potentially go wrong? Cause this could have gone wrong in a lot of ways you imagine that booster chokes on its side and fires off the rocket and it goes, it's a missile at that point.

So it's not a rocket, and I'm very thankful that it didn't go wrong. And it's just take a minute to marvel at human engineering.

[00:33:56] Meghan Michaels: It's legitimately fascinating. There are some really smart people on this earth that are just, it's just a wonder. It is just a wonder. I, what a, what an amazing time to be alive. Truly. We are part of one of the most unique generations that has seen the shift in technological marvel and we're just getting started.

The exponential growth that is going to be happening just even over the course of the next 10 years, we can't even imagine it. It's just phenomenal.

[00:34:30] Nick Roome: Yeah, you're right. All right. I think that's all for the news stories today. Thank you to all of our friends over at AP news, the federal trade commission in gadget for all of our news stories this week.

If you want to follow along, we do post the links to all the original articles on our weekly roundups in our blog and in our discord. You can chat us up there for more discussion on these articles, these stories, and much more. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back to see what's going on in the Human Factors community right after this.

Yes, as always, huge thank you to all of our patrons. You literally keep the lights on over here, and I don't say it enough, but your financial support really, truly does make this thing possible. And this is the only time during the show where I get to beg for your money, so if you want to see us do bigger and better things at next year's HFES Aspire, or, heck, even some other conferences going on, there's a Patreon, you can support us if you're financially able to and want to support us that way.

We try our very best to give back to you for doing so. All right. With that said, let's move into a part of the show that we have not necessarily touched on in a while. But back by popular request,

Popular request in years of having that stupid graphic that I still haven't done anything with. It came from, yes, this is the part of the show where we search all over the internet to bring you things that the Human Factors community is talking about. So we have three up tonight and we've actually started reaching out on Reaching out.

We started looking at LinkedIn to see what folks in our profession are talking about. This first one up here is from Jeremy Schwark, who is the human factors lead at Google. And the sort of premise of this post was do you need a PhD to do research? So I'm going to read his full post here.

We can go through our comments. Sad to see. An influential UX pioneer suggests that researchers might be better off without a PhD so one can, quote, focus on useful and fast research. End quote. Is a PhD required for research? No. Should you get a PhD if you want an industry research job? For the vast majority of people, no.

There are a lot of reasons not to get a PhD. And he goes into some of those, but the idea that getting a PhD inhibits you from doing useful or fast research is in my opinion, nonsense. There's a little bit more to the post, but I want to talk about this premise here. Megan you have some thoughts here about PhDs.

You mentioned in the pre show that your family is of PhDs. What are you thinking about this? Do you need a PhD to conduct research?

[00:37:04] Meghan Michaels: Nope. Not in the least.

[00:37:07] Nick Roome: Great. Next question. No,

[00:37:08] Meghan Michaels: yeah,

[00:37:10] Nick Roome: elaborate.

[00:37:11] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, of course. No. So no, absolutely not. Here's where the PhD component is. is valuable.

Number one, there's history behind it. Number two you are doing highly focused highly focused research that nobody else has done. You have the tiniest slice of the tiniest slice of pie to make your mark and ensure that the work that you're going to be doing creates a space for someone else to step upon and do further work.

There's value in that. There's also the math and the way that you learn to ask questions and the validity behind the work that you're doing. What's really important though, in all of this is all of these things. Okay, so you can teach those things to someone in, in sequence, but you can teach them also in isolation.

And it doesn't require, 3 years of coursework and a full year of writing a dissertation in order to do that. Much of those things can be learned in a working environment. I wrote the piece about, lots of reasons not to get a PhD. That really resonates. I myself, I was literally to the point I just had about a class left.

And I dropped out of getting my PhD, my quality of life was suffering. I had a newborn at that point. I, and I could not, I couldn't manage all of the things. And then the thought of knowing that it was going to take me a solid year to then sit down and dedicate. A significant amount of time every single week that was just to writing and evaluating all of the research that I was doing.

It wasn't possible, especially because I was also working full time. So the balance with all of it, it's just, it's not possible. Now, if you think about the flip side, where you are able to integrate the learning and the skillset to do valid research, To get information out of it to promote your, whatever it is you're working on, whether it's a product or a medicine or, even just a process that you're using, you can do that well.

And you can do it with a group of people as long as it's repeatable. And as long as you have valid metrics that you can rely on and support with evidence, you're in really good shape.

[00:39:36] Nick Roome: Yeah. I think the the, one of the premises of his argument here is that researchers specifically in industry need to learn constraints and those constraints are learned from from PhD approach.

And basically the argument is that when you get a PhD, you understand how to look at those constraints and dial back. And, one of the comments here on this post by Trevor he actually says, to put it succinctly, you need to learn the rules before you can break them. Beyond analytical thinking skills, a PhD gives you the know how of which rules you can soften and to which degree while maintaining rigor.

And while I agree that in most cases, yeah, a PhD will give you that, but I think at a master's level, you get that too. And yeah, And to me, the argument is not necessarily master's or PhD, but rather higher education or democratize research in such a way that some folks can come up from the ranks and do it and about I've talked many times about the democratization of UX research, um, in such a way that allows people to contribute.

Without being gatekeepy in such a way that that prevents those people from learning, that prevents those people from taking the next step to understand what some of those constraints are, right? When I approach something, I'll say, here's what we need to do to get it. To give it that science approach to make sure that our to make sure that our data is sound to make sure that everything's in its place where it needs to be.

But then I'll often include others and explain why we came to certain decisions about that process. Frank here. Frank in the chat says there is a difference two in being in the business of creating research versus the business of applying research. And that's absolutely true. Think about, academia you're pushing the boundaries on something very small and specific and you have a good idea of what comes next.

And then in industry, you are trying your best to apply academic certain methodologies to your process. And in, in most cases I won't say in most cases, in many cases, those processes will break down because of of certain Conditions about what it is that you're looking at, whether it's access to the end users or not being able to gather data in a way that you would traditionally gather data in and having all of this all these constraints You are forced to modify your methodology to accommodate those constraints, and it's how you approach the study of UX research in such a way that still allows for it to be sound research without it, without these constraints impacting the validity of your study.

[00:42:29] Meghan Michaels: Yeah, I, when you're looking at research and in academia, you're really considering so much of the. The ideal situation and what Frank said really, yeah it's one, there's a difference between doing the research and applying it. I just, uh, this is such an interesting topic to me, literally.

Like my mom and my sister and my brother in law all have PhDs and they're all very smart. We also all, every single person in our family has a master's degree. And there were, um, there, There were times even, when working on your masters and you're doing the research and you're like, you're doing all of the same things.

Just on a smaller scale, but that doesn't mean you can't. Apply it. Frank said he added another comment. He said there's also the business of training researchers and creating new research training researchers applying the research. That's Yeah. You've got the research originating in the methodologies originating in academia.

The whole point of doing any kind of experiment. So your research Is that it's duplicatable it's it doesn't have any validity if you can't transport it somewhere else. The question is, does this the same thing apply to research itself? If you're doing what you're doing in academia, but you're doing it in a business setting and your restraints are now different.

Are you able to Frank? You're.

[00:43:56] Nick Roome: Frank's on a roll. He's just, I'll read this next one, applying research, probably some opportunity costs to learn other non PhD skills or getting practical work experience.

[00:44:08] Meghan Michaels: You're not wrong, Frank. There's a, there's an element to personal inter communication skills that need to occur outside of academia.

As well that are going to look different in a business setting or a commercialized setting than they are going to look.

[00:44:26] Nick Roome: I'll end it with this one. There's a comment by Joel Barr on on this post. Cause I feel like we do this debate once a year. The last time we had it, nothing was resolved and no one switched their side of the fence.

My wager is that this will turn out to similarly with the Pioneer. Yeah, I saw, and then Jeremy responds to it. Yeah. I saw that research democratization is back on the menu. Life is a simulation. Nothing is real. Joel says. It's nice to be back to normal now.

So

[00:44:53] Nick Roome: yes, this is a continuous topic that always pops up in the field.

And one that I think we're no closer to answering now, after talking about it for a few minutes than we were five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, whenever we started talking about this, we had a couple of other, it came from, but this one sparked such good discussion with you all watching at home and us here.

We're going to cut the other two. Maybe we'll get to them next week. But now it's time for us to talk about one more thing and there's no intro or no, no fun visual for this one. It's just one more thing. Megan, what you got on this week?

[00:45:27] Meghan Michaels: Okay very intentional life in the sense that I I wake up every day and I look for things to be grateful for.

I keep a journal and I write three things down every day that I'm grateful for. It's next to my bed and I write it every night before I go to sleep. It's really an important part of how I operate, but in particular this week there were some difficult things happening with my family. My family is absolutely critical to my livelihood.

I have two amazing kids, but I also have a large family. We all live near one another and there were hard things. And I really had this moment where I woke up the other day and I just was like, Oh my gosh, this day is going to be hard, but I made a really specific effort to shift my mindset right in that point to choose joy.

So not this day is going to be really hard, but where can I find joy today? And. It was something that I really wanted to share especially because one of the things that was really interesting was my daughter who did, who is 18, she turned 18 yesterday, but we had her birthday cake in a hospital room because my mom was in the hospital.

So like having that juxtaposition of like celebration of life, but also the reality. In that same moment, it was the most interesting experience. I think I've just about ever had as it relates to choosing joy, choosing presence, choosing how to operate in a way that. Is intentional so that when you are present with people, they truly feel it.

So just something I really wanted to share. I think it's important. The other thing was, Oh my gosh, it's almost time to vote. And I'm so excited. And one of the coolest things I think I've ever seen is watching my daughter and her friends talk about voting and how they all worked together to ensure like in Michigan, when you are 16 and a half, if you did not know this.

Spread the word when you are 16 and a half, you can pre register to vote so that when you turn 18, you're automatically registered so she can just go to the polls and she, she and her friends have made a plan already for voting. And I love that they're going to go pre vote or they're doing early voting.

They're going together like that is the coolest thing. Like I, if there's any. Effort or any like growth and into adulting that I am most proud of about her it's that, and that she like did it on her own. So I, that is just, it's really neat to watch your kids turn into their own little people.

[00:48:05] Nick Roome: It's very cool. I have two things on here and I usually pick one. Depending on how the conversation goes. But since you brought up voting, I'm going to bring up this. So long time listeners, watchers, viewers of the show know that I am a junkie when it comes to politics. And when it comes to like Barry and I had a whole stream when the UK politics were going on and stay tuned, we might do something for the U S elections here in a couple of weeks, but TBD we'll see.

But leading up. To elections, there are a ton of different websites and a ton of different institutions that are doing various analyses on early voting. And a lot of these break down to you know, who's voting, where are they voting, what counties are returning. And. All these things are very interesting to me because I think we're all invested in politics in some way, or we should be, and having a certain outcome happen is of interest.

And when you are starting to see where people are starting to return their ballots and what that demographic is, it makes it makes it very cool. And so there's a six or seven different dashboards that I'm using to understand that data as it's coming in. And as we're finding out more about who's voting and where they're voting and what counties, and it just, it excites me because a couple of years ago, we went out to a cabin in the middle of the woods for my wife's birthday.

And it was on election night. And I was like trying to get the like faintest signal going. What are the results? What are the results? And it's just cause you get up to that point and it's we're here and everything's coming in and, ah, I'm so excited. A lot of people are nervous.

I'm just excited. And I think that's going to be it for today, everyone. If you like what you hear let's see here. Where's my outro? I got to find my outro. That's it for today, everyone. If you liked this episode, enjoy some of the discussion around, I don't know, what did we talk about today?

The click to cancel. I'll encourage you to go listen to some of our other episodes where we talk about similar topics. Comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the stories this week. For more in depth discussion, like I said, you can always join us on our Discord community. We are now publicly posting stories there, so you can comment on those.

Which ones you want to hear about any thoughts you might have, they might end up on the show, visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news. If you like what you hear, you want to support the show. There's a couple of things you can do one, wherever you're at right now, leave us a five star review that is free for you to do, and it really helps other people find the show.

Two, this one's really impactful. Tell your friends about us. That is the word of mouth is the biggest way that we grow. And three, if you have the financial means to, you want to support us on Patreon, that is something you can do as well. We always appreciate that. As always links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode.

I want to thank Megan Michaels for being on the show today, filling in for Barry Kirby. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about. Toddler arms, chopsticks, catching SpaceX rockets.

[00:50:59] Meghan Michaels: You can find me on LinkedIn, but be careful. You may go down some rabbit holes of a video series that I made last spring called build with me, but enjoy.

[00:51:09] Nick Roome: Excellent. As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome. You can find me on discord and across social media at Nick underscore Rome. Thanks again for tuning into human factors cast until next time.

It all depends! It depends! It depends!