E200 - Technology for the Vision Impaired

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Welcome to human factors cast, your weekly podcast for human factors, psychology and design.
Hello, everybody and welcome to human factors cast. It is Episode 200. We've made it. We are recording this live on April 1 2021. I'm your host, Nick Roome, I'm joined by Blake Arnsdorff across the internet from me. Hey, y'all. How's everybody doing?
Hey, I'm good, Blake, it's Episode 200. I can't believe it. We have a great news story to break down for Episode 200 for you, and we have some fun surprises along the way tonight. But the new story we'll be talking about is neuroscientists unveiling this technology for the vision impaired. So we're talking bionic eyes, we're talking textured tablets. We're talking a lot more, we'll get to that. But in terms of surprises, should we just get them out of the way at the top of the show here? There's a lot to go through, we might as well get it out of the way. There is a lot to go through. The biggest thing is that well, this episode 200 is going to be the last episode of human factors cast. We are, you know, everyone's busy. We are we are, in fact, some of those busy folks. And
you know, it just the podcast has become too much of a burden for us. So we are no longer going to do the podcast. This will be the last episode, kind of pack it in. What's that time to pack it in, pack up, pack out? we're gone. And so again, if you're listening, we are recording this on April 1. So April Fool's everyone.
What follows is the actual surprises here and we are not. This is this is not an April Fool's joke for this next step. So, so, Blake, if you want to go through the first Why don't you start us off? what's what's going on here? With with, with what's going on what's going on? Alright, so maybe the most visible change here is we've had a logo redesigned. So we've got a new dark, gritty, HFC future logo. And we're just so stoked on getting to work with our designer. Erica, it's been so fun going through this process.
Yeah, so Erica is she's in the chat right now, she has been working with us to update this. This logo, it kind of matches a little bit more of the maturity of the podcast, we've we've grown 200 episodes, and we wanted to kind of match that maturity. So it's darker, darker and grittier. But it's still familiar. And I think it looks really great. I'm actually really happy with the logo. And I think this will be a great sort of addition to, you know, all our branding across all our platforms. So if you're on if you're on the live stream, you can see it if you're on the podcast, you've probably seen it already. But
yeah, new logo, it's it's great. I love I love the new branding stuff come out so nice. Yeah.
With the branding, we've also made another big change or big.
What's the word I'm looking for a big investment, the big, we got something big. So
you know, if, if y'all are listening right now, when you go to human factors cast calm it? Well, here's the thing that this
provides. This is gonna be embarrassing, but it's no fault of our own. So that the provider that you know, we bought the domain from
basically said, yo, you haven't paid and we weren't notified. And they have you knows, we looked and we're working with customer service to try to get it back anyway, we don't have the domain right now. Human Factors cast calm. Don't worry, it's coming back though. In the meantime, though, we have actually worked with a with another provider to, to update our website. So we actually have a new website, you'll be able to get to it from human factors cast.com later, but for now, it's it's pod page comm slash human TAC factors, tack cast, and I know it's clunky. So we put a link down in the description of this video or this audio, wherever you're watching from,
for your convenience, so you can get to it. But I do want to go over just a couple fun things with the website here.
Let me actually pull up my list and I'm pulling up the website as well. So you can see me click through it. Let me let me do the show this thing off because it comes out pretty sweet. Yeah. So here's here's our fancy new website here. I don't know. Can you see that? Blake? Are we Yeah, that's great. We can see that. So here's the fancy new website. I just want to go over a couple things here. So
at the bottom right of the website, you'll actually notice there's the capability to send us a voicemail. So if you're
listening to the show, want to talk to us directly, or leave us a voicemail you can do that you can get in touch with us.
That's a great way to do it. And we'll potentially If you want, we can play your clip on the show and answer it for things like the it came from section. There's also a direct link to our merchandise store up here. There's a lot of really great things up here, you know, there's a link to our Patreon, you can go in and check out all our episodes, it has a link to our YouTube, right on the front page, and a subscribe button here with all your favorite pod catchers, and all the links right there, I think it's pretty slick, you can actually go in and search some of these episodes, if you were looking for a specific topic like I'm looking for artificial intelligence, you can go ahead and look that up that's misspelling here live on
there on the podcast. So if you wanted to look for something like artificial intelligence, you can search for that. It'll return all the results where we have actually talked about that topic. And you can see all the pertinent episodes. So I think it's a really great way to filter and search through our website. Again, we're doing this through pod page.
And you'll be able to get there later this year, through human factors cast.com. But for now, there's a link in the description. So I'm gonna use that in the middle of the show to figure out like when we've talked about a topic previously to reference different, you know, stories we've done, because that's awesome. Blake.
That's a great idea.
So yeah, we, so we got that.
I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Blake. I'm just really excited that we have the website up. I know that it's weird with the domain thing, but it'll come through and it please send us some voicemails or some voice notes to the website. It's a fun way to kind of get get in touch with us and see what we're up to. So Nick, another awesome thing that we've done, I think I'm really glad that we've made the jump back to video. But we haven't just gone back to YouTube, we've gone to a bunch of different places. So like right now we're on Twitch, we tried to get on LinkedIn. And we'll figure that over that over the course of the next week or so. We're on Twitch and Hugh, and Nick's Facebook page, as well as Periscope and YouTube. So yeah, it's been cool to kind of go back and do this and do the pre and post show. Yeah, so we'll be live on our Facebook group. someday. That's our stretch goal, right. So there's there's certain capabilities, we're using a tool called Restream. Here, we're trying to be a little bit more transparent about some of the things that we're using, I'll get into that in just a minute. But we're using a tool called restream, right now allows us to broadcast over multiple platforms, it says in the top right corner, what tool we're using, so if you want to go check it out, you can there, you know, there are certain websites that we can't cast to without paying for this. And there's some things that we can't do, in terms of
I guess visualization is is the way I'd put it with the free version. But you know, it's it's a good tool for us to use for now. While we are kind of exploring this video space,
and yeah, like Blake said, you know, we are trying to stretch our video muscles a little bit, we're gonna be what? We are doing twitch office hours, we've been talking about this on the show for a little bit, but you know, it's it. This is the official launch of all this stuff, really.
We were kind of doing all this in anticipation for Episode 200. So yes, we're doing office hours on Twitch, join Blake Sunday morning, myself, on Tuesday mornings, we are just kind of hanging out and doing Human Factors things Blake is building a website, his portfolio, and I'm going through the news stories, so you'll be able to see what doesn't quite make the cut.
So I mentioned that we're trying to be a little bit more transparent about things. And we have, I guess, what I would call new goodies, I don't even know what other
you know, kind of category to put these in. But we have two new things, we have a, a, a link to our resources, we use a bunch of tools, you know, we have kind of a link to everything that we use all the way from our web page to the to the microphones that we use to the stands that we use to our our webcams and all that stuff. So we wanted to make that available as a resource for everybody. But we've also developed this ethics policy for human factors cast and it's, it's nothing big, you know, it's just kind of a nice thing to have where we kind of disclose, you know, if we're paid for a product to review it or anything like that, or if if we have accommodations paid for us to go to a conference or something like that, well, we'll disclose that information so that we no one thinks that we're getting paid under the table for things to say certain things.
You know, if we get a review copy of something, we'll we'll mention that as well. And then, you know, there's there's the audio changes, which if you're watching live here, you won't actually you won't actually hear this because we don't have a live component to this yet. Maybe once we pay for restream but if you're listening to the audio version to this, you may have
noticed a cleaned up intro. There's no more blown out audio that we've had since like the early days. And there's there's a little change later for the Patreon commercial, we have finally a commercial that accurately reflects what our patrons are getting. So yeah, that's what I would call new goodies, which are two of my favorite changes. Cuz I know we've talked about redoing the Patreon commercial for a long time, but also fixing the blown out intro has been awesome as well. Yeah, man. So Nick, this is a big one. And it's it's kind of a big change for us and for the community that we've kind of fostered over the years, but we are working, or we've already put it together. So we're opening up a new discord community for human factors cast between Nicolas we've Nick and I, we both found that there are some advantages we think that discord has in general over slack. Now, don't worry, anybody that hangs out in slack and enjoys using that platform. We're going to keep them both up for the meantime and kind of see how discord works out and kind of go from there. But it's just uh, it'll be a fun change for both of us cuz I know I'm actively using discord for a lot of different servers. So it'd be fun to bring a human factor spin to it. Yeah, so you know, there's there's a couple cool things that discord does that slack doesn't do. There's a couple things that slack does well, that discord doesn't quite do, hopefully soon. It will. We know that like, you know, keeping threaded.
threaded conversations are really important. That's a little harder to do on Discord. But discord actually kind of encourages more of that in the moment, fluid conversation kind of discussion. So they do different things. And we're Yeah, we're going to kind of foster both of these communities just to kind of see which one is more effective at building this human factors community.
And we'll kind of go with the best option going forward. I think we'll probably try it for like a year. Think of it like a big AB test. Really.
That's, I mean, it's a big AV test if we're doing it for a year. But you know, we don't want to alienate people who enjoy slack. We don't want to alienate people who enjoy Discord. But there is, you know, potentially untapped market or not market, I use market, but it's untapped community really on discord that we may not have access to. Right, not everybody has slack. A lot of people have Discord. So maybe, maybe we'll get a couple more people in there.
Yeah, also with that, you know, there's some really cool integrations. So you can, if you're a Patreon, there's like different roles that you'll get in our discord, which if that's important to you, we have those for you. So you can kind of show your human factors cast social status with the
with the, with the rolls, but I gotta say, you know, with that, we've also got new merchandise, we got to make money somehow. This is we're not making a lot of money off this. But if you want to support the show, it's one way you can do it. You can see tonight I'm wearing my it depends shirt.
Only about so good. So yeah, we have, we have new merchandise on our store. And you can get to that from our website.
And we're gonna run a couple promos for you all, we don't really make money when we run promos. But that's okay. You know, we, we also appreciate the word of mouth. So there's that. So right now, if you go there, I guess starting tomorrow, there should be 20% off your entire store for the next week. And that offer ends on the fifth. So I think that's this weekend. And then if you go after the fifth, it's going to be free shipping, from April 6, April 10. So depending on when you're listening to this, depending on when you're watching this, you can go and check that out. So we're gonna work on trying to get some of the new artwork up there for the merge store. And I again, want to be transparent about where the money goes,
it goes towards some of the stuff that we use, right. So like, like, if we, if we get enough money, we'd pay for Restream. And we'd be able to go to more platforms or stuff like that. Or it goes to you know,
I gotta say, our new website wouldn't be possible without our patrons. So that's all Patreon money going there. So, so there's a lot of things that come into the show, but we put it all right back to the show, you know, we're not
it's all out of pocket for us. And so anything that we get back, I hate begging and talking about, but I do want to, like be transparent about where that stuff goes.
Yeah, I mean, for a lot of ways, we've been able to keep this show ad free because of the Patreon support too. And that was like an awesome move for doing the merchandise too, because it's been really creative endeavor. I know for Nick like putting together different merge ideas. So I don't know, it's, it's a way we kind of keep the show afloat and hopefully go past farther than 200, maybe not 300, whatever it may be.
But one other thing that we're trying to ramp up a little bit more to help encourage growth along with kind of this introduction of a new discord community is really trying to be more available and posting more on social media. So across like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. So just making a lot more of an effort to try and grow those communities because we know that there's a
We've kind of relied on the podcast and slack to really help us kind of reach a lot of people. And I think that's done as much organic growth as we can for 200 episodes. But we really like the way Nick has talked about this podcast to me when we first started was making Human Factors accessible to everyone. And I think it's, it's kind of become in the back of our minds our job to continue doing that outside of just recording a podcast once a week. So that's hence the twitch office hours and now the movement towards more social media content.
But yeah, so Nick's been doing a lot of the legwork there kind of like posting stuff to Instagram and trying to grow that medium as well. So hats off to you, man. Yeah, there's, there's some weird, we had automation doing it, right. So we have right now at least automation posting our episodes, we're, we're hoping to be a little bit more engaged, right. And so like, Instagram is one of those manual ones, we can automatically post anything there. So I've been trying to be a little bit more active on that platform to get, you know, a little bit more engagement going. And it's all kind of a way to build the show, and build the community. And that's, you know, when we first started this out is like, hey, well, it'd be a cool topic of a podcast to talk about. But you know, as we've kind of gone through this, we've actually kind of really focused on the community aspect of this, because, you know, even though our listenership is small ish, I mean, you know, we have
I guess it's not a leap to say that we're the number one human factors podcast. I mean, you know, I think
the thing for me is that we are growing the show, and we are growing the community and the,
you know, the podcasting is separate. I mean, it's, it's still something I enjoy talking to you every week.
But, uh, yeah, I think the community is where we really want to focus. And so we're trying really hard to put things back into that. And so with that, you know, one of the one of the other communities that we have a sub community, if you will, we have Patreon. And that's something that we keep bringing up. I know, it sounds like we've hammered this every week. And we do because it's so important to the health of the show. You know, like Blake said, we are, you know,
we're still ad free. And, you know, we had a little, a couple ads towards the beginning of the lifespan of this show, where, you know, is audible and Blake's favorite audio clips ever.
In my sleep for the rest of my life.
If you like books, that's so bad. Yeah. But I mean, you know, we've largely kept this ad free. So So Patreon support is really vital, really, to the longevity and growth of this podcast. And so, you know, we have been doing a lot of work on the Patreon side of things we've, you know, starting with this episode, Episode 200, there will be a full audio version of the pre and post show. So we do a pre show and post show on our streaming platform. So if you're listening to just the audio of this, we actually do a pre and post show.
Every time it's it's about half an hour on each side. So we'll be actually posting the audio version of those for our patrons. So if they're unable to join us on on video, or streaming or anything like that, it's still a convenient thing for them.
In addition to that, we've been hard at work, we actually have a whole nother year of human factors minute in the can written, recorded ready to go, they're uploaded,
and will be distributed over the course of the next year, where you know, you have
slow drip every Tuesday, one minute of very focused Human Factors content.
And then here's a little fun thing. So starting today, if you are a Patreon,
we have a new campaign going on. And it's it's so stupid, and I love it.
You were so excited when you showed this to me last week. You guys want to sticker.
Let me show you this. So we have a holographic sticker of our legacy logo. And this is the only way you can get this content now.
If you're an existing Patreon member,
we will and you leave us your address, we'll send one of these out to you with you know, a little note from us. And you know, we'll give these stickers out to the first 10 newest Patreon as well. So, again, this is this there's no other way to get this piece of human factors cast history. It's a nice little memorabilia. Yeah, exactly. So So for our existing patrons in our next 10 Patreon. We'll we'll do that for them.
We've also on Patreon. This is the biggest section, guys, so stick with us. We're almost done. We've also updated our goals right? I keep talking
about transparency. And one of the big things is that we want you all to know, if you support the show where your money goes. And so we've put in some of these stretch goals to where, you know, to really define where our money is going, right. So
we've put in these tiered goals to say, if if we get this much money, we're gonna put it towards the effort of live streaming and stuff like that. And if we get this much, we'll actually use that money and fund our tickets to some of these conferences that we've had coverage of in the past.
To where, you know, we can, we can get a plane ticket, a hotel, all that stuff, when COVID done, we can actually sit there and and bring you more coverage, right. So that those sort of extended goals are, we wanted to be transparent there.
And you know, those those stretch goals, or hopefully,
we can meet those someday, I don't know that their stretch goals for a reason. But it's super cool. It's definitely one of those things like, that's not an expectation, but we I don't know, I've kind of enjoyed being able to be, I gotta say this and probably regret parts of it. But we had a lot of ways have been like the premier podcast to bring a lot of human factors content, that's at conferences that you wouldn't get unless you went. And so by putting stuff on YouTube, and having interviews, outside of talks, and all that kind of stuff, it allows us to, again, serve the community in a larger way. So that's why like, the Patreon push has been so big for us, because as the world hopefully starts to round out, and we do see more conferences, you know, in the coming year, we're able to, you know, be out there or be present in some of these conferences to give actual coverage, so you can understand what was going on if you weren't able to go and learn a little bit more about different factions of human factors.
Yeah, so with that, we just want to say a huge thank you to all of our patrons for helping make some of these changes and exciting things that we talked about here happen, you know, and with more people subscribing to our content, you know, we can kind of continue to push these boundaries of how we interact with the community. And speaking of community, if, you know, wherever you're at, right now, if you're watching on the live stream, or if you're hanging out with us somewhere else on a on a post recorded thing, if you could just give us a hate this, give us a like and subscribe or follow or whatever it is. The thing here is that
doing those things kind of helps the algorithm help others find the show.
It's so dumb the way it works, but it does work. So you know, it's it's a small thing for us to ask, I guess. And that's one way you can help the show to. Yeah, so it's all free. There's nothing it's like, there's no cost required there. You don't have to help us like fund the show. It's just making it so we can get to more people through these different sources. Yeah, so after 200 episodes, like, like we said earlier, we're still able to kind of keep the show ad free, because of our
fantastic community minus those couple episodes that Blake is so proud of with the you like books.
Oh, audible? Yeah.
All right. So that's, that's all the surprises that we have. We are not going away.
That's a lot. That's a lot of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. And we've put some important links in our descriptions below.
And, yeah, that's the show, guys. No, I'm just kidding.
That's it. We still got a new story to talk about. Right? It's a bunch of announcements. Yes, we do. Let's go. All right.
Yes, this is the part of the show all about human factors, news. This is where we talk about everything related to the field of, you guessed it, human factors. This could be anything from medical privacy, robotics, whatever it is, as long as it relates to the field of human factors. It is fair game for us to talk about on the show. Blake, what do we have up this week? All right, so this week, we're talking about neuroscientists unveiling a bunch of tech for the vision impaired. So there are many, many wearables and portable devices that are aimed at improving life for the blind and visually impaired, and in some cases, even trying to restore vision. Such devices have been developed for pretty much every part of the body, including your fingers, wrist, admin, face, ears, you name it. The thing is, most people don't want to wear them. So most of these wearables currently on the market have very low acceptance rates from the blind community or visually impaired community, because you look like some sort of Robocop wearing them and makes you feel kind of odd in a space when you're around other people attracting attention that you didn't necessarily have otherwise. Plus, there's a major unmet need in this field for providing tools for children's providing wearables that can help children navigate their environment, and the 300 million people worldwide with visual impairments about 20 more
Have those are children. And yet analysis to date, there are some awesome coming devices. And we're going to talk about three of them that are designed to help kids in different ways to understand their environment and really tackle it. So that includes something called the audio bracelet, which uses sound and motion sensors to help blind visually impaired children restore a sense of space around them. We also have a little bit about some prosthesis for image in our eye implants, excuse me, that can help stimulate the eye and kind of allow people to see some kind of vision that they maybe never had in their whole life. And then we've also got this hap to you technology that's a textured tablet that similar to the audio bracelet tries to help you define and understand a space around you. But Nick, one thing I want to do is go ahead and thank the Patreon for doing a three way tie on this one. Because this I know you're excited about it, I'm stoked to talk about it. But let's let's just jump into what do you want to start with? I don't know, man, should we start at the top here with this audio bracelet? Let's do it. Alright, this audio bracelet, using sound and motion sensors to help blind visually impaired children restore a sense of space. So we've talked about some of these assistive technologies before we've talked about
hearing aids where, you know, it will kind of do like this echolocation bit, we've talked about canes that will give vibration feedback for this type of thing. But this seems like you're taking all that technology, and you're packing it into a bracelet that allows people to basically understand their spatial location,
you know, as it pertains to their environment, right? So, so we're looking at, like, orientation of an object,
or, you know, even
sort of what distance to objects in their in their environment to right, yeah, so understanding both your environment itself, but also things that are, you might be interacting with it within your environment, too. So this could be really helpful for, you know, kids, especially when they're adjusting to going to school, for instance. And so this is a really great way to help them kind of navigate in a perceptual way, what their environment looks like, especially if it's brand new, and then different elements that you should be interacting with, or expect to interact with, like going through doors or anything of that nature. So it's a interesting kind of take on some of the technology we've talked about before, because it's really taking integrated audio and motion sensors to help produce that sound where you wouldn't really have it. So you can navigate that way by understanding based off of sound what's actually in space in front of you.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much more we can talk about this object specifically. Because I feel like we've kind of talked at nauseam about this type of technology when it comes to like, like I mentioned before, the smart gains, the the ear device, I don't remember their headphones or what but
I think the interesting bit about this specific technology is how you're interacting with an object, right? That's, that's kind of the novel bit that I'm getting from this, because the other ones have always been like lane maintenance within a very narrow lane, or,
you know, having that smart cane be able to detect what's around you in an environment. But this one's actually telling you how you are
manip manipulating an object or kind of what's going on, right, because
we're talking about like, manipulating an object with your fingertips, we're talking about,
basically, how textures might represent space.
You know, and kind of use using this in tandem with like a mobile app or something where you have
sort of all these different cues, audio GPS, to explore that space, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing that I find most interesting here is because this is like a research based project that has come into more developed technology, it's interesting that it has a lot of backing from the research side. So there's actually like a study that goes into and shows that after just a short period of training, you can see a transfer in skill. So you see that improvement in auditory and motor motor skills from just a little bit of use, that doesn't just last for a couple of months, but can even you know, last up to a year.
So you don't end you don't necessarily have to keep using the device after a certain duration or period, let's say let's say it's not something for you, or you don't find it useful, but you may still have some kind of improvement and skill to track the transfers for a long amount of time. So it's a it's just a cool one based on the fact that it's you know, being that market of people that are both, you know, visually impaired, but also kids so it provides them you know, ways to kind of understand social cues as well as what's going on through an environment. Can we talk about this bionic eye? Yeah, this is gonna blow my mind. I really am having a hard time.
Understanding just how this even works. So basically the way that they've talked about it. So it's a, it's an image of an eye, it's called a prima implant. And it can stimulate your eye, so that you can obtain at least six or 25 pixels in your view, which allows, in some cases, it seems like the most general cases, you can read letters, read shapes and outlines of letters. But in some cases, you're actually even to do a little bit of facial recognition, which, in the case of being visually impaired, that's mind blowing.
Yeah, I mean, let's, let's really, let's talk about the resolution here, because it's low, it's 625 pixels. But if you think about something like that, in comparison to what you have, as you know, someone with a disadvantage, or someone who's blind,
that's a huge difference, and being able to read or at least, detect what objects are nearby. So that way, you don't bump into them without the assistance of another object that you're holding in your hand. That's a huge thing.
To have, right? That's, that's a huge advantage that you didn't have before with this bionic eye.
And
I don't know, man, this is this is the coolest thing to me, cuz I'm, my, my brain is exploding as we're talking about it. Because it's, it's like, what are the applications and now they have all this input that they didn't have before, I imagine.
Even though the resolution is so little, the response to this might be the same as you might get with somebody who's getting a cochlear implant for the first time.
You know, those videos of people reacting to that is very striking. It's because they're experiencing something that they haven't before. They're getting a bunch of new input, and they can interact with the world in different way. And I feel like, you know, it's something like this is going to be the same case. And who knows, someday it might have the same or, or a good enough resolution to where they can
kind of navigate the world as as a sighted person could write. I think this is very exciting. Well, I mean, that's the dream, right? Like, okay, yes, this is 625 pixels of resolution, which to give kind of a, like an understanding of what that means for a sighted person. So the way that they actually describe it is patients are reaching levels of where they can see just below what's considered the level of legal blindness. So in the in legal terms, you're still like, considered blind. But from having an ad that's legally blind, that actually can see she considered herself much more visually impaired, that kind of gives you a reference, right, but going from zero to 625 pixels, that's got to be insane, because like Nick was saying, it's so much more visual input than you would have been used to at all. But there with this kind of technology, there's always a place to start. And so being at that kind of resolution, and getting people to just below legal blindness from just one to two implants, that over time, I can only imagine is going to get better. And I wonder if they're like down the line, it could produce some kind of technology that at least gets you very, very close to, you know, being right above the legal blindness range, and maybe even being able to, you know, move past that completely. So I don't know, I mean, this is a it's an interesting take, and I know that it's it, it seems like a small resolution. But that's just it's so amazing that you can even do any of this with as little as an implant in some electrodes or two implants in some cases.
Yeah, it is really striking. And there's a I trying to show it, but maybe I can't get it ready to go. But there's, there's a striking image on the
on the I triple E article that has this where it actually breaks down, like what this might look like for somebody. Hang on, I'll get it. So for everyone watching here, you'll be able to see this in just a moment, but you can actually see the difference in pixels of of the, you know, like what, what it would look like looking through these at different pixels, so you can see, you know,
the, the various resolutions, and I the 625 looks blurry, but it's not bad. I mean, it's very pixelated. But you can clearly tell that's a woman smiling.
And it's kind of insane to think about somebody getting that level of detail that they didn't have before.
Well, yeah, I mean, even the jump between 64 and 625, that's completely different. Like one is an amorphous shape and the other one, you start to be able to like, put it put it together that it could be facial recognition in some way. Now, I have a hard time with this a little bit because I don't know if I'm saying that because there's a reference image that's already priming me to know
like rice is supposed to be. But nonetheless, I mean, the difference between 64 and 625 is just so much that it's, I don't know, I would, I would love to see how this grows over time.
Because this is it's it talks about this a little bit in the article. And it's kind of interesting to read about, but this is coming out of, you know, two times before they've tried to do something similar, and it just has poor, poor results in the end of it. And now we're moving towards technology with it's a little bit more complex and having better results. So it's, again, in kind of the light of what you were talking about, Nick, it's, it's a large possibility that this will eventually get better and better. Yeah, let's talk briefly about what they're actually doing. So they're, they're actually introducing a gene to cells in the back of the eye to make them become photosensitive. So that's, that's kind of where this vision is coming from.
But that's what they need to be able to get this level of resolution, right. So it's, it's a, it's a new method of, like you said, the,
the other methods didn't work. But this one is, and it's giving you that, that level of resolution. Why don't we get into this last one here? All right. So this last one is, I haven't, we haven't talked about haptic interfaces, I feel a long time. So it's a haptic interface that relies on ultrasonic vibrations beneath a display to create a more or less friction against somebody's fingertips. So giving them the ability to feel these different touch sensations. So this type of thing is meant to help you understand spatial information around you and map out the environment or things that are in front of you. So this is a little bit kind of analogous to what we were talking about with the bracelet suffered, this is really focused on tactile feedback and that haptics,
yeah, if you think about, okay, so the technology that they're using, or at least in this article that they talked about is a tablet, like you said that uses that friction. So if you imagine,
like a CAD drawing of a floor plan, right? That might be one way that you can illustrate open areas versus walls, where you have maybe more friction on the walls or a smoother surface on open area. Or if you if you want to preview a layout or communicate a layout to a vision impaired person, you might give them a top down reference image of the layout of a workspace of a living space or something like that to say, hey, there's a couch here. And that's like a
slightly more friction nice surface, I don't know how to say it, right, this is a slightly more frequently service. And then a wall might be a very like, it requires a lot of friction to hover over.
Where open areas might be completely smooth. So that might be one way to communicate
about surroundings to somebody to give them that mental model of what's around them. And what's going on in the space that they're either about to enter or navigate out of. Absolutely, yeah. And that's similar to what actually happened to us seems to be trying to push towards. So they're like, really applied application in this case, is taking this idea of using like haptic feedback in a mobile app setting where you're actually using GPS to help you kind of like we've talked about before the app kind of talking somebody through steps they need to take or things around in their surroundings to give them indications of where to move, and where when they can walk, and all that kind of stuff. Well, in this case, now, like Think, think of adding tactile feedback on top of that. So it's just like what Nick had been describing. We're almost using your hands on top of your mobile phone to understand friction points and smooth being like continue going, and there's no obstacles in your way and friction, trying to indicate like, oh, there's something that is either coming up in your direction, or you're running right into something. And that is kind of their next steps. It seems like so this tablet is the first precursor. Right. So this technology is not widely available yet. But you can very easily imagine a world where if this technology does end up being successful and easy to kind of produce, you can imagine,
you know, a cellular device that that people can pick up or non sighted people can pick up and navigate through using their fingertips, right, they can use that that display on a device that they already have and kind of build it in all together. And then the application could be limitless. You could almost use that technology on things like websites to navigate and you know, more friction means menu bar, with hovering and vibration to add in all those different
sensory inputs that allow you to navigate some of these spaces that were previously both both physical and digital that were previously unattainable or navigatable to blind folks. Absolutely. Yeah, I think
That's the biggest implication for me or in my mind, right is that if you're going somewhere brand new that you haven't been before, like having it and being able to basically have a trusted companion, like if you can't travel with somebody that to know that you'll be able to navigate the environment, based off of these kind of augmentations that you would have with you on your phone. So if all of this kind of stuff is combined, right, using your phone's GPS on top of like voice cues, and then this haptic cue, I could imagine it might make, you know, traveling a little bit easier or going to somewhere like the grocery store you haven't visited before a little bit simpler. So it just really kind of makes the world more accessible through haptic feedback. Really? Yeah, I think that's a great note to leave it on. I always love talking about accessibility devices, especially for the vision impaired, I think it's a cool topic to really, you know, there's a lot of untapped space there, too, um to really explore so i always love talking about these so i just want to say a huge thank you to our patrons for selecting our topic this week uh and thank you to our friends over at ieee spectrum for our news story if you want to follow along we do post the links to all the original articles in both our slack and our discord now look at that as we find them so join us in one of our communities for more discussion uh we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna see what's going on in the human factors community

are we back we are are we we're back hi everyone we're back uh and here i am without my notes um how about that new patreon commercial if you're watching live you didn't hear it but uh if you're listening later you have definitely heard the new patreon commercial and it sounds great uh yeah so patreon is a thing that we do we explained it at the top of the show i'm not gonna go over it um but we have a bunch of fun things over there um so if that's something that you can help us with then that's great um why don't we go ahead and switch gears and get into this next part of the show we like to call

it came from reddit or maybe not reddit this week we'll see there might be one i don't know what's going on places on the internet let's go with that uh this is the part of the show where we search is that what you just said we search all over the internet to bring new topics that the community is talking about um i think we're gonna do a little bit something different this week uh you know what we're gonna we're gonna catch up with some folks that we haven't heard from in a while so this week it came from human factors cast long time listener and guest host congratulations on your 200th episode this is a great testament to your perseverance passion and personal investment for the field of human factors thank you for bringing together a great community and looking forward to your 400th show on the move hi everyone my name is mia jaramillo and i co-hosted episodes 35 and 39 with nick and blake we cover things like the sensory wearables that are designed for flirting pedestrian autonomous vehicle negotiation electronic skin augmented reality furniture stores the biases and us cops face recognition software databases google home recognizing up to six voices and a scary tech that can replicate your voice with only one minute audio clip lots of fun stuff in those episodes i'm so proud of these guys for hitting the big 200 and continuing to find interesting topics to discuss episode after episode wishing you many many more and hoping that episode 201 has some meaty human factor stories to work through well done you too logan clark here i'm a long time listener to the show and an occasional guest for some of your hfes and ahfe conference coverage when i started listening to you guys i was an undergrad student just starting to learn about human factors now i'm halfway through a phd and i still look forward to tuning in each week for my weekly dose of hf news congrats on the 200th episode and here's to inspiring another round of students and future practitioners of the next 200. hi i'm jeff olson the former digital media editor for the human factors cast when we were working together i was responsible for creating graphics intros transitions combining video and audio assets together to officially launch the human factors cast on youtube for the hundredth episode i also helped edit human factors cast coverage for hfes 2018 and uploading all the previous 99 podcasts to youtube for viewer consumption i was also a guest on episodes 99 and 136 and 136 which was the first episode transitioning human factors cast into live streams unfortunately things didn't work out as planned and youtube content kind of stopped for a while but you guys kept going and recently tackled doing live streams again on youtube i'm really impressed and really glad to see that you guys have kept this going for so long it shows how truly dedicated you are to science uh i believe scientific literacy is so important to people now more than ever and you guys have been highlighting current topics and research leading discussion helping people learn this area of science i think your podcast may be more important than you know and i want you to know that i really respect you guys your commitment to this podcast i i just think it shows how intelligent and dedicated and genuinely good people you are and i'm excited for you for you and i i wish you nothing but the best stay strong and don't forget that it depends hey y'all i'm bryan mcdonald i was on human factors cast 90 right before going to grad school i am just so impressed that this show has hit 200 it really is an always entertaining and educational chat with two nerdy friends i can't wait to see what magic is produced in the future hi i'm erica ackerman i actually worked with nick back in the day he was a user experience designer and i was a user interface designer we had a lot of fun and he wanted to start a podcast and i helped design the logo so that's how i was involved with this and i'm so excited to see that there are 200 episodes so excited for human factors cast and with a new updated logo design i can't wait to see it go forward yay hey human factors cast it's woodrow gusted guys a happy 200 episodes what an accomplishment uh really proud of you guys you guys are our true professionals and dedicated to what you do and and it really shows so i've had the privilege of working with you guys several times over the years and i think six or seven and you know one of my favorite memories was uh you you gave me the honored privilege of being a field correspondent when i went to the 2018 kai conference in montreal and got to meet a lot of cool people and and see a lot of really cool technology but you know one of the things we i got to do was we had a sit down with a somebody who designed cockpits for bombardier and uh talking with him about their process and and what they went through as far as designs and and implementation and everything was was really cool so without without you guys i wouldn't have been able to do that so again uh you know really happy for you and uh looking forward to another 200

name is epis i had the privilege of covering the hfes 2019 annual conference for the human factors cast and i had an absolute blast doing it from self-driving cars to star wars to chris wickens human factors cast really covers everything i really really pleased for nick and blake on achieving this amazing milestone and i cannot wait to see what the future holds for them and for their listeners i personally am excited to see what comes out in 2022 in this weird world that we call life hi my name is matteo from perth western australia i first discovered the podcast a few years back while looking for human practice resources online and got involved with the slack discussions and uh sending through news articles for the show and i was on an episode on december 2018 with a recap of the hfix day conference we had here in perth i reckon it's uh great that the guys have achieved the 300 episode milestone uh doing a great job with the patriots patreon and uh yeah all the other things that they're doing online and the various resources that they're sharing they're really building a great human factors community around the globe with this podcast and i'm looking forward uh with what's become for 2021 and beyond so as always it depends hey guys elise here congratulations on hitting episode 200. i remember when you two first started and each episode was a mountain in itself but it's been awesome watching you two grow this podcast and even being on as a guest a few times you guys are awesome i can't wait to see what tricks are up your sleeve for your next 200 episodes hey guys this is billy man 200 episodes it's fantastic you guys have taken this podcast to a whole another level this is amazing i'm so happy that i was even a little bit a part of this you guys have taken something that was a great idea and made it into a very successful show and i'm so happy blake you are amazing i knew you would be a great addition the moment you stepped on board and i think you guys wouldn't have been able to take it as far as you did with me involved man nick you're all so amazing i always knew you had it in you and that you could do amazing things when given the opportunity i'm very proud that i could even say that i was a little bit a part of this show i still wear my human factors t-shirt all the time guys thank you thank you so much for letting me play a part of it for a little while and thank you guys and i'm looking forward to another 200 or more episodes take care uh wow blake

i'm not crying i'm not crying you're crying i'm not crying you're crying yeah that's kind of how i feel so that was awesome so i have not heard that nick tried to get me to watch it or listen to it a day ago and i wouldn't do it uh because i was afraid of the tears but that was awesome i can't believe some of the people that showed up to do that thank you everybody that threw a nice message for us that was really really cool to go through and listen to i there were some parts i was trying not to die laughing um yeah it was so fun there were there were definitely some uh some comments in there that i was like yes that's perfect um we'll have a post credit stinger too if you stick around with us so there's another one that i didn't include in that but i do want to share it with everybody so we'll stick it after the credits yes um blake you know man i think our time's up for today i i i want to leave it on that note because um that was just such a tremendous uh uh send out i guess on our way forward to 201 and beyond um yeah so as you know as we close out our 200th episode i just want to give a huge thank you to our family uh to who puts up with our podcasting for multiple hours a week you know our friends who kind of served as as the resources uh as we've navigated through some of these topics um all of our show contributors interviewees our patrons for their continued support and especially our listeners all of our listeners for making the show what it is today uh you know without you none of this would be possible so blake let's send it home that's it for today everyone that's it for today everyone let us know what you guys think of the news story this week if you want you can join the discussion on our slack or discord or follow us on any of our social channels where we're being active now at h factor's podcast if you want to get with us directly you can do that human factors cast gmail.com for now we'll be back later if you like what you hear you want to support the show there's a couple ways you can do that like i said you can leave us a review on your podcast medium of choice uh you can like and subscribe wherever you're at it doesn't matter uh it all helps the algorithm and all that stuff uh or you know you can consider supporting us on patreon if you have the financial means to like i said want to be more transparent about where all that money's going um you know as always you can find us our all our socials and stuff or in the links to the description in this episode wow that was a sentence all of them are down below or wherever you're at uh so click on those if you're interested and uh as always um you know i want to thank mr blake garnsdorf for being on the show dude i seriously couldn't have done 200 episodes without you uh i i enjoy sitting here every week and and talking with you uh so thank you you know i didn't put you in that list but thank you blake thank you nick because without you the show would not exist yeah i mean billy like hit on it without you the show wouldn't have even started so you're the reason it's here it's just been fun to ride along and read the news it's a team effort where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about episode 200 this is exciting so guys if you want to come and get a hold of me come hang out on sundays from what is it eight o'clock in the morning uh pacific time on twitch at twitch.tv human factors cast and you can reach me anywhere else on the web at don't panic ux as for me i've been your host nick rome you can find me on the slacker discord at nick rome or nick or whatever i'm at you know i'm there you'll find me uh thanks again for tuning in to human factors cast episode 200 special edition until next time it depends