E211 - Does ‘Rudeness’ Impact Patient Treatment?

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Welcome to human factors yeah your weekly podcast for human factors psychology and design. Hey what's up everybody this is episode 211 we're recording this live in 7/1/2021 this is human factors cast Idaho's Nick Rome I'm joined today by Mr Blake are in store hello everybody and thank you for the bongo drums intro that was sick man there was there was a lot going on I had to like turn everything off I forgot to record and there's a lot so sorry about the drums guy anyway welcome to the show it's just a quick programming note we do have our latest deep dive and is live now on algorithms and whether or not it can predict your brain preferences as a lot of fun those deep ties are awesome to go if they're great companion pieces of the podcast what 1 for this episode as well so be sure to check out our website for that human factors gas digital media lab that's open for business we got quite a few members welcome to our newest member you bet. So we have a couple of spots left in there some really interesting things going on in the lab that we're not quite ready to share but if that at all interest you if you want to get involved in any way we do have a couple spots open so please reach out to us let us know kind of what you're interested in and we can try to find our the best way that you can help us out and help you out too and it's all a bit what symbiotic relationship we we want to make sure that the lab is a fun place to be. Anyway I think that's it we know what you're here for you here for human factors news right. We. But what if we stop for one week and I forget how to press buttons well yeah this is the part of the show all about human factors news this is where we talk about everything related to the field of human factors could be anything we got some medical in there we got some psychology in there as long as it relates to the field of human factors it is fair game for us to sit here and chat about on the show Blake what we have this week all rights are up first are up only this we would reduce becomes a matter of life and death so how rude it narrows your mindset and can lead to medical mistakes so if you're ever been interrupted by a colleague in a meeting and found yourself replaying that of it your head all day even after you left work probably minor route events like this happen all the time and you may be surprised by the magnitude of the effects they have on our decision making in our daily functioning in fact recent research suggests that in certain situations incidental rudeness like this can actually be deadly so in research forthcoming in the journal of applied psychology Smith management management professor Falk and colleagues looked at how experiencing rudeness amplifies the anchoring bias thank ring bias can happen a lot of different situations but it's very common in medical diagnosis and negotiations so if you go to a doctor and say I think I'm having a heart attack that can become an anchor for the doctor to focus on trying to fix that diagnosis or understand that diagnosis even if you're experiencing something like indigestion across 4 studies researchers found that both witnessed and directly experience rudeness seem to have a similar anchoring the fact across situations and basically what they were observing his unerring affect the rudest narrowing a person's perspective that narrow the perspective that they couldn't see outside of that particular situation leave leaving them susceptible to dangerous situations in this case for decision making. Nick this is really an intersection of a lot of different psychological principles but the biggest thing being that rudeness can have a severe effect depending on context that was this something you've ever thought about before I'm kind of passively I have thought so let me just back up and talk about like the anchoring bias I thought about this with medical diagnoses so whenever I go into the doctor. I can only describe symptoms I don't describe what I think it is based on what I've web emptied before I go because I don't want to anchor them an 8 I want their expert opinion that's why I'm there I don't I actively try to avoid that. But whether or not you know rudeness affects that anchoring I had never thought about before and you we're talking about this before the show this is one of those things it's like. I think this comes out of a business school but this is like psychology research and it was just interesting to see how human factors this kind of pervasive across multiple disciplines but I I do wanna back up here let's let's talk about. What we mean when we say rudeness and what we mean we are talking about the anchoring bias right so rudeness that's kind of this display of disrespect kind of ignoring social norms. Or some common etiquette that you might experience that goes against cultural expectations and basically kind of pushes boundaries of these. Interactions of accepted behavior right so that's that's what's going on when we define rudeness so something that's not culturally acceptable I like. I don't know calling somebody a name that's not kind you can you can imagine what that is but and then you pair that with anchoring bias a let's talk about anchoring bias really quick so this is a cognitive bias that allows us causes us to rely too heavily on that first piece of information that we receive about something that the example that you gave about heart attack right that's a example of anchoring in a medical context someone comes in they say I I think I'm having a heart attack and so the doctor then. Let me get fixated on that. Idea of this patient having a heart attack in the bend might be suffering from another type of bias confirmation bias you know to basically make sure that that is the correct diagnosis and so they're looking for things that fit that so they're they're looking for anchoring and then they're kind of trying to fit everything to that and then let's let's talk about the other example you said the Mississippi River example right 500 miles you're anchoring them to that 500 miles when in reality it might be much bigger it might be much smaller. And that that anchor becomes an influence. For how long you feel like that river actually is right so so there's a couple things going on here. And then kind of the the. That's what I'm looking for the confluence of the 2 is what we're talking about in this paper right I'm gonna pass it back over to you Blake have you ever thought of this and do you use any or have you thought about anchoring in medical contacts before so I've definitely thought about anchoring because that's something you read in like any early you know comment oversee paper where they really focus on decision making and I did have a professor early on who is very interested in you know medical errors and what I had to do with you know patient decision making along with doctor decision making in the operating room so I've heard of the idea but I guess I'd never really thought about it in a real world context like outside of an operating room like a me as a patient coming into a doctor's office and being able to immediately bias somebody by you know my assumption that I'm having a heart attack or whatever being able to buy kind of color their view of whatever's going on with me which to some degree you have to rely on and I think in the medical world it actually makes sense that it's so prolific because if you think about the kind of help in health health care ends up really working. Typical doctors like if you're going to it yeah no I'm typical big box doctor's office right they only have so much time they can actually spend with patients so they've got to be in and out and making certain decisions as fast as they can so if you hear like I think this is wrong with me trying to investigate that is a likely way to go based on like time and decision making you have to make to be able to get somebody either to more help if they need or out of the doctor's office and on their way so it I think it's it's funny that this is definitely a dangerous consequence in the medical field but I think it's a pretty intuitive why and that when you present a piece of information to someone they can tend to latch on to that or what that color their judgments as they move forward. Yeah I want to talk about briefly. 2 things what one the Mississippi River just for anyone listening who doesn't know how long it is I just said I Google this for everyone's convenience I guess it's 2318 miles so you can see where that 500 mile as an anchor is actually really impacting how long you think it is because you think 500 miles you might think it's the you know length of the 5 between southern California northern California that's that's my frame of reference right. And so San Diego in the bay area right that's 5 and miles anyway so that's like my anchor and I'm like oh yeah that seems reasonable it goes up the country and anyway you can see how that anchors your your frame of thought when you think about the river as a whole when it actuality it's like 4 times that and so you might be thinking is actually shorter than I am I don't know so I do want to I do want to talk about anchoring bias and why it actually happens right so. There is some debate as to why it happens but it's deeply rooted in sort of human psychology and cognition. And some of the more recent evidence suggests that it happens. Kind of depending on where the anchoring information comes from so we can become anchored to all different types of information values of pieces of information. Whether we come up them whether we come up with them ourselves or are provided with them by others. But basically we react to them for different reasons and so. You know if we come up with something ourselves that's almost borderline confirmation bias but then when it comes from others it's more of that anchoring bias. So again we kind of don't know exactly why it happens but we do know what happens and it has different sources there. Mmhm and I'm sure like most things in psychology there's a large interaction effect there because of you yeah I think about that there you could like you maybe you just trust source of and information more so you'll always believe our anchor yourself and that just because of you know your prior experience or you know you you believe and what type of medical science or something like that. Sorry I think there's probably a little bit of confirmation bias that lead you to anchors the U. bill you actually believe that and or that you focus on or if it's data oriented right like sometimes when you put statistics or numbers to things people are more likely to believe it anyway without doing any extra research which is kind of again in that same line of the common interest the work of providing people with data and then see how it affects their decision making which is still mind boggling that that's that like science from the psychology science from like the eighties still like it colors what we do today in terms of psychology research. Yeah so we've talked a lot about kind of the concept behind it but do you want to break down how they kind of tested this theory out yes Sir to break down how they were seeing this and kind of replicate in the lab what they did is they the researchers ran actually medical simulation with anesthesiology students and that residents had to diagnose and treat us a patient but right before they go into the simulation where they're gonna treat this patient they're given and anchoring piece of information about the patient's condition or suggestion about what they may experience so the suggestion was typically incorrect and it served as the the court court anchor for the study. And throughout the exercise the simulator during like the person who is facilitating this provided feedback to the album was not sick not to suggest a diagnosis but instead something else so you have this conflict between what a resident was told before they went into actually diagnose a patient and then your patient or your Confederate in this case kind of giving information that was contrary to that if you well. And then in some of the some of these iterations of course to do a little bit of a delay between subjects study here. They the researchers had one doctor entered the room and act rudely toward another doctor in front of residents to see how that would actually called the situation as well so we got 2 things going on we have an instance of anchoring effect from outside party but then we have the introduction of rudeness see how that kind of affects people's overall interaction with patients. Right and the answer to the question does rudeness impact the way that patients are treated because of the anchoring effect is yes is what this is the study is suggesting right yeah so basically they're saying that rudeness the you know experiencing this rude doctor would make you more likely to anchor because it kinda narrows your perspective and the researchers explored these 2 tasks right that have been shown to expand your perspective which were perspective taking an informational aberration so you know they were they were looking at those 2 things and found that the rudeness actually makes you more likely to anchor. This really makes you want to ask my doctor questions about how the day's been before we get started right right yes so this is this is a news you can use if you will right. The doctor's office and ask them Hey how's your day going be polite and that's that's why you should always be polite to your health care professionals. You know I I think that's a great great when they're black. Yeah I I don't know. So the answer is yes it does impacted I don't know do we want to get into some of these other insights here Blake so it just like really show the antithesis that thesis or what really happened here so the the big overall takeaways like Nick said there is a correlation between these 2 actions kind of net the having the rudeness of the anchor kind of narrowing your focus so what the research is really a found as they were when experiencing rudeness prior to the simulation starting the particular resident within keep treating the wrong thing even though the person the simulation or the Confederate was giving them plenty of markers to say like actually it's something else it it has nothing to do with that like anchoring affect you what you had before you came in and potentially this like a fact of narrowing your perception. So it that's that's a really interesting they're able to like get both to work together in that show in a basically a pretty narrow study this can actually happen in a medical contacts to have consequence. Sorry it's it's just a it's a strange thing to see this. Kind of play out across studies because this this paper star to make a lot more sense based on where this. School is because that they mention this happens in negotiation technique as well so seeing like a negative affect and then also seeing how like anchoring sucks based on somebody's like suggestion or some like that could happen in the business world and now we're seeing it replicated in a kind of a more serious context or a more deadly context in some cases yeah I already I do wanna talk you kind of opened up the Pandora's box here but I do wanna talk a little bit about real world applications of anchoring. I mean like salary negotiation right that's something that you can use to anchor. And depending on who says a number first that anchors the other party to the expectations so I'm. You know you could you could say something incredibly high and that anchors them to hit you know where you are it might not get you the job but it will let you know what let them know what you're thinking and so they'll start to think about what around that range is appropriate likewise you could let them set the anchor first and it might be and a really big lowball and you know it it's like well do I take it because it's. It's a job and I need money at like a it's so use use anchoring in your everyday life right when you go to negotiate a used car sale right that's another instance where the anchor at the the sticker on the window is an anchor in itself where it says you know $5000 or whatever they think you know that might be much higher than they're willing to part with it but they put that anchor there so that way you can determine whether or not that is a appropriate price so think about anchoring in your everyday life we'll talk about some applications of anchoring in and just a minute but I do want to mention that this anchoring a factor with the rudeness this was actually replicated across several different tasks I you mentioned to go she Asians but general knowledge tasks as well and all throughout all these different studies the results were consistent where rudeness makes it more likely that a person will get anchored to the first suggestion here so if you compare if you combine that with the other applications that I just said be rude to respective employers then they'll be more likely to anchor themselves to your expected salary don't do that that is really bad. It will work like you think it will yeah and and same thing like it's it's this weird mmhm this is weird thing right where if you if you need something you can't be rude yet if they are experiencing rudeness from an outside source that is not you they might still be more receptive to your anchor it's all very fascinating and I'm sure somebody will figure out a way to optimize this and take advantage of it but you know that's that's for another time. I don't know is there anything else you wanna talk about here Blake before we get into some of these other application areas. No I mean the the biggest parts from here because I think I think you've done a good job helping it make it clear like there's different types of anchoring that exist in your daily life whether we're kind of cognizant of it are paying attention to it but something that did come up throughout the paper is like how do you what we do in situations like this where anchoring and then come like yeah in combination with the rudeness could have really you know drastic effects like in the medical world or even in your own you know to go she ation for job stuff. And one big thing that they continue to bring up with this capability to try and do your part perspective taking so actually trying to put yourself in the shoes of the person that's talking to you and then really kind of think from their perspective to help you elaborate your world view a little bit more and I don't know if that looks like the researchers were actually able to find it both behaviors could help to counter a fact counter act the effective route as an anchoring by doing these kind of perspective taking Tasker adding these and which is really interesting and it probably takes a lot of self awareness to be able to put yourself through those kind of things in daily life to come out of anchoring a fax or like a rude experience impacting how you interact with other people but it's it's cool to see that there's actual mitigation strategies in the research as well. Yeah I wanna talk about just a couple more examples in the real world right you have judged L. like in in the court room you have these examples where when convictions are handed out lawyers are going to try very hard to make sure to get that meeting directly after a lunch break because they're far more likely to give lesser sentences or allow people to go on parole. So I mean you know that's that's a that's kind of the anchoring swing judgments and then you have court sort of this a. Speculation about like what how how might this affect self driving cars right you we talk about that example at the very top about when somebody cuts you off on the freeway and you are finding yourself seething you know down the line do we talk about that or is that that's in the actual article I don't know if we talk about that the blur but anyway they tell they mention that the article and so what might that look like for a self driving vehicle fully autonomous vehicle basically if we think somebody's cutting us off are we more likely to. Sort of. You know be upset at that other person because them cutting you off was the anchor. But it in fact was not them it was the self driving technology. So I there's there's that kind of speculation as well. I don't know those are those are fine applications I think yeah that self driving car waiting even some of the like other applications for just automation or machine learning or interesting because it becomes like if their anchors that are put in there or if there are actions that happened in the self driving car instance that make your trigger you to think that it's a real like a rudeness when fact maybe that was a life saving maneuver for the person in the car. Did it kind of gets it that whole problem of like putting self driving cars into playing us in like a slow fashion we're dealing with like manual and self driving at the same time so you're trying to interpret interactions are what you assume is a human but it's not it's like automation making decisions based on programming so I I think that that leads itself to I think have probably human bias inside of the automation development potentially but then to you kind of have to you know assess the situation is like that the human driver led to my car just cut that other car off and understand like behavior behind you that you may not be in control of anymore so I think it adds a lot of different techniques yeah wave at him and say oh I'm sorry. It is automated me like throw up your hands both of them and show you know it's it's not me I do wanna talk about this in sort of a medical context again. I'm kind of these application areas of rudeness meets anchoring bias and I wanna talk about specifically like what might this look like if there's some sort of anchoring bias check in the software programs that these medical professionals use that are creating the diagnosis. You know I I is there is there something that we can do it or is there some sort of anti bias error anchoring bias check that you know kind of is used to complete these diagnosis negotiations or other similar work like what kind of checks are in place in the software to make sure that you're not being. That your diagnosis is to the best of your ability and like how do you counter sort of that anchoring bias right that's it it's interesting question I don't have the answer to your any speculation from your end like I think it's really hard and be at that's so stupid to say so I I do have an example of why it why this is kind of breaking my brain twist a little bit I'm gonna talk about it at a high level because I want to protect the person that it's related to but a very close friend of mine he spent all of his career working in the medical world army which he developed a lot of different types of technologies and worked on them and he came to see that there was a really good software implementations for specific. Specific things you do in the medical world related diagnosis but what can often get in the way is doctors prior experience and it not being aligned with how the machine worked and so there's this mismatch between I am the human the doctor that understands the the science behind all of this and I've been doing this job for a long time first is I've got a machine that's you know powered by machine learning and early A. II and is proven to be a very good diagnostic tool you have this kind of combative nature between you know technology and human perception perception so I think a lot of this stuff does exist in some form or fashion. In medical technology it's trying to keep our humans perspective in check they can be very very tough based on prior experience how you anchor in situations or you know experiences you've had in the past that have colored or mental model of how things work so it I think software. It's it's kind of hard in the in the medical world because I think there is a lot of really good software that exists out there but I do know there's it's also very prone to use errors and things like that that are also related to you you know bad design but I don't know Nick from your perspective where do you see maybe checks for this kind of stuff. I don't know that's an interesting question and something that you know smarter people than me are dedicating their lives research too yeah. If I were to speculate I would imagine it there's like some questions that don't necessarily reveal what they're checking for in the software like I don't know was it you know how great the doctor's mood. Where you know it's not necessarily transparent what the software is asking that for. You know and I think that could be built into a work flow throughout the day you know like how it where something just comes up randomly and it just you know maybe doctors have like a a pager or something on them and they say oh my mood is happy face my mood is sad face my mood is angry face you know and there's just some way to correlate that to win their diagnosing. These patients conditions in and whether or not. Maybe there's some correlation through machine learning or something like that that can predict exactly based on a doctor's mood or other you know periodic check in questions although that's a lot to ask of a doctor I don't know I'm just you know I think you bring up a really good point and you you know me I love it in evasive measure aimed we talked about on the show I think at least 2 times about various algorithms that are out there I think they're related to smartphone A. I. assistance they can kind of analyze your mood based off your voice so using something like that to kind of have a passive pulls check on you throughout the day to see how your decision making is and that that does get into a very weird place doesn't it very quickly her maybe that's where I mind goes is is jacking your your decision making across patients based off of analysis of something like your phones decision making about how you're feeling and that's that's your work performance and stuff like that so it it gets into very sci fi place but I think there's a lot of merit to it yeah it could be cool to see like we talked about a couple weeks ago where you know all this information about a person is being. Used for medical diagnoses or you know these these sorts of algorithms that go on behind the scenes you can also play those into medical professionals who are actually diagnosing these things. Mmhm so. Yeah I am it's interesting to think about how you know software can be used I do wanna get into this next question here about whether or not we can use human factors principles to decrease rudeness in the workplace or is that you know in the domain of I psych. And if we can use human factors what is that look like I mean we kind of talked a little bit about it anything else that comes to mind their Blake. The this is hard because I I think. How. I don't know how to approach this so I'm gonna try and do it as appropriately as I can I gotta do it so I I value. A lot of my colleagues who do not always present me things in the most. On route fashion possible and I think it's led me to have a thicker skin to be able to produce and take Kurt K. take types of critique in a much better way and make better products and separate myself from my work. So I think we're moving subroutine is from the work place there so that I wouldn't what wanted to be removed because it's been invaluable to me and my growth. And also with some of my right I think so my own behaviors can be perceived as rude because I'm very straight to the point. So I I really don't know if removing rudeness in the workplace if that completely changes how people interact. Because I think there I think I have a lot of positive relationships where there are people who know me very well and I know them very well and we can be kind of tough with each other to get to where we need to go to like push a product for like brainstorm ideas without it being professionally unprofessional I guess is the way a way that I would put it I am sure there are benefits over because of this whole Nehring is narrowing this a mind set may not be for people who cannot. Basically get themselves out of that or like take information and look at it a different way if somebody's been rude to them I do think there is value in figuring out how to put that into place but I would imagine that you've got some ideas for different tactics are principles that you think you could interject in the workplace to either reduce or change how rudeness impacts people a man just to talk with HR I don't know like I feel like the. You know Kristen makes a good point in chat here non formal meetings between people to discuss behavior could potentially. The help right you know whether or not they're positive or negative and just say what works for people and those individual differences right what works for somebody may not work for somebody else. I I don't know there's like I said there are people that are smarter than me that are devoting their life's work to this I think we kind of talked a little bit about you know intervention methods that may attract additional metrics that might help with. With things like the diagnosis and the accuracy of that but I feel like there's also things that you could do to be or to to intervene to be less a route in the workplace to write like there's. There's certainly like meditation methods that doctors can employ or there's like standards that. Institutions can make mandatory across their staff to where if anybody says something derogatory then you know they're they're out you know what I mean there's a staffing crisis right now but like. You know that that there's that type of thing and that the staffing crisis is a whole separate the anyway there's there's ways about it. I think I think it's actors can help I think it's a really great point I I do to be completely but I do think there is a difference between. Occupational rudeness that has some kind of benefit because this party or personality in the bluntness and and how you do things but there's also like don't be a deck there so there's a lot of that there's some definite gray area I love the idea about the meditation thing because call back to last week's episode I I did attend to talk with one of the product designers for my headspace headspace at mindspace headspace and it sounded like that has a tremendous impact and some other work environment stuff like they're all hand starts off with meditation interesting yeah so there there's a lot of interesting kind of applications of things like that you can bring into the workplace also groups use may I have a big fan of exercise so if you can find ways to interject that in the beginning or the middle or whatever part of your day sometimes that can change your complete complete brain chemistry and just turn a day around completely so maybe that's another way to approach it yeah very interesting article this week like any other closing thoughts on this one. I just really liked it it was tough because there's a lot going on here and the so I I but I haven't revisited kind of this anchoring T. in case stuff in a long long time I do like that this is being done from the business school perspective in that they're thinking outside of just like the go go shading table in terms of where this can be impactful I agree all right well thank you to our patrons this week for selecting our topic and thank you to our friends over at the university of Maryland for news story this week if you want to follow along we do post links to the original articles in our slack in our discord as we find them as well as our weekly news round ups so join us over there for more discussion where to take a quick break and we'll be back to see what's going on in the human factors community right after this human factors cast brings you the best in human factors news interviews conference coverage and overall fun conversations into each and every episode we produce but we can't do it without you. The human factors cast network is 100 percent listener supported all the funds are going to running the show come from our listeners our patrons are our priority and we want to ensure we're giving back to you for supporting us pledges start at just $1 per month and include rewards like access to our weekly Q. and a is with the hosts personalized professional reviews and human factors minute patrie on only weekly podcast where the host breakdown unique obscure 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came. It was. Somebody clip that I'd like I'd not been doing this for anyway I let's switch gears get to you it came from this week we actually got to really great questions from our community one from our YouTube community and one from our discord and this is the part of your research all over everything to bring you community topics so fortunately you know we did get like I said from our you tube in discord so we'll go ahead and get into it here this first one is from YouTube this one 's from Derek Carr and she they write hello I just found your channel and I really enjoy your content will thank you for the kind words really appreciate that a video that I would like to request would be about what a student should be doing within their last semester to better prepare themselves for the human factors field thank you Blake what should a student be doing in their last semester to help prepare themselves for the human factors field wolf that's a good question definitely not things I was doing so one thing that I think is really important in your last semester. Is it this this sounds cliche but I I swear it's it's the truth it's a really start thinking about what your next step is so if you if you are planning to go to grad school if you're planning to try to look for that first job or whatever it's going to be like really start putting that plan together for what those next steps arc is that usually if you're going to grad school that means you know filling out applications taken tasks getting with your professors to get those awesome letters of recommendation and all that kind of stuff and then finding a job can be even tougher I think one really important aspect of that last semester is to make sure that you're you're getting the proper experience you want so that you can move forwards are finding an internship as a really invaluable thing to try and do or in that can even be you know working in a new lab or taking out a new research project in a lab there you go human factors cast has one. So that's a really really great place to spend your time and lastly I would I would have told myself to do this but I honestly didn't know anything about human factors until the week that I started the program. But one thing I didn't do you early on because I think in college it's easy to get lost and you know not thinking too much about the rational world just going to school that kind of stuff but networking and building a network of friends or colleagues or whatever you wanna call them can really help because you never know like down the line when somebody's you know working at a place you'd like to work at you want to know what it's like to work there what it takes to get a interview how invaluable that can be or if you end up doing a podcast or whatever the next podcast is you can call on friends to kind of pick their brain about topics like machine learning or deep learning that kind of stuff so it did several important to network kind of put a plan together for what you want your next steps to be and spend some time doing a little doing some kind of work whether it's an internship or research project or joining a lap but Nick what would you have done or what would you like to do if you if this was your last semester of school yeah that's that's a great point I do that so I want to purchase from 2 different perspectives one there's the are you continuing your education it's a little ambiguous here last semester is it last semester of undergrad last semester of grad school I think they're very different steps that you take. Some overlap but I wanna talk about it into perspective so one if this is your last semester of undergrad. It may be too late to get into grad school for the following year but you take a year off you get that experience you get stuff to kind of buy off your resume or your CV and you apply to schools you take all the tests required to get into said schools you research professors you know I think there's a lot of steps that are included in that. That are. Maybe you don't think about right off the bat like I had a whole spreadsheet of different Loggins for different institutions with different professors and different contact information for admissions and the professors themselves and you know there's there's a whole nerdy thing about it that it's like what's required you know a whole column for requirements has been submitted yet has. If you're already on it that's amazing I mean it may have gotten easier since I went to grad school but that's kind of what I did is is kind of keep track of everything that needed to be done from start to finish and I think that's a good first step is to categorize take a catalog what it is you need to do and take a step back in Canada okay well we're going to fill in the gaps do I have extracurricular activities that I can talk about or write about do I have this test done do I have that test done have I applied to this institution winner the due dates how do I prioritize those due dates there's a lot of things that you can do from that perspective now I want to move over to the I am done with school be it undergrad or grad school doesn't matter I think up Blake you brought up a lot of really great points here and I want to reiterate a couple so you brought up the point that you are looking for an internship. Or some sort of experience that will help you find a position later. Right I don't think internship is always the right word for it because you can still get positions in labs at school that can help you with research or you know that that helps kind of solidify your role is like a lab manager or something like that so. With that. You know I I I would take a step back and almost look at the gaps that you need to fill in order to get to the place that you want to be if you need to it let's say you want to be in a specific domain. And you have no research in that domain well I mean there's like what if it's the only school that you got accepted to there's that problem is so. Try to fill in those gaps where you can it doesn't always have to be an internship it could be a lab on campus or virtually like I said earlier we're still looking for a couple people so feel free to reach out I'm. The the other thing is the connection side of things and the going to conferences and I think. There are there are some conferences that are better than others and I always like to mention H. F. yes it's a great conference for this for students especially because you get the opportunity to sit down at a career fair and since. Pandemics over right I think that's our classically but because we're starting to get back to normal life. The the ability to sit down in front of somebody to interact with them and to run into them again during the conference is going to be huge you know there especially if you're there presenting work that you've done in a lab. That is a a huge benefit to people who are looking for a job because you can get in front of these big tech companies you can get experience interviewing and even if you fumble one you can just roll right into the next one and be like okay what did I do wrong there I can just you know improve upon it instantly you get that feedback instantly. And you get that experience interviewing and I think that's really valuable to so there's. There's some stuff you can do before you go into the work force. Yeah it's mostly about filling gaps making connections and applying for what you want to do it and I I would be lying if I said it was easy all the time I'm. You know there are some people I know who have been looking for jobs for like months and I don't want to discourage anybody it's hard. I'm. But you know just bring your best self and apply where you can and. I don't know it's rough I don't I I don't I don't want to say it's it's so easy a caveman could do it because it's not and now it's definitely not it's it's one of those things where it's like this gotta keep Pushin until well even. And for us it's like even when we had a job it's keep Pushin yeah so it never stops it never stops unless you get comfortable and you get a company that really likes you and your good there forever I don't know like. If you're fine with that address anyway that's the we're getting we're getting outside the bounds of the topic so thank you for that question Derek I really appreciate it let's get into this other one here this comes from our discord from joyful way. This is let's see here I have a really general question. Right now I'm in school for engineering but most of my internships have entirely been in U. X. and it seems like 99 percent of human factors jobs are in U. X. what does the human factors field look like outside of digital web and mobile you axe. As someone from Canada are there any opportunities for engineering human factors jobs outside of defense and aerospace and what those look like Blake what do you think. So there there is that I really love this thread so shout out to the discord for just being an awesome place for human factors people but the big the big thing that I see at least in the states in terms of who's hiring human factors people and where human factors engineering specifically has a lot of potential for poll is the medical field it is a place that is like really doing an overhaul and is doing some serious hiring of HF professionals you experts astronauts the whole gamut to change the way how products are made change existing medical record technology just tackle really kind of legacy problems that I've always been there and I think you would find in the medical field that age at like being an HR practitioner is highly valued since there's requirements by the FDA lease in the states I'm assuming there's probably something similar in Canada that requires you to actually go through a very formalized process for medical device testing in which a human factors person has to be involved so there's a lot of opportunity there for sure. I do want to highlight one of our I'm not gonna called out by name because I don't have their permission to but I do want to highlight a comment that's made in our discord slack about this in really it's it's what do you enjoy doing and what drove you to do human factors or get into engineering in the first place because I I would bet that there is probably some kind of technology be it like a software solution or a physical product that exists in that space so you could try to get your foot in the door somewhere I'm sure there's a lot more there's a there's plenty of more contacts of where you know human factors engineering is important but in terms of being outside of just purely software or like mobile design I do think the medical field as a place where you can get experience in both. Yeah I am I answered this one in the discord just to make sure because this is a asked a couple weeks ago here and we had a break last week but I do I do with a kind of restate what my answer was but basically yes I think defense aerospace medical those are the big 3 and so you know you're on the right track they're on the right track and thinking that that's kind of the human factor sector. Mmhm but I think there's more to it than that and it's like finding a domain that's interesting to you that's the other discord number that you won't say their name but they're they're quite active in there and we love them so. I will say you know it it's it's it's weird to say a blanket statement like human factors can be applied everywhere but I think that's true and it's just a matter of finding that niche of where you can apply it. And whether or not you have the right experience for it right I listed off a bunch of kind of niche domain areas. That you know aren't typically associated with human factors work you know and I know folks that are in other industries like film and theme parks too you know you you might not typically think of that as human factors but they certainly have applications in those areas and you know I. I definitely listen I have a couple industries here. I'm looking for hang on I got to pull it up because I didn't pull it into this. Let's see here so I. I mentioned that they are a couple different industries in which you could look at and they were. 0 or theme parks public space layouts tell adult onyx if you don't know what that is go go go will it human factors of training materials so like written or digital tools are videos. So maybe pick anyway to display information you can do a deep dive on it so like color font loading screens this is like research threads right there's like self care medical devices and that's kind of the medical field right bandaids or any other device that you use on your self there's a lot of human factors research that goes into that medical device design children's products are another huge thing that could use human factors because children. Interact with the world differently than we do and so there are special considerations that need to be taken into into the products designed for that specific for specific age groups even you know it breaks down you know 0 to 3 months is going to have something different than 18 to 24 months so that's another interesting aspect so I think there's a variety of different industries in which human factors can be applied to that may not necessarily you might not necessarily think of human factors first but I think defense aerospace medical are the big 3 where there's like government standards that need to be applied just need 2 more real quick that I think are growing very fast and I. E. so you see a lot of a lot of positions that are like you access early researcher but I think a lot of times there's a couple of emerging industries that like they're definitely look for somebody with like human fact like true human factors experience and that's in. Automation technology in cars. And also just wearable technology in general under so understanding a lot more of context of use and the impact of context of use for things like it everything from like a fit bit. To like like we talked about medical like glucose monitors and stuff that you wear all the time so there's a lot of impact do you have those 2 fields and they're they're kind of on the edge of you know it's growing technology so it's not some eggs as establishes like medical or defense or anything like that. But I from my perspective and it all depends on this person's perspective that's kind of a fun place to be because you could be here early in your career you know defining what a space looks like. Yes I agree all right let's get into this next part of the show it's called one more thing it really needs no introduction because it's just one more thing the Blake and I get to talk about Blake what's your one more thing this week. Oh man so that today is my first return to playing video games and I've gotta say I've really enjoyed it. Laying dark alliance it's like D. it said D. N. D. R. it's a game that's based out of India and the kind of like storytelling and is just a silly hack and slash game it has been a lot of fun. Yeah what's what's the day it's hack and slash its his deep story but it's not as deep as I expected it's kind of like it feels a lot like Diablo 3 if you've ever played in home games so you're you take on some specific role and then you're just like you fight monsters and bosses and stuff it's just a lot of fun any call human factors you axe stuff going on with it. Aw there is a lot of kind of the end user experience problems up front the you have to kind of get past and be willing to dalit patch after patch it's had a lot of like logging credentials issues which have been really interesting. But luckily if your leads this is why I don't play games on the first day anymore is it just like it sucks it's not a fun experience like usually it's it's not ready to go a software development for games is too fast. So it is kind of where this thing's been nice to read about some of the problems I mean like the imac the massive amount of you know server farm crashes and stuff like that because of the D. and D. name that tack that's attached to a game there's a whole sub reddit devoted to patient gamers which it's like there's so many benefits to waiting right the only drawback is that you're not part of the conversation right so if anyone talking about it you might have to. You know step out but you do get like all the patches all the DLC you know when it's fully out it's usually on sale for less than what it was when it came out and you can usually grab my great deal so yes waiting is is better if you can if you can do it either way I know you know and I don't want to like harp on anybody who jumps on the games right away because being part of that conversation and keeping up with you know your favorite streamers who are playing with it and that type of thing is is you know that's part of it and so I don't blame anybody for doing that it's just that you know there's there's a lot of benefits to waiting to so my one more thing this week is a is is I bought this a couple weeks ago a couple months ago as my Fitbit and that it's the Fitbit sense and it took me like 2 or 3 weeks before I realize that the button on the side of this thing is not a real button let me show it to you so for those on the video you can actually see it looks like a button it's actually just a recessed indent instead of an outward button but it gives you that tactile sense that you're pressing something because of the way it's indented. And it it was just it was a. It was interesting to me to me they make it feel like a button. But you're really just pushing in on the side and you know the plastic is bending on the side to press a button on the inside and it's a way I'm sure to keep you know water out or whatever yeah good move but I I just found it really interesting and you know that the care that went into making an indent that feels like something that was outwardly you know being pressed. Really surprised me and like I said it took me a couple weeks even figure that out it took me like a year did not understand that the the cortical button on my iPhone is the same thing it's not a button it's the tactical feedback you're getting. First time it died I was like oh man I broke the button oh wait it's not a button it's that's pretty cool it again it's like a it's smart design because it's doing it for you know some other purpose you know functional breakdown doesn't happen as fast on non mechanical parts so stuff like that it's just interesting to me yeah well that's gonna be it for today everyone let us know what you guys think of the news story this week you can hang out with us on our slack or discord get to us on any of our social channels visit our official website sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest human factors news for support the show if you like what you hear your sports show or you know. Any of that stuff I guess you can put a couple ways you can do that one leave us a 5 star review wherever you're listening to this thing if it allows if not you can tell your friends about us that helps us grow the show quite a bit if you're able to consider supporting us on Patreon that actually really does help keep the lights on over here you know and help us go to things like conferences and do all the coverage there so you know think about that that's that's what I leave you with and as always at least over socials are websites in the description of this episode Mr Blake OnStar thank you for being on the show tonight where can our listeners going find you if they want to talk about the rudeness if you want to route this is either would always talk about rudeness in the in the discord slack would be I'm at Blake in there and then you can reach out say rude things to me on any social media channel through at don't panic you axe he's such a rude boy as for me I've been your host Nick Rome you can find me streaming on twitch every Tuesday at 1:00 Pacific for office hours across social media at Nick _ Rome thanks again for tuning in human factors cast until next time. Yes.