E227 - How Will Cars of the Future Understand Passengers?

Welcome to human factors yeah your weekly podcast for human factors psychology and design. Hello it's episode 200 27 we're recording this live on 12/2/2021 and this is human factors customer host Nick Rome I'm joined today by across the sea. By Mister berry Kirby good evening. A cross on the over the pot what across the pond over the way. The problem is yes okay while you're here and I'm happy you're here because we got a great show for you all tonight we're talking about how artificial intelligence and vehicles may be able to adapt to our needs and later we're gonna answer some questions from the community about working at a company that doesn't use a certain tool that you're used to how to approach the situation if you don't have a E. U. acts are human factors job title but do the work end creating a portfolio with projects that don't have real users but first we have some programming notes for you all and this one 's a pretty big one here this one says social bots is we're gonna change this up a little bit I'm. So we've been doing social thoughts for a while now probably a couple months and what it has intended to be is kind of reaching out to the community to get your voice involved in the show and a lot of the times you know we we put the stuff out because we don't know we're gonna talk about because our patrons choose the news here and so what we're gonna be doing going forward starting tomorrow we're gonna actually allow the public to vote on the news story that they want to hear this is still gonna be a reward for patrons because they get higher vote share right the public's voice it's only gonna be account for 20 percent of the total vote. That we have of patrons right so it'll it'll come for 20 percent of however many patients that we have and will be you know it can act as tie breakers or just add on to the total. This gives everyone kind of a chance to chime in on the stories that we talk about on the show and give everyone a sense of ownership while still kind of rewarding our patrons and giving them a little bit stronger of a vote if you will for supporting us financially. I think it's gonna be a cool change well I'm excited to see how it all plays out here. We have a couple other updates here so team sees those human factors minutes are going swimmingly berry actually did the latest one from hotel rooms so you know we're. We're chugging along on those. Yeah oil rigs and those will continue to come out through the end of this month while the team sees effort is still going by the way quick update on that I think we're at 17000000 last I checked so. Pretty close. And then last but not least of course there's there's the holidays coming up for everyone's awareness we're going to be around I think until the sixteenth on this program so you got 2 more shows with us but don't worry we have some content in the works that will come out on the 20 third in the thirtieth for you all. Hopefully hopefully both days maybe just one depending on how much time it takes us to do this stuff so stay tuned for that it's going to be our typical recap of the year's stories kind of highlight of stuff that wasn't covered on the show that we want to talk about in in just a free form. So at 8 you can expect that. Anyway I've talked long enough let's get to why you're the reason you are all here it's. That's right it is human factors news berry what is the news story this week. So this week we talk about the next generation of A. I. NA because that will understand you 20 merging into a smaller vehicle if the count that will manage the drivers we don't count up by recognize the emotional and cognitive states that drivers could prevent them from doing anything dangerous so monitoring system systems will need to have insight into the state of the entire vehicle under everyone is to have a full understanding of what's shaping driver behavior and how that behavior affects safety. Yes I do realize that many penalties mon you almost all come all it's just a bit more complicated than making sure that the driver's eyes are on the road and requires of you beyond just the drive up these mounting systems the top insights into the state of the entire vehicle and everyone in it have a full understanding of what's shaping the driver behavior and how about how about this if it's what's going on. So how do we know when a driver is impaired attention so simply by tracking the driver's head position in the I. close right B. C. you you need to decide that larger context where does not need full interiors and saying I'm not going to drive the monitoring come into play. A previous episode look at the US at look look to the use of artificial intelligence I don't sign the co where is the show is all about how the use of A. I. and associate associated technology can be utilized to get a better understanding of the current state of the driver and all of the entrances inside the car so Nick how does the use of A. I. monitoring inside the common ground beef. Yeah it grabs me pretty well so look I think this is this is great because it kind of is a complementary. Episode 2 a lot of the stuff that we've been talking about recently right. Yep my general impressions here is that this is exciting to see that we're thinking about the entire system not just like okay well how does the driver deal with an autonomous system but how can an AI system monitor the driver and provide subtle recommendations to that driver also forecast weak or not last week to 2 weeks ago I guess we look at how the car itself can interact with the system outside of the vehicle so we're looking at this whole thing holistically and then even further back we talked about A. I. N. in health care. And so A. I. is been pretty pretty big topic on the show recently so I guess our patients want to hear a lot about A. I. but I I'm happy to talk about this is awesome I think this comes with a lot of interesting questions. More than answers there's certainly some applications that we can look at for this type of technology A. I. inside the vehicle monitoring the driver monitoring the passengers I think the interesting a piece of it comes. Perhaps with the ethics and that's where I'll leave it but what did you think of this article. So I 33 interesting because the it is clearly a next step I think the sunny when we when we spoke in the bit the last episode we spoke a lot about how drivers homes have to be that whole he's ready to take action and we know that it's it's almost a. Tosca seen task is done type approach that we know the drives are just not going to sit there the not going to be in the loop enough just to jump in at a moment's notice otherwise you might as well be driving. So this is really getting I get really appreciate appreciated the fact that in autonomous vehicles particular that they're not going to do it they're not gonna be doing that and this will really allow us to recognize the state of what the what people are doing but just in everyday driving tasks as well it's the. The recognition that the things go on in the car your you know as a driver you're not just solely focused on on the driving you you got the radio on you got people in the back the kids crying all that sort of that sort of thing and they hold on to the general ambience of of your driving task you're right it really made me think I don't know it if you have to remember that Simpsons episode where my house designed to come. And yet the bags on the kind of busy the drivers of the bubble at the front and that is the ideal possibly for many people but we don't ban I think these are the sort of recognizes that so yeah I think it's it's it's good I think he gets stuck into a bit more I'm sure we have a look at where we're at with the buy BC fresh everybody aware we have with the current state of A. I. systems with the girls yeah that's a great segue I say whether we can take a look at that yeah so let's take a look at A. I. inside cars then we'll maybe talk about the human factors issues with the drivers and passengers normally get all back to the story like we usually do we circle back and talk about all the stuff so let's talk about A. I. systems in cars right so we we have the elephant in the room which is autonomous vehicles. And that we talked in depth for last week you know so I keep saying last week is 2 weeks ago. So so go back and listen to that discussion for more of a state on how autonomous vehicles themselves are doing I think we can look at kind of A. I. in the sense of a big picture in terms of. Automotive technology right because there's there's various ways in which A. I. is being utilized it from start to finish the development life cycle of this of automobiles right so you have everything from. The development of the concept. You have a like I'm thinking like you maybe even. A. I. models of like wind resistance you have that right and and this is talking about the holistic thing and we'll get to inside the cabin here last but you have you have kind of looking at the holistic that their models you have. Even A. I. in terms of the assembly line and manufacturing so whether or not a car needs a certain piece how to optimize that whole manufacturing piece to make sure that the timing of systems are just right and all that stuff and then you also have. A. I. on the road like I said that's kind of the what we talked about last week and then this week we're talking more about inside the cabin monitoring drivers passengers that type of thing. It's almost worth it to take a step back and look at A. I. A. in terms of you know just just a I'd not not necessarily even in the cabin but we certainly can look at that too. I'm thinking for a I you know it's. It's good for these complex solutions that we may not necessarily have the time or resources to have a human do those things. And. It's right now it's kind of viable for these automated vehicle use cases and I think that's where we're at right now we're kind of just on the threshold of understanding how. These automated vehicles can be it can leverage A. I. to be effective right but I think there's a lot of drawbacks with this you know there that these these models are becoming so large because there's a lot of things that you need to account for you can start to extrapolate this to inside the cabin to write and and understanding human behavior is incredibly difficult thing humans are bad at it and so it's like you know we're we're better than most other species standing human behavior. What happens so right like. We're we're probably the best thing we have at it and it's still difficult to read and understand body language. Or even you know the inflection and tone and all these M. really important things when it comes to communication so if you're trying to. To sort of. Develop an artificial intelligence system that is trying to monitor that stuff inside the cabin you're gonna have your men need a bunch of data for this type of thing you're gonna need. Understanding of how decisions are made. On the. But on the models themselves right away the data comes in how does that model make decisions based on that data that comes in. There's there's a lot of things that go into artificial intelligence and you know safety is another piece of it right we can talk about this with some specific examples later but I'm thinking of like the case where maybe the maybe the car or automated system isn't within the vehicle misunderstands what a human is doing and go creates a situation where. It then puts the human at risk because of. A. M. exposure to a a what's the word I'm looking for a exposure to that bad stimuli yeah so like it might pull the car over where that might be more dangerous than doubt striving forward anyway that that's kind of some of the things I'm thinking about what about you bury but we're just we're the current state of A. I. to you like what what key things you want to bring out. So I think the I mean one of the big things that I think we should be looking at ease ease regulations as well and the impact of regulation is going to have all my own A. I. N. in general so there's all sorts of things around personal information Sir in the E. U. we've got GDPR the the the ability to understand where all your data was being used and how it's being used in the in the appropriateness of the and media there's almost a. Become a crutch small noted the moment we don't really know how A. I. he's going forward and how that's going how that is going to play but we got some read the. Mmhm okay sledgehammer rules the greedy could be a nose Stifel how ARE these is developed and I'm going to be moving forward but I think the some of the interesting bits here going to be around wet A. I. in automotives is going to be in a way that's going and so yet to drive it to some of that I guess is we we go to A. I. in in the A. I. technology automotive has got a whole bunch of bits around it there just we repeat we were starting to get to use but it's almost at the really though the the precipice of things we could do really well so we've got to have the decisions it makes we could have them that could be understandable people to drill into the men's side why they make the decision which goes back to the point you're making out yes Sir the use your networks qualities decision but we got to understand why and they're gonna make the same decisions on repeatable basis so we don't you don't just choosing a on Monday M. be on the next unknowns on the one that's going to happen I am and then the the thing that always trips a lot of this thing up is the edge cases is when things are not how did things happen that you don't expect and how to handle lots of and would you do in a in a really good way so the current A. I. you get used on so speech recognition user interfaces diagnostics and maintenance and things like that. The vision recognition so make sure that you you know thing I've I stayed late and and and things like that. But as we get full as we going forward the the driving element is more more be taken over by it by A. I. we talk about things like to has the run of things in the past about having them all to drive capabilities and we we starting to get a lot more down that route to. How could we how do it because taking over more of the driving task. So we we should be able to see in the future that actually software doing a lot of driving we seen elements of where that taxi services for example will be expected not to have a dry run them you'll get in the get to the vehicle and it will it take you where you need to be there's gonna be some issues around that around you know how do we do the the software development and the the cyber security of it so how do we make sure that something that is using AI doesn't get hijacked and there is been some really interesting things on YouTube and things like that where people have been shown to demonstrate how they conducted house system through some unopened leak on the windscreen wiper and and things like that though so that this could be a fab it worked on around that thus I'm skewed a bit to have that complete trust in the. Yeah and you you bring up cyber security and I think to me cyber security is one of the largest sort of. Not missing links but sort of gaps right in in sort of the way that we're thinking about this and we also know I want to link that back to. Something you said about you know data and and personal data on what happens with that right so you have you know you mentioned G. D. P. R. that to me the whole ethics of what happens to data especially when you're collecting data on a person right it's one thing to get driving habits right where you it might take you you have a car that's attached to an owner and you get driving habits from them and that to me is like one of those cases where it's probably okay to gather because you can't really tell who's behind the wheel at any given time unless you have data on like seat height and yet that there's other things that you can get right but it it becomes a little bit less clear but when you're pointing a camera. Right at somebody and you're trying to get information on their body language on that number of Jahn's that they're doing. The number of blanks that they're doing how long their eyes are closed while you're on the road this becomes very dangerous when you start to think about the implications for what. Insurance companies can do with that type of data right and so. ET or even worse right like a match and if those are markers for other things like. I don't know sales habits or some I I making a huge stretch here but you know that date is exposed it's going to be a big problem for people to solve and so cybersecurity comes down all that that we have the ethics of that right you know it there's laws in some states in some countries that require people who are getting data collected on them to be notified right G. D. P. R. I think is kind of that but for the internet that's my understanding. And so will you need to have something where you hop into an automated taxi service that monitors the inside of the cab. M. collects data and operates on that data. Well you have to notify the the you know passengers you know is it something where you you summon an uber or left with your phone while you're waiting and says Hey we're gonna give you an automated vehicle while you're in there we might collect video on you and this is what we're gonna do with it you know and if you agree hit yes otherwise we'll get you a human driver. Mmhm you know it is or not yes. We don't have humans anymore we got rid of them and so like. Is that something that you agreed to up front I feel like that's probably the loophole that a lot of companies are gonna do you know Hey we might collect data on you while you're in the vehicle. Do you rate it yeah that's the agreement with the latest information implantation of the the cookie agreement voted so when you go to a website yeah we got cookies on you do you agree does anybody need any will no doubt it's just like I would do is get like season season small print you know very few people read the tees and sees that you know no matter how we study you do they don't do it you know they just like okay of no they'll go through to use the to use the capability so. Right yes I I was hinting at it a little bit but I I wanna get into sort of the human factors bets within the people inside the car yeah right we we talked a lot last week keep saying last week talked a lot about last time the people outside the car have a car interact with them let's talk about some of the issues facing people inside the cabin right so you have some. And kind of the state of where things are at right now in terms of cabin monitoring right you have some things I think this is your point do you want to talk about this. Yes so that there's already some basic driving monitoring tools on the market so you love the systems have a camera mounted Steven Wales somewhere in the cabin this trucking drivers eye movements in particular link rates and things like that to determine whether a person the pad so it could be distracted the could be drowsy they could be drunk although my discovery we blink right who knows but fundamentally driving is a complex you know it's a cognitively demanding activity you doing a whole lot of things at the same time so you constantly planning and reporting what you're doing you go to concentrate what you doing on the task itself you trying to get from a to B. try to navigate junctions you're trying to look at a list on where you are in relation to the vehicles on the road as well as what's going on inside the car so you know if you go children crying if you got your palm to talking to you have you got the radio on the. Singing very loud music because I I sometimes do right we it's not also not just about being in that moment you could be anticipating what you gonna do next are you going to be going for a good photo eagle conditions of turning I you got somebody else to do something that you don't you might have to react to see your your anticipated with things mailbag go wrong all you know what a light might still you might be you might have missed the junctional something so your exam to problem solve on the go and do that sort of thing you gonna be able to take complex situations with lots of different things going on you could about whether or not type thing you have yet to react to that quite quickly and efficiently. Currently you mixed doubles quite calmly. Some people bill Miller too and that's where I might be slightly better the by beside me but you would do things quite quickly quite effectively because everybody's on the road and the road is a very dynamic place of different people different attitudes to it. Mmhm so then you might have if you're doing all this stuff all the time if you're tired and you could be just a multi describes post lunch dip always because you filed the alert to sleep in and you know long I was that type thing.affect how you concentrate islands and you give you this idea of what what what they call it health symptoms of near misses so we have actually had an accident books right because you took a last minute diversion then you have a you could have had an accident it was very very close it was an EMS when you talk a bit more about near misses yeah those by the way are really. Not difficult but yeah they are difficult to collect information on right because no one reports near misses unless there's like some spectacular thing that happened. You know like you watch these dashcam videos of people who do these amazing recoveries. Don't have any damage to their vehicle in your like. Yes that it wow that could have been really bad and those instances it's like. We don't really collect a whole lot of data on that that I know of. But the the you know these types of events these don't these don't really cause injury and they don't have that much media impact other than kind of minor league disrupting road flow or something like that but it's. You know these near misses they they tend to be kind of these indicators of. Higher risk. The individuals that might get into accidents right so the more the more near misses you might have those are good indicators of of sort of whether or not you'll get into an accident later on. And and you mentioned drowsiness. You know near misses. Earlier 14 times more common than actual accidents and so if if you think about that. For somebody who's drowsy that is incredibly important for getting them off the road or you know getting them in energy. I don't know. You know thinking about concentration right that's the other thing you mentioned all these complex factors about driving. There's there's of course the concentration part of it to where. You mentioned people in the car might be a distraction if you're looking back at the baby if you're talking to somebody in the passenger seat if you're singing out loud closing your eyes those types of things. You know those play a large role in some of these accidents right so the national highway traffic safety administration they estimate that about 25 percent of all accidents that were that are reported by the police involved some sort of inattention. Either just drivers distracted the sleep fatigued lost in their thoughts at cetera. And that's really big and so now if we if we start to piece all the stuff together right that where a I is that right now. What the human factors issues are within the cabin we can kind of revisit this article. The promise of using AI inside the cabin to help the human ultimately right. I think this is where we have the discussion right what what what key takeaways do you want to take away from this discussion berry. Well when you. Let's look at the M.. Where we need to drive a lotus I mean the the point you just making their around the mid season in other domains DMS reporting it is quite is quite a significant thing I mean the work placement report near misses in aviation you much about it the buses we don't do that on the road because there's no drive to drive to do so so that needs to be something around if we gonna use this sort of technology there's gonna have to be some sort of policy some sort of a push to be able to do that so in Europe the the end cap which is then you can assist assessment program is now going to be all has been doing since 2020 big rating because based on the advanced occupant status monitoring so what can you do already to do that but you get a 5 star rating comic is will need to build in car technologies the check for driver fatigue and distraction and and Saudi 2022 and kat will award rating points for technologies to detect the presence of a child left alone in a Cup can you preventing tragic deaths by heatstroke etcetera that's kind of it decided it's more about the this is the fact that we gonna have some I see policy we're gonna have some driver within the within the common market to be saying right this second the sick technologies they need to be developed they need to be done fall for safety reasons so I think that that's going to be quite some quite a good thing but can you see any sort of examples out there about well you know what's all things we could do you know we're in quite simple terms to be to be able to help drivers yeah I think there's a couple that the article here actually mentions itself so you know if the drivers glancing at the speedometer too often or. You know something like that where they're looking at the the vehicles display screen could send a gentle reminder on that. I'm a speedometer to keep his eyes has her eyes on the road right that's that's like kind of bare bones right there here you're looking at something too often you. You get them to look back at the thing that they should be paying attention to which is the route. You also have sort of the other extreme where in a of a driver's texting you're turning around to check in on a baby vehicle could send a more urgent alert or even suggest that the driver pulls over to save space and then you also have like even more extreme than that you have the system actually taking over for the driver and pulling out of the side of the road because they've they've deemed the driver to be. 22 incapacitated to even do that much right. Mmhm but I mean like you think about driving is your central task and everything else is kind of perfect referee and and so to have an A. I. system jump in at that point be kind of a big step but I mean there's other things that you can do to write like let's say let's say the system notices you are not looking at something often enough either it could do a subtle gentle push to that area to ram thinking like you're not checking your rear view mirror often enough and so maybe you know just a subtle orange glow around you know that that might go oh that's that's a change I need to look up in that direction what was that change Hey I need to check my rear view what's going on back there right. And it's not even something that has to be constant right you're you're not like instructing them to look at their rear view but you just give them a subtle cue to say okay yeah oh yeah right look at look at those and then if they don't do it again you know more attention to it may be a slightly brighter orange or sorry I got up to the red where it's like you really need to look. So I think there's there's some good examples out there of what a system like this could do there's also sort of the conversation of well where could this go in the future and what kind of crazy things could we think berry can you think of any crazy things we could think up in the future well I'm surprised we haven't come up with the idea of the artificial intelligence in detecting the baby that's been destructing yeah yeah that's that's perfect of course but we should have but no you I mean you all kinds of imported around you know that the in car entertainment out like so even if the you know you own the vehicle or to ride sharing vehicle what why don't we leverage that's all I ask is intelligence to deliver content based on the rising gauge with the emotional state of their reactions of personal preferences I could really do you know that could very on the different type of trip you go on on the situation you doing that the meeting is going to all the. The publication you know that so if you're going to say that sporting event this is a good 67 the other relevant to that activity in. If you see the the passengers responded well to the out that he might offer you a coupon all foot first after the game it know how because I because tomorrow's hope you have the toys is really sort of focused. What folks depend and focused journey. And I guess that then leads itself to say well actually is it more the more about media lab because I observed the reactions to the contents which you've got your audience this is up there with a fairly fixed space. If you could read the read the reactions the the system could offer recommendations you compose the old you with the user comes to an attentive in and customize the other to colds with with with their preferences Sir contemplate this could really use this to determine which channels that have the most engaging content and use it to set up premiums and stuff so it it could be really sort of proactive way to give you that sort of that top media experience that you know ties in your entire journey or is it just going to be too crazy no I think that makes sense right I think it gets a little questionable when we're trying to like advertise to people but I mean in terms of like Han 10 recommendations like let's say I'm on my way to a conference verses a vacation with my family right you know that's you mentioned that kind of personalization right based on the context a reason of the trip right that that I could see being something really cool I'm going to human factors and ergonomics society and I want to I want to see things about. You know that the city that I'm in because maybe I've been too focused on the conference and not enough about the destination and I checked this out there's there's something down the way here they might want to check out or you're some human factors history in in the city that you know I don't I don't know who's producing that content you're producing that content let me know I'd love to have you on the show. But yeah yeah I mean it's it's cool and I think I'm. These these types of example that we just mentioned here just kind of breaking the surface right at it I think ultimately these types of systems can be used to make things much safer. To make systems much more reliable and to just make transportation service transportation general much more enjoyable and sort of keeps coming back to safety but yeah I mean that's really the goal is to keep people alive when they go from point a to point B.. Any other closing thoughts on this one berry I am I guess is one more it was kind of in spite of the government's doing the other week is the point the pro football hall met on Twitter things today basically the we are spending a lot of time trying to make a LA inside and outside the car 15 sides the current world which is not made for a night we're trying to grow by something thank you very clever into adults that requirement so is this a good should we be thinking also not just about the car itself for the environment that is driving in in order to to be thought about safety ambition so I guess very altruistic very very high level thinking that budget you just sold. Time to a soul with me that that maybe we should also be looking outside the co. I am interested in. Yeah good good thoughts all right well thank you our patrons this week for selecting our topic and thank you to our friends over at the I spectrum for news story this week if you want to follow along you can I've I've not been doing office hours admittedly a bit but that's because there's there's been light it usually gets pretty light around the holidays anyway I sometimes do office hours you can find me there and we do post links to all of our original articles in our weekly roundup center blog also join us on a slack or discord for more discussion on the stories we'll take a quick break and we'll be back to see what's going on around him affected 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. 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Normally this is where we talk about patron we talk about patriarchal lot. But one of the things that we do for patriotic human factors minute and this is something that I like to do from time to time because I'm a huge data nerd. I really like understanding what exactly we promised and what exactly we're delivering so let's talk about that right now as of the time of this recording we have 96 episodes of human factors minute available for your consumption. This is counting the team sees episodes which everyone gets for free. But our total time in human factors minutes is one hour 56 minutes and 16 seconds. That is. Hold on a second yeah I'm 6 episodes of human factors minutes so that should be 96 minutes you would expect it you'd expect that right. So let's let's talk about the average length is actually 73 seconds so you're actually getting a little bit more than a minute on average. Which so so we should be calling it human factors Minakata it we could we could it doesn't bring up of doesn't roll off the tongue is easily that's true but let's actually look at some of the stats here right so 25 of them are clocking in at one minute exactly or less. And 75 of them are 61 seconds or longer with 14 of those 14 of those 45 being longer than 90 seconds. So we actually did our longest one was the most recent one that we did with well on surface transportation the technical group at H. F. yes the that was at a minute and 59 seconds I think any longer than that that's kind of my absolute limit with that right we don't want to go beyond that because then it wouldn't be a human factors minute I'm still counting that first minute we're rounding down every bit of it I hate to be the bearer of twice as much as what you promised look around it down as long as it has one. We rounded up anything below a minute we round down anything above a minute. In between 2 workouts that's it that's how it that's how that math works out right. One of my favorite episodes of human factors minutes still remains ancient human factors history. That's available for free to everyone right now fact the first 10 episodes as well as the team sees human factors minutes are available to everyone for free you can check out our Patreon for details on that end one last little teeth for you while that is. The only place where you can get Blake for exclusive Blake content right now. We're still working on getting him back soon so bear with us on that but that's that's where you can get to Blake for now. That's all I have is it's kind of fun to jump into those metrics from time to time it's a little a little extra thing all right well why don't we go ahead and get into this next part a show we like to call. That's right. So research all over the internet to bring you topics the communities talking about it it came from this week it is read it if you find these answers helpful give us a like to help other people find this type of content. All right we got 3 tonight. They are all great questions let's tackle this first one first it says would you work at a company that doesn't use big my and I'm gonna go ahead and extrapolate here and say we're gonna be talking about not just big my but other tools here right. I had an interview at a tech company the interview said they primarily use Adger since they have better prototyping slash interaction features than figma they want me to do a design challenge for the next round I asked if I could use that they said to try and download the free trial badger since that's what they use I asked what they like better about actor than thick mud they said they can make detailed prototypes for user testing but the design challenge and that I'm being tested on my you wax and critical thinking skills shouldn't the tool not matter so much I use figma plus road show pie I haven't heard that one and find a way more efficient than actor mind you the job description listed figma as one of the tools also so let's talk about this from 2 perspectives right one should do the trick. Can you from completing task and to. What happens if a company is forcing you to do it tool use a tool for either. An interview or the work itself very taken away. Yes Sir. It's an interesting one because I think if they just wanted to see an example of you doing things that actually may be the tool doesn't matter so much but if you're gonna go for work for come you're wanting to go work for a company and that tool sets aids that they use as your or whatever the tool does it it doesn't but it could be you know almost across the piece I I have a really interesting discussion with them sister company that about was that they use Google for most of that that that office we didn't we use Microsoft and it's one of things of like what if you wanna come due I will recall system is setup to use that's what every Disney if they use it as your is that is that is until the why do you want to go in through going to improve does he stick something in there that says I wanna work for you but I don't companies any vehicles that full you'll make it harder for them to accept you though for them to you want to make if you want to go work for them then you need to be making yourself understand that that that's what that's what they're going to go on you Sir I kind of see the what this person is saying you don't actually do you want to do my dessert you you want my you work skills critical thinking skills and it should not the way I do it the truth of the matter is it doesn't matter because if you're not willing to go and use the tools that that the call is going to use and yet the person next to you is willing to go and use the tools that they can use and you both do you X. that's going to be deciding factor so yeah I think you just need to crack on and and let out to users via because it is actually I I do agree to some extent that that that the tool to tools that pluses and minuses but if that's what the company wants you to use in our circuit up buttercup. When you think I have I have conflicting views and that's right I think I think. A company should be supportive if a employee wants to use a different tool within reason. If you know a key part of their package as an employee relies on a specific tool then I think maybe the employee should be willing to. Expand you know like it may be a key functionality or something is contained within a certain tool might be it might be a good justification but that employee is is the one responsible for bringing up that justification at the same time I think you should be flexible and I don't think tools really matter yeah I could use excel or I could use Google sheets doesn't much matter I can do most of the same things in both of those programs. With some differences obviously but like. Tools shouldn't matter it's exactly what you're talking about here and in terms of interviews I'm a little torn on this one. I think I think maybe the company should be more receptive to using a different tool maybe they don't have a license especially if you're trying to use the free version and evaluate somebody skills based on. Mmhm you know their unfamiliarity with the new product I think that's a little unfair I think if if an employee truly values. Somebody's ability to do the core responsibilities of the job they should be willing to see what their work looks like and that their preferred tool and then you know kind of ask them to switch over and provide the training required you know tool the tool you can train up on a new tool and change will change all the time. So I don't know I I think I think everything's kind of bad here. I think the point you made around you know it's it's and I think this is a big distinction for me is if you got employed up I've been there were employees turned out to be NXT was with with this year as well they turned around and said actually you're doing stuff in in this way if you do that we could actually do it a lot cleaner not simply could you could do a lot of the stuff knows that absolutely but well yeah let's try it let's give me a demonstration that's because sister will decide the system removes it and that's one thing I think but here I think we could. You are wanting the job and I kind of get I have the feeling of white the food might be fine but if the call is asked me to do X. as a demonstration of this 2 of us out but why would I do something that puts me after you know it's such distinct olds if I'm wanting the job and if you find one if I don't want a job that much that I wanted to have a fight with the person who is not even my employee at that you don't want to that much so what's the you know what what what's the gold bank at the end of this you you clearly want employment but if you don't employment then why would you do in the first place. Yeah well said. Yeah I yeah I don't know that's let's write down on that one not it's not too controversial learn to adapt to new tools and let people use their preferred tool it's all the same. Completely conflicting information just just make it happen all right let's get into this next one here this one is by. I D. K. what to put as my user on the user experience I've read it this is a U. X. job without the title I'm a junior with the new junior role doing user experience however my title doesn't sound like the typical U. X. months it sounds more related to data or marketing will this matter when I'm applying for more U. S. jobs in the future Barry what do you think does job title impact your higher ability for future prospects no not all. I think if you are a we're moving on to the next one I'm scared go ahead no I think you know I'm in for the mentally feel if you're doing stuff and you know did you ready put down just a job tied the put down a bit description as well job titles you know we see we see the amazing job titles from people who are at light so. Google in them so things were you make up your job title and stuff the I think the doorbells itself doesn't really matter I think you you have a little bit of blood which will say that you do you X. work whatever it is and then you could eat a bit invite debate make a bit more intriguing so I don't think it really must estimate that goes I go back to what I've said in previous episodes about difference cultural differences when U. K. U. S. is U. K. we typically don't have straight you know we don't have very discreet you X. roles do you have your research are you excited more people Clinton together but you know be muster 2 or 3 tries well that's fine said there might be a bit of a difference in the US what what do you think now. It's. I mean what can I add it I've heard it both ways here I'm let's not my it depends button because the. In some ways. I like I wouldn't look away from anyone who submitted their resume. For for a position like just off the merits of job title like that's not something that I would do I wouldn't go this person says their data and now it says in their planning for it as I rolled out like that's not something that happens I'm. I would look at it I might scratch my head a little bit going. From data analysis that's interesting. You know but as long as everything checked out on the resume like the stuff that they've written in their resume he was like Hey did this type of research did this type of you know and it's like okay well I can see what you're going for here your job title Justin natural and it's it's really what you're writing below that. And so to me that doesn't matter V. thing where it might matter is where. Systems use automated. Like let's say this is your only job and systems use automated sorting techniques to weed out resumes. For a potentially high. I'm highly sought after position that might be a case where you might just want to change it on your resume and say like Hey look if you go into contact the employer they'll say I actually did this as my job title but. You know kind of explain it away in the resume and but I mean really you shouldn't have to lie too much. It's. It just it's fine and like you said berry I think it is actually more intriguing. If somebody's coming from one of those other you know a titles because it it's like I did tell me that story yes exactly right. Yeah thank you interest make you makes you unique yes there you go all right let's get into this last one here this one 's from Jalen trail on the user experience already how to get projects for your first portfolio when you don't have real customers is there something like front end mentor I don't know what that is. Or brief box for you X. projects I don't know what those are but how do you get let's see here data when you don't have real customers. They gonna right I want to switch careers from building websites and doing U. Y. designs to a full blown you X. career been working in the web field for 7 years now. I'm. Now I'd like to switch to the US field and really take users needs front and center. The agency I'm working at really isn't that professional I don't have great products show which means I have to create about 4 to 5 new portfolio projects doing the Google you X. certificate course right now and I'll have some projects by the end of it when I have something that doesn't just look like a course project and that has that made with real give me ideas on where to get briefings and data for projects like this or do you have proven approaches on how to get such a project rolling all by myself any help would be highly appreciated and thanks in advance all right Barry we've tackled this question before but I think it's bear it bears repeating. Ng why don't you go ahead and tackle this question. So I guess for me a lot of it is around actually some cool ways of doing this is look at where a local charity local laundry organizations might want some sort of experience and you can basically get breeze from them and ensure they you know you're you gonna use of your time and effort into producing and some some great products not only then when you get some things any portfolio but you look you find you put it makes a really interesting contacts you can think about make in the first place so that will work. Also actually make up your own project isn't necessarily about thank if you could work out you know problems and ideas that you know that you that could that could be sold in terms of so web design a web websites and as long as you documents what you're doing and the use case he also doing it for. And the problems you're trying to sell you an actual through quite a lot of it on your own but certainly the the best examples I've seen of that is easy to go double injury and finding people who need note that the websites that would necessarily be able to engage with them normally that kind of works for me but and I know you've got some different ideas as well so what what the actual since so so let's see here a couple things I think your points are great and I don't disagree with them at all I think. This topic is something that I feel pretty passionate about and I have like. A nontrivial more serious draft of like a a master class type. Program for exactly this and if that's something that people are interested in and want to actually find out more about. Did you to write in to let me know that this is a great idea and that I should pursue it. You know step by step guidance for how to do something like this to to help. Mmhm. You know the students are people even who are looking to switch over into you extra build up their portfolios without the user data if this is something you're interested reach out I'd love to hear from you. But my my M. my high level advice here is that they're the problems exist you just need to go and look for them. And so whether that is. You know like you said berry at a local agency or if it's. Or or if it's with an established product that you feel passionate about I think there are plenty of opportunities to look for it and when it comes to real data there are ways to get that. Without sort of. Without. Faking it or what yeah it's it's real user data. And that's that's the interesting piece to me right you can go to some of these forms that are out there like the reddit sub communities or anything like that and look for problems that people have with the program the game the system whatever your. Wanting to use for your portfolio and find a way to solve it I'm. And in your project in your portfolio site that as a real issue that users needed. Fixed with with whatever metric that you're going by right you can you can state it was by a number of up votes. You know days visible on whatever or number of votes in a Zendesk platform or something like that right there there are ways of getting real user data that you can use to populate projects and it's a great place to look for ideas if your stock and don't know where to go next anyway that's my teas if that is something that you're interested in let me know I like like I said I have a not. Not trippy it it's it's pretty far out if that's something you want to see me produce let me know I'm happy to do that all right I think we get into this last part of your we call one more thing it needs no introduction so let's just get into a berry what's your one more thing this week so my one more thing was actually do you mind planning for the rest of your full my podcast I can't believe it's December December 8 it's absolutely crazy because the I. busy what will more focused absurd from full my thing to recall this year and I'm done. Only 21 it's Alfa so I think now it's that case of you know it's we yes we will just December but he's now we get into the festive season we never think about parties and things like that and whether we can go for parties with that with everything else is going on but it's that it's a fundamental thing now it's it's it's we can stop that wind sort of that wind down of global wind up before but the what one down this month but it's I just can't get over that we are talking about being in December already it's just it's it's it's mind blowing in many ways. Yeah I I wanna jump in because the the last like I don't know 6 or 6 to 8 weeks of the month of the year. Has this weird time dilation a fact where it's both fast and slow simultaneously. Yeah insane like yeah like. Like thanksgiving was a week ago for us here in the states and it's like I I was just last week wow. And it's like you know Chris Christmas gonna be here tomorrow and it's like wow all right. I'm. Yeah anything else for you one more thing no that was it I just crying that this year's gone gone by the. Sure the freshmen are yellow what are you. Where you are yeah well my one more thing is gonna be the same one more thing that I had for last week except now we have more details so on Friday December 17 at 1:00 PM eastern I'm is gonna be the first. HFS presidential town hall so H. FES is put on this town hall yours truly is going to be moderating the event. And it's basically an opportunity for you to discuss the latest human factors industry news trends. Even state of the society if you want to show up for that it's Chris Reid is gonna be there for the show and we'll also have a president elect Caroline some rich is going to be there as well so it's gonna be a great time. Ask your questions we're still working on setting up the event itself you can find it in our feed right now we're working on getting it linked up for all of them as well. You can find on any of our channels any of the H. FES channels it will be out there but that is going to be it for today everyone let us know what you guys think of the news this story this week if you like this episode we do invite you to check out the episode that we did just last time episode 226 we take a look at the state of autonomous vehicles and how they interact with the pedestrians a common wherever you're listening to what you think of the story this week for more in depth discussion join us on our slack or discord communities can always visit our official website sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest impactors news like what you hear there's a couple ways you can support the show one you can leave us a 5 star review that is free for you to do you could do that right now and it makes us happy when we see those 2 you could tell your friends about us that is also free for you to do a little bit more social pressure because you have to work it into conversation but that is how we grow that is an awesome way to help us grow and 3 if you're able to financially it is the holiday season so I totally get it if not but if you wanna make our holidays. 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