E290 - Emotional Edifices

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: Hi. Hi. Hey. Hello. We're back. We're energized. We're ready to do this. It's episode 290. We're recording this episode live on August 3rd, 2023. This is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host, Nick Rome. Joined today by Mr. Barry Kirby. Hello. Come on. I was full energy for that. And all I get outta you is a hello.

Hello. Alright, we got a great show for y'all lined up. Tonight we're gonna be diving into the fascinating topic of how the design of our city's influences are driving decisions and emotions. And later on we'll be answering some questions from our community, including questions on struggling to land a new role, pursuing a career as a ux, given the competition and salary trends and our role.

As human factors, UX in convincing stakeholders to engage with the research, all that and more. But first, hey just in case you are new to the show, there's a couple things we want you to be aware of. There's a cute, a few things that you can help us with too. If you can give us a review, that would be really helpful.

Helps other people find the show. Tell your friends about us. We have a Patreon that you can help support us financially. Usually ask this towards the end, but again, if you wanna do any of that, we would welcome that. I also wanna let you all know that we're starting something new. You may have seen it earlier this week, but on Mondays we're gonna now start doing, in case you missed it, this is Monday.

Every Monday at noon Pacific, we're just gonna do a repost of the live stream, just in case you missed it and wanna be involved in the conversation. I'll be sitting in on those conversations if there's anyone who wants to chat about what's going on the screen. I won't address it on the live screen, obviously, since it's a replay event, but.

In case you missed it, we'll be there in chat. Anyway, Barry, what's going on with 1202? What's the latest?

[00:01:43] Barry Kirby: How could, would it be if we could comment on the things for me in case you missed it in the live show? Could we guess? And sorry, I'm completely taken away from that. I think it's s Anyway, so on 1202 The latest one, and I'm stumbling slightly because actually the artificial feed has bought in the wrong one.

So the artificial feed has bought in the talking about artificial intelligence in hospitals with Kate Preston, which has been on for quite a while. But it's really great article to listen to. However, the latest is talking about human factors integration with Trevor Dobbins, and in particular looking at it from a the perspective of armored armored vehicles, armored military vehicles, and some of the great work he's been doing.

Him and his team. So he leads a team of human practice practitioners in basically making sure that there is the right. Assurance in place to make sure that people are thought about throughout the project lifecycle of developing basically pieces of armor with big guns on the top so well worth listening to.

[00:02:35] Nick Roome: Great. If that automation's broken, that means your feet is broken. Let's figure that out.

[00:02:39] Barry Kirby: I think I know why, but and it's my fault not yours, so that's fine.

[00:02:42] Nick Roome: Okay. Alright let's figure that out. Anyway, why don't we get into this the news. Let's just get into the news.

That's right. This is the part of the show all about human factors news. Mr. Barry Kirby, where is our news story taking us this week? Where's it driving us?

[00:02:57] Barry Kirby: I see what you did there. That's clever. Our story this week is talking about how does the design of our cities influence our driving decisions and emotions?

So in this article, the focus is on the intersection of urban design and user experience. In the context of driving, the author explores how the design of cities can profoundly impact our driving decisions and emotions. So starting with the historical context, the article examines how city planning has evolved over time from ancient civilizations to the present day.

Smart city revolution. Principles such as connectivity, accessibility, legibility, and visibility are discussing relation to their influence on driving experiences. The integration of technology and smart cities and smart communities is emphasized as means to enhance driving predictability and in theory, reduce stress.

Moreover, the article explores the impact of urban design on driver motions, highlighting the importance of aesthetics, the reduction of noise and air pollution, and the creation of a sense of control. The social and psychological aspects of urban designer also discussed emphasizing how cities can foster or hinder community engagement and social interaction.

The article concludes by calling for individual drivers and collective citizens to contribute to the shaping of the future of cities by making choices that prioritize connectivity, empowerment, and emotional fulfillment. Overall. The article disclose the vital role of urban design in the human ed profession emphasizing the importance of understanding and optimizing user experience within driving environments.

So Nick, what road is that this article taking you down in terms of the way that you feel about your driving emotion?

[00:04:30] Nick Roome: An emotional one? It's an emotional rollercoaster. I look, here's the thing, I saw this story and I thought, wow, this is fun to talk about. Fun to think about. And I really started thinking about a lot of really cool things that are actually happening, I don't know, close-ish in proximity to me.

And one thing for me, I. Been in, city centers, well close to city centers all my life. And so like driving through cities on freeways slowly because of traffic gets me emotional. And not in a good way. And it gets me really frustrated and also driving in an unfamiliar just, drawing on some of my experiences here.

Dr. Driving in an unfamiliar place where you're not quite sure what's going on, signage only does so much. And your navigation app only does so much. What were we doing before that? And I remember MapQuest, do you? But look, here's the thing is that there's entire cities who are rethinking the way that they create these spaces to be.

Different and geared towards a different goal. So one thing that's close-ish to me is Seattle's re remodel of Alaska Way. And basically what happened here is there was like an entire freeway going through the whole waterfront of Seattle. And what they did is they shifted that underground and then they redesigned the space above ground to be more walkable and pedestrian friendly.

And, discourage drivers from going around that area. But if you do drive through it, it's really nice and pretty. And your tax dollars at work. But Barry, I'm getting ahead of myself here. We'll talk more about that later. What are your thoughts on the story?

[00:06:06] Barry Kirby: I, in many ways, I quite liked it.

It touches upon a whole bunch of issues that I've been involved with probably over the past 10, 15 years or so. I guess to start with, it was an interesting walkthrough history. I quite, if you go and read the article, it does go into, two two and a half thousand bc all from all the way through the Middle ages, through to the Indu industrial age, through to the modern age with different aspects of usability.

But it does have a bit of a weird premise for me that everyone's workflow is the same as it is now. And and I guess what I mean by, so I'll take a quote from the article. Fast forward to the Middle Ages, and we find cities with winding alleyways and surine roads reflecting the organic unplanned growth.

These labyrinthine layouts often result in higher cognitive load for navigation. Yeah. See if you drive around them now they they do. They're hard to drive around. You've got some some of the cities here in, in the uk you drive around bit of London, York, places like that, they've, they're quite hard to navigate.

But at the time, in the middle ages they weren't, because you weren't driving around everywhere at 50 to 70 mile an hour. So actually the cognitive load at the time for navigation is nowhere near as pressured because most people were either walking or on the back of a. Actually people then didn't travel as far as we do now.

So actually the sea there is a bit of a weird construct element around it. But that aside there is, it's very true that now that the evolution of cities and adapting to cars is very difficult. Because when we have loads of terrorist houses in, in some of our large cities, 'cause when they were built, people didn't have cars, so they could you didn't have to worry about on street parking or anything like that.

And now going back to some of the issues raised around poverty and things. Then actually these houses are now starter homes because they're small and it's actually people who can't afford bigger homes are having to buy them houses because there's nothing else on the market. Fundamentally, and we'll probably get into this, is one of the premises of the article is we want to reduce the amount people want to use cars.

And here in the UK we are seeing more a big greater drive into the reduction of the use of cars. But fundamentally I've got no problem with that because, single use transport, particularly if I'm driving on my own is a waste if I've got people in the car with me that, that's a slight different matter.

But you need viable alternatives and there need to be cost effective alternatives. So if I wanted to go and do, say the journey I've done today I wouldn't be able to get it door to door where I want to be. I want to, wouldn't, it wouldn't be convenient. I wouldn't be able to take my luggage with me as easily.

And it would be very expensive to do. And not on my timetable. There isn't a viable alternative here in the UK really, unless you live right in the central, big city. So if you live in London, you've got the tube, you've got the the bus network, all that sort of, that works really well.

As soon as you step outside of London you're sced. And I guess the same must be true if not worse in the states because you've you drive everywhere and everything has gone suburban in that way. So I'd be interested to hear your views on that as well.

[00:09:00] Nick Roome: Yeah, it is, from, I guess someone.

In Europe who, like Europe, uk. I think there's like this whole there was a Reddit post the other day of do you guys really drive everywhere for everything? Like how do you get, how do you get groceries if you're in the suburbs? Like you, you drive 15 minutes to the local grocery store.

And that's how we get around. And they, they were very not used to this in Europe and it's like this whole foreign concept to them. And so like this I think the the interesting bit is that yes, we do drive everywhere and cities can do a lot for reducing congestion and planning transportation effectively to get people who are in the city around.

But this long distance driving, this long distance commute the long distance travel, that piece isn't solved yet, at least here in the States. There's not there's not like a light rail that goes through the suburbs that you can just hop on. It's not a thing that's solved.

And I don't know, I this article is so interesting for a lot of different reasons. And I want to focus here on the thesis of the article, which is sticking around how does design in the city affect the way that we perceive things as drivers, right? So we're taking that approach with the analysis of this article.

And I appreciate your analysis on the cognitive load and how that's changed over time. And I love that we can dissect these articles in that way. It really lends a lot to how we see the world. So let's dive into it. I don't know. What area do you want to focus on first here, Barry?

[00:10:34] Barry Kirby: Firstly I just wanted, I think I wanted to dip into just the whole principle of urban design, because it might not be a term that. Everybody's necessarily familiar with. I'm looking enough to have to have known and do know two urban designers cla Matt, who taught me an awful lot when we lived in our previous city of Gloucester, around how urban design is really taking that holistic perspective of around neighborhoods around.

So not just looking at the development of a particular road, but how does that road fit into the landscape that it's in? How does it fit into what it does, et cetera, et cetera. I, a really good example of where I got heavily involved in it is in the development of a housing estate where I lived and I was representative for.

How they could use design to get what we wanted out of drive appropriate driving behaviors without having to necessarily legislate for it. So if we want, through the housing estates, we wanted people to drive slower, but also, but we wanted it to be their decision to drive slower, not just to be big warning signs everywhere.

Say you must drive 10 mile an hour, 20 mile an hour, 30 mile an hour for two reasons. One is you get, you get better engagement that way. And secondly, if you can, if you force that behavior, then they, then the drivers have that sense of responsibility and they're, they've been brought along for the ride pun accepted.

They'd been brought along for the journey rather than just being dictated to 'cause people take that sort of thing better. So some of the things that they were engaging with is, rather than building straight roads, You'd build wiggly roads, so you couldn't see, you were constantly almost feeling like you're going around the corner and when you're going around the corner, particularly when there's traffic parked, that that you would automatically slow down because you ha you were having to take a more cautious approach.

But that was you having to take that decision to do that? Not being told just by sign to slow down. Equally, putting there was a word that they used and I can't Oh. When a word just slips out your mind. Yeah. But anyway they would put traffic calming obstacles there to be part of the street furniture that that would, so that would have maybe a build out into the road slightly, but with a tree in it.

So it wasn't necessarily a a straight up stop sign or anything like that. But it was something that looked like it was part of the road aesthetic the the street aesthetic. But you would have to slow down for it 'cause it was in the, breaking out into the road. I really like that idea of urban design.

I really like the way that it, it is that holistic piece and trying to work with everybody for everybody's benefit rather than just being dictatorial. And it is a real, for me, a real behavior driven activity. Which I just think is really neat.

[00:13:14] Nick Roome: Yeah, those are some great points. I've also seen, the design of I guess even road elements.

So like keeping a a little barrier between the like bike lane and the car lane. And that then reduces the total amount of space that you have on the road, which means that you drive slower when those lines are closer together than if you were to drive further apart. So like on straightaways you might reduce the total width, so that way you have to drive slower so that way you're not gonna hit the other cars on the side of the road.

That those are all some great points here. I see some other points that you wanna. You want to address the anti-car agenda? Do you wanna talk about that?

[00:13:54] Barry Kirby: I just feel, and there was some comments made in the article around how ev we want to, there's, there seems to be a big drive at the moment to get people to stop using cars and that's fine from, a number of reasons.

Largely yes, from a climate change perspective, we need to reduce the amount of can we putting in that and we know cars pollute. But now as an electric car driver, then I don't pollute as much. And actually I'm pleasantly surprised. I noticed today that. In the car park that I was in.

Even just the change over a year when I packed in it over a year, there was maybe one, two other, or two other EVs in the car park. And I was in there today and there was considerably more, I'm not, I'm still, we're still not up to 50% of the car park, but it was noticeable how many more there were.

So I, it's interesting how we have quite a few politicians around at the moment who are pushing this anti-car agenda. But which I, as we said before, I don't necessarily have a problem with this article seems to have fallen into that anti-car agenda to a certain extent. There are comments made through it, yet we trying to drive down, trying to drive down this idea about how do we make driving I guess better, how do we reduce the stress on driving itself?

Get it still talking about trying to take people outta cars and onto walking and cycling and things like that. Yeah. That does, sorry, go on.

[00:15:12] Nick Roome: I was just gonna say, that, that opens up the conversation about like stress levels in general and the ease of navigation with, within a city, right?

A system that kind of helps with some of these with that lessened workload can really help reduce that stress in drivers. And this can be done through things like clear signage that intuitive layout, lane markings, all that stuff that, that helps drivers easily understand what's going on.

I mentioned that driving through an unfamiliar city is really stressful because you're not familiar with where you need to go, what the signs mean. Anything LA is particularly bad. I don't know ever drove through there, but I think there's kind of two examples here that we can maybe point to.

Like in, in New York this grid system, I. In Manhattan, and I think in Arizona too, they use a grid system in Phoenix. And so that navigation is easier when you understand that grid system. 'cause then you can just go up so much and over so much and then you're there which can reduce that confusion.

And if you miss it, then you just circle around and go one more street down, one more over, then go back. So that's one way to approach it. But then there's also the sort of complicated roadways that we were talking about, the squiggly ones, that does induce more stress, but intended stress to make you slow down.

And so when you're doing that, You just need to be clear about it and make it not confusing because that is what results in stress. If it's straightforward, you know that there's a turn there, you're gonna slow down for the turn. But if it's like a turn, then a switchback, then that's like a confusing thing to do for a driver because then they're not sure if they're going in the right direction.

Their sense of place in the world is shifted if they're going away from the target, but then swerving back to it this is in Boston, there's a lot of older areas that tend to have be associated with driver confusion and stress. I struggle to find those correct routes over there.

So East coast examples, we'll bring in some West Coast ones a little later on.

[00:17:16] Barry Kirby: I think the, if we stick with the ease of navigation for a moment, because I think there is also an evolutionary thing here as well, because we are we, you mentioned in earlier on about using old cell maps.

When you used to go on a journey of any distance or length you would spend, you would get the map out first. You'd work out where it is, you're gonna go almost familiar, familiarize yourself with the route and drive it. And then if you got lost, you'd stop, you'd call somebody over. You'd do, we don't do that anymore because we have Cool satnav devices on our on our phones.

And the interesting thing with that, and I think we've talked about it before here, is we now have a much more just in time approach to navigation and getting somewhere. So if we, if you route plan on your on your device and it says you got, you can be there in 50 minutes. Historically, you'd have turned around and said that's 50 minutes, but traffic's back, traffic can be bad, dah.

I'll add an extra 10 to 15 minutes to my journey. And so that gives me a bit of a gap to go with. Now you plug in and it tells you 15 minutes. So you, if you are meet, if you need to be where you need to be at two o'clock, you'll set off at 10 past one because it's told you it's gonna be 50 minutes.

And you expect the n the navigation device to do remapping for you for congestion and stuff like that. So actually we've taken technology and allowed it to stress us out more because we moved we've moved our barriers our our contingency planning we just in time navigation it's crazy.

[00:18:40] Nick Roome: Yeah, I think that opens up the conversation about congestion and sort of this fatigue that you would experience in congestion. I mentioned it at the top sitting in traffic let's just call it sitting in traffic and sort of these a lot of overcrowded roadways. I think one thing that like, growing up in California, there's their solution is just, oh, widen the freeway.

More lanes equals less congestion, right? More bandwidth means more cars can get through without needing to stop. Not always true. When there's crashes and whatnot that slow down a lane, you still have the merging, all that stuff. But I think you look at an example like LA where these traffic jams mean that 4 0 5, you're going, one mile an hour quite literally in some cases where I think.

Those long commutes are and I guess the needless exhaust that is being put into the atmosphere is is one of the reasons why we're so anti-car, at least in this article, and politics in general. And if they're EVs then it's better, but electric vehicles, then it's better. But I think there's still this this mental fatigue that happens when you're sitting in traffic.

And I will cite like a very specific example that's more, to do with the design of the car than the environment. But if you are going through two things. Let me sort my thoughts here. So first off, if you're going through an environment you want to make it. I guess more dull in a lot of ways because you don't want driver's attention to be off the road, especially if you're driving through a city center on a freeway, you don't want the attention to be on the buildings around you.

You want the attention to be on the road so that way you're not looking at all this stuff going on around you and potentially be distracted. And that's true anywhere that you're at, but especially true in cities where there's more pedestrians on the road not so much on freeways, but if you are driving, you want the focus to be on the road and not.

Everything around you. So that's one. But two, the thing that's made that congestion piece, the mental fatigue a little bit better is the sort of onset of a lot of these automated systems on vehicles, right? So I had a rental car that had automatic cruise control, adaptive cruise control that's been around for a while, the lane maintenance.

And all you had to do was keep the hand on the steering wheel and it mostly took care of everything for you, right? If you're sitting in traffic, you no longer have to go on and off the pedal, which was the most fatiguing part, paying attention to when things are happening now, instead of, okay, put foot on the pedal, go, you're paying attention to what's going around you.

I will just briefly mention that automated systems are helping with that, but a good portion of the cars on the road are not automated at this point. So I think that's, something to bring up there just with the traffic flow peak times, all these considerations with. Designing for urban environments, I think we can be more thoughtful about how we make those corridors and pathways go through a city.

That, that will help reduce congestion over time. And I do have a specific example to point to for this, but I'll wait on that until we've talked through a couple more points so I can circle back on the points.

[00:21:56] Barry Kirby: Yeah. I think there's nothing wrong at all. In fact, I think it's quite a good thing that if you are stuck in congestion and if you are doing that, it's, you are focused on the car in front of you, you are focused on why can't this car move because the car in front of it can't move.

'cause the car in front of it can't move. If you've got things around it that will actually make it. More engaging to, to drive through. So if you see nice things, if you see things around you, if you've got notable things to be looking out for, I always remember as a young child going to visit my grandparents.

There was on the way, on the drive to them, which was cross country a sculpture had been built of a brick sculpture had been built of a railway train. And you always knew when you were getting close, because you'd see this you'd see this railway train, this brick railway train.

And so you had something to look forward to as a kid, it was something, you're waiting for that landmark to come along. If you make some words where you are going to be stopped and in congestion the. To make it a less stressful experience. 'cause you generally, so if I drive here in the uk, if I'm gonna drive, say, back from Bristol, so from the from England to Wales where I'm at the moment, I know that I'm gonna get stuck on the piece of motorway that we call the M four.

If I hit that anything like rush time because rush hour, then I know I'm gonna get stuck in it. It's just, It every day. It just happens. So the government refused to do anything about it. So it's, it is just gonna exist, but if you made the stuff around it nicer, so as you the differences between that motorway and one of the other ones the, is it's a dull, boring, monotonous motorway.

Whereas if you go drive to some of the other ones, you've got amazing scenery to look at. You've got all this sort, so you don't necessarily mind being stuck a bit. 'cause you can look at the hills and stuff like that. It's that I always feel nicer for driving up some other motorways because, 'cause they're just nicer to look at and take in.

And I think if we are cognizant of the fact that some people are gonna be stuck there, then we should, we, there's nothing wrong with trying to make that aesthetic nicer for them to look at.

[00:23:57] Nick Roome: Sure there is that aesthetic piece of it, but I guess there's the trade off between safety.

And aesthetics, right? You don't want something to be too distracting for someone who's unfamiliar with the environment, especially in non-peak hours, right? So that's what I, my point was, is that you don't wanna make anything distracting in those non-peak hours that could potentially result in an accident and then cause congestion.

So I guess that was more my point, which

[00:24:24] Barry Kirby: No, which is a very, a really good point right. To the point that we see the amount of road furniture with basically advertising holdings on them. Yeah. Which, I mean they are UK US I think presumably around the world, there are, the amount of advertising that you get that is, is distracting.

That, I guess that fits as a as an alternative in, into some

[00:24:46] Nick Roome: of this. Yeah. Billboards is what we call them here in the States. And so yeah those side of the road advertisements that you see there, those are distracting in a lot of ways. And I think at least from, I'm talking from a so Southern California perspective right now, there are what they do on the freeways is they build up walls around the side, so that way you're more focused.

You can still see buildings around them. You can still see landscape and scenery. It's not you're completely locked into a tunnel. But I think reducing the amount of like visual noise in the immediate periphery is a good thing. You still have those landmarks, you still have buildings sticking out.

You still have, major streets, cross sections that you know of. But I think that whole focusing the attention on the road is the best part that you can do there. I think the same thing here, at least in Portland is like, there's a lot of there, there's a lot of the same tricks being used there, and there's some really pleasant scenery to look at.

I actually find myself getting more distracted up here in Portland than I did in California because the scenery is much more beautiful, and there's like a bridge that you drive through, and then you come up on this mountain and you drive right under the mountain and it's, anyway speaking about all that, like there's these safety concerns, when it comes to the the road piece itself, right?

So thinking about like I said, making it so that way you're not seeing all of the excess stuff that's down below the wall where you're gonna get distracted by all that. And I guess the most important piece here, at least for me with respect to this article, obviously we talk about.

From the driver's perspective. But when I think about safety, I do think about the drivers, but I also think about the pedestrians. And so putting lots of visual indicators that there's like pedestrians nearby, especially in like city driving, city street driving, not on a highway or a freeway or anything like that.

I think that's really important, especially when it comes to like lighting and crosswalks. We saw a very unfortunate example of a woman who lost her life because an autonomous system didn't see crossing the road in the middle of the night with a bike, but like it was done on a city street.

And so you have there, there's a lot more that went on with that issue than what I'm talking about here, but just having a. Plenty of opportunities for pedestrians to cross. That also reduces the amount of speed that a driver can take without having to, hit an intersection. And so that's why you see slower driving in the cities.

[00:27:21] Barry Kirby: I, a couple of other safety measures that I think are really useful. In Germany, they, in a lot of the German cities, they do proper dividing of space between cyclists, drivers and pedestrians. So making sure that each has its as much authority in its own space as it possibly needs to have.

The, this the cycling is properly controlled as well as pedestrians are. They're not just seen as an add-on to, to, to the highway, if that makes sense. And it's like curve ball, but I think it's it's a real, really genius way of looking at it is musical highways. So the musical highway is one that has got the vibrations that you would have say when you come up to a say a roundabout or so, or an intersection or something where the, to alert you or encourage you to slow down.

But actually, if you go across these at the right speed of the road with the posted speed, it may, it sings a song through the vibrations of the, of that. And that is a a great use of behavior queuing because you want to hear the song, so you will stick at the right speed because you get that, that, that reward piece from it.

And therefore you're, you're keeping to the safe limit. But you're encouraged to do it. You're not told to do it. So I just think that they're two really neat examples of I guess proactive safety measures.

[00:28:36] Nick Roome: Yeah, I agree. I think I. Where we could go now is to talk through a specific example.

I know I'm looking at the clock here to see like where we're at in the episode. I think So I would like to talk about the Alaska Wave remodel that's happening close-ish to me up in Seattle. And this is really interesting because what I mentioned earlier is there's this kind of freeway running straight through Seattle's waterfront where there was, they moved it underground and redesigned that entire space.

So before it was elevated and blocked off a lot of the buildings from being able to see it actually separated a lot of like downtown Seattle with the waterfront. And so for pedestrians it's a whole thing that they read did to be a little bit more easier to navigate I guess, from that perspective.

But I think there's some interesting pieces here. Is that the connections to the park spaces, the restaurants, the stores, the neighborhoods. By removing this corridor that was more like a wall than it was anything else. They're actually connecting all these places together. And it's not like you can't drive there anymore.

You still can a lot of these, a lot of these measures are for the pedestrians. But I do wanna also comment on what this means for the driver. So there's there's talking about like the aesthetic piece of this. It's a little bit more pleasant to look at because before it looked very industrial and now there's actually like planted trees.

You can actually see the waterfront, you see all the buildings. It's actually quite pleasant. I was just there. And you can see it, you drive slower there. And it's not like this huge congested mess that it used to be because it was a freeway before. It's just really interesting to see how that Has been designed for pedestrian accessibility, but also provided a really positive experience for drivers as they're driving through that they're driving slowly, they can leisurely actually look at their environment and enjoy what's going around.

And, I wasn't driving it personally. I had, a ride share, but I think if I was driving it, it would be less stressful than if I was to, be under a freeway trying to figure out all that stuff on my own. And then just to streamline things they did go underneath.

That pathway for the road, for the freeway. So now it's isolated, but it is a tunnel, which again focuses your attention on the road and not everything else around you. So I think there's a lot of really positive things that are going on with this specific project that touch on a lot of the things that we talked about.

I will bring up Alex in chat, bringing up the redo of the Willamette Falls in downtown Oregon City hitting these positive marks as well. So that's one of our social thoughts for the week. I.

[00:31:19] Barry Kirby: That's cool. Check. I guess as you said, we are running long time. I think one of the other bits, I guess as a, almost a, as a counterfactual to a certain extent is one thing that's been tried over his dual use spaces.

So you a space which a driver can drive through and a pedestrian can walk on. So pedestrian can walk it as if it was a pedestrianized area, but the driver can also drive through it. And the idea is that nobody has right away, you are e you are on an equal footing. Therefore the theory being that the driver has to get the eye attention of the pedestrian.

So they have to, you have to make eye contact and then then be able to navigate and almost di. Buy into a social contract that you're not gonna run each other r type of affair and therefore you can navigate through this piece. Now we tried this in Gloucester in, in, in a particular corner in the center of town.

And what it ended up with was, the idea was it was meant to be an open area, but it turned out that it caused massive amounts of congestion because no pedestrians would give way at all. But then also then when cars got moving, the cars wouldn't give way at all. 'cause there would be basically bumper to bumper and it would end up like being like a train.

So we ended up having to put in, still put in a pedestrian crossing area into there to make it work properly because both sides just really annoyed each other. And the other big finding we found out, or that is actually the shared spaces are really good idea unless you're blind. And then, 'cause you can't navigate, you can't make that social contract with it's not like you can shout at the car because most people have the windows up.

I thought it was just worth highlighting that. 'cause not all things, they're good ideas, but they don't necessarily get full use everywhere. And I guess we, we could do an entire another show on We could. We

[00:33:02] Nick Roome: could. Yeah. Oh, like we did. So we didn't even touch on accessibility, which you were just hinting on that.

We didn't talk about internet of things. We didn't talk about parking, we didn't talk about all this community piece of it. Economic considerations, self-worth, all this stuff. We didn't even touch on a lot of that. And I'm sorry, we have to wrap up and get to the next portion of the show. Barry, final thoughts?

[00:33:24] Barry Kirby: I just wanted to, 'cause we had another social thought from Graham Coh and where I'd put, does it, does this have a, an impact? Do you see it? And all that sort stuff. And he come back with, yes, I think so. Excellent. Short up to the point. Thank you very much Graham for that.

[00:33:37] Nick Roome: Excellent social thought. Alright, so we gotta move on. But thank you to everyone, especially our patrons this week for selecting our topic. And thank you to our friends over at UX Collective for our news story this week. If you wanna follow along, we do post the links to all the original articles and our weekly roundups and our blog.

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Yes. Huge thank you as always. To our patrons, we especially wanna thank our human factors, cast all access and v i p patrons, Michelle Tripp and Neil Ganey. Hey, if you want your name, read on the show, become a All Access, or v i p, patron, patron and speak while we're on the topic of Patreon, lemme just tell you what that helps us out with.

'cause I mentioned it at the top of the show. I mentioned it, you just heard the commercial for it. But what does it actually help with? We have hosting fees for a lot of different things that we do, right? So we do the podcast, we have the website. There's all this capability that we are using behind the scenes to make this possible.

And so a lot of the support that you all give to us goes right back into that. And we're actually experimenting with automation products and services that really help out with the audio video production and. It really does generate a lot of like tools and resources for the lab. And so I don't pocket any of it.

It all goes back out into costs. So I'm, I'm still in the hole. Still in the hole. How long are we within this? Seven years. Oh, geez. Uh, Anyway, I think that that's our queue to get into the next part of the show

yes. Let's get into it came from, this is the part of the show where we search all over the internet to bring you topics that the community, our lovely community folks talking about. If you find any of these answers useful or funny, give us a like to help other people find this content.

We got three great ones up for you tonight. We got the first one here by User Figs and Jam on the Human Factors subreddit, advice for interviewing for human factors roles. They write Emmy Senior Human Factors Engineer looking for new roles. I've been applying seven months, but I've had no luck. I need advice on how to improve my interviewing skills and highlight my abilities as I feel overlooked compared to those with a master's degree.

I have relevant skills in hardware, graphic design, front-end development, and ui ux. I would appreciate some mentorship and advice in this area, Barry.

[00:37:56] Barry Kirby: So for me, I don't have a human factors degree. And look at me now. Woo. Really your, the value that you've got here is got, you've got seven how many years experience they've been applying for seven months, but four years.

Four years experience. So you've got a whole chunk of experience there that is is something that you don't get. When you get your degree, 'cause your degree, you're getting a whole bunch of knowledge thrown at you for you to assimilate and work with and get and work off other people's experience.

But when you've done it yourself and you're a senior human factors engineer now you've got, so you've got that real life experience. And what that experience, I think gives you that, that can't necessarily be taught is things like working under pressure, looking at team engagement, negotiation.

How many times on these have we talked about how to engage with different parts of the the organization. You'll have, you'll more than likely engage with demanding customers and users and in things that outside of a classroom or may maybe a a role play, you've actually got some users who won't give you the information or customers that are truly demanding, and also the taking methodologies and the things you read in the book and actually tailoring them to a to a real life situation.

Because no methodology survives first contact. You have to adapt. And that's not necessarily, that's something that as soon as you come out of university, you don't necessarily have that appreciation you need to do. But the flip side is true. You are gonna not know stuff that is taught throughout a master's degree or a a graduate typically human practice degree.

And I've had that myself. I've got bags of experience in some areas and I've got very little experience in others, and I. We were talking about just yesterday, today talking about the human factors investigations, so incident investigations and things. Now I've got no experience in that whatsoever, but I'm quite happy to turn around and say, I've got no experience in that whatsoever.

I'll, and, but I know people who do, but also I put a little thing in my book saying, actually I need to learn a bit more about human factors investigation because if more people are asking about it, it could be interesting. It is potentially harder in some safety critical areas. So here in the uk particularly defense nuclear in particular, I think is possibly one of the hardest domains to get into if you don't have human factors qualifications because it is part of the ably qualified piece.

And it's something I've done very little work in myself, but I've been in other areas. Wager on your experience is worth so much and you possibly do yourself down. Nick, that was a long way go round saying that piece. Yeah. What do you,

[00:40:19] Nick Roome: So you started mentioning the safety critical domains.

Biotech pharma. That's kind of safety critical. And 'cause devices need to be safe and effective.

[00:40:32] Barry Kirby: Oh that, that was cheap. Ah, it was

[00:40:34] Nick Roome: cheap. Hey, go listen to that Heidi and I put a lot of work into that. Go listen to that. So devices do have to be safe and effective to be out there on the market and the rigor that it has to go through for those f D A approvals, at least here in the states, I think there's a lot there that you can't necessarily teach to.

I think you need some good fundamentals. So this is my short-winded way of saying four years experience in my mind equates to about the equivalent of a degree, just in terms of raw experience, different types of experience. With a degree you're learning fundamentals and methodology, but. The four years experience in the workplace gets at all those things that you were talking about, Barry, the work environment user, interacting with users, the pressures that you experience, time management the application of those methodologies.

I just to, to hammer this point home, think about the reasons why I would hire someone with a master's degree over the reasons that I would think about hiring someone with work experience and then try to plug those gaps, right? So a master's degree might know more fundamentals and so if you can patch those gaps and speak the language, that might be more I don't know, for specifically within biotech and pharma they might have stricter requirements or vetting procedures to find folks that have gone through or that know more fundamentals, especially those who have had the experience already working in that domain.

That's what I'm thinking. Okay. So let's move on to this next question. This next one is by four computer stuff. On the user experience subreddit, they write, is it a bad time to try becoming a ux or should I pursue a career as a ux Or despite concerns about salary and competition trends? Barry, what do you think?

[00:42:32] Barry Kirby: In fact, you calling it ux just concern me. I don't know. I'm always mixed when we get this type of question because particularly around ux, 'cause I, I'm no, but yeah. But because I've said it before and I'll say it again. I still feel UX is seen as trendy as it's fashionable.

And I still think, even though, it's been going for a bunch of years now, and there's some really amazing people in there who do stuff. But I still feel it's finding its feet and growing. I think that there are people who will go and do the qualifications or do the initial engagement because they think it's gonna be easy.

There was a massive trend, and I dunno whether it's still there, but lots of people went to university to do psychology 'cause they thought it was gonna be easy. And it was an easy degree to do. And then you get into it and you realize actually not so much. It's actually quite, especially if you're taking it seriously it's difficult.

And quite right too because people are difficult. But fundamentally, if it sings to you if you feel that's your bag, then then pursue it. But I would possibly look I would be thinking wider, which is one of the reasons I like human factors as a broader thing is because it does give you a grounding in a wide range of stuff.

But you can specialize in areas, but and play it that way would be my approach. Nick, what about you?

[00:43:45] Nick Roome: I. Ah, these two communities. So UX is not human factors and human factors is not. UX is just a bad argument and I hate that because it is all the same thing. But I think you're right in the sense that UX feels more lucrative and easier because it doesn't have the same rigor.

That human factors, which is traditionally associated with like safety, critical systems has. And so they're, the goals are the same between the two communities. And I know this is not the premise of the question, but make things easier for the user. So that way, in safety critical environments, no one's dying.

And in software development in ux it's so that they're not frustrated with your product and they wanna buy it or consume that thing more. So ultimately the term ux, while it might be trendy, I think that the understanding for a need to include the end user in the discussion as a stakeholder ultimately is where we're going.

And I see more and more opportunities for that in the long run. I think as more and more companies begin to ha have that sort of UX maturity, there's gonna be more companies that need that role fulfilled and. They'll need it in a way that's going to do it correctly. And I don't know if we're necessarily there, but the market's weird.

We're still recovering from this 2020 realignment. But we're normalizing or we were normalizing and then the tech layoffs happened and that didn't help. I don't know. Do what your heart wants. If you like UX and your heart is in it, do it. I like, I don't know, this seems like a question.

It's if you like doing the thing, do the thing like yes, it's gonna be competitive, but it sounds like this is more I don't know. This sounds more resource allocation driven than it does interest driven and I think you need to look at what your interests are. That's just my 2 cents. Alright, last question here.

By. On Worklet. Wow. I don't know that one. UX research subreddit, they write, giving up on making people. Listen, this is a very long-winded post. I'm just gonna edit it here. As a researcher, I am starting to question whether it's my job to convince stakeholders to engage with my research. I don't feel responsible for educating or evangelizing those who are not open to it.

I'm hesitant to follow the playbook on increasing research impact. I would try harder if I truly cared about the product or the company's mission, or if I enjoyed influencing people. Yeah, if I enjoyed influencing people or being recognized as smart. But ultimately my responsibility is to do the research that benefits the company if they choose not to engage with the insights.

It's not my responsibility. I care about doing good research and sharing it with those who need it, but I'm tired of making people listen if they don't want to. Does anyone else feel this way? Barry, what are your very politely worded thoughts on this one? Oh,

[00:46:31] Barry Kirby: we've gotta be polite. Okay. Hard message.

Get another job. Fundamentally, the, what you've described is you're not enjoying what you're doing now. You're either not enjoying what you're doing because of the role, or you, or because of the company. But fundamentally, you don't like to be doing, find something new. If you don't believe in who you work for, what they're delivering, find somewhere else.

So if you believe in the job, but you don't believe in your employer, you don't believe in the company or the or, or what they're producing, do something else with it. If you don't believe in what the actual work that you are doing, 'cause actually what you described, you like doing the research, but the other half of the job is to get people to engage with it.

We've spoken time and time again about half of our job is bringing people into the fold and get them to understand that users matter. What you've described that you and Joan is only one half of the job, I'm afraid. And it always will be because you are always gonna be part of that positive tension between software engineers wanting to do what software engineers do and us wanting to try and bring them into the thinking about what users want to do at the very basic level.

Nick, what's your very politely worded way of suggesting a way forward for this individual?

[00:47:40] Nick Roome: Get that sensor button ready, Barry? So I think the thing is here that it shouldn't be our job, but we are advocates of the user. And if you don't advocate for that user in trying to get your research to be accepted by these stakeholders, then what are you doing?

That's exactly our job. You what? There you go. All right. Yay. You did it. All right, and now we just move on to the fun part of the show. With that one more thing. Barry, what is your One more thing?

[00:48:15] Barry Kirby: So very clear. I can't remember whether I mentioned it last week but I'm actually moving company offices and in theory get the keys tomorrow.

So that's exciting. And maybe next week if I get my shizzle together and stuff we could maybe even have a a tour around the office. 'cause I'm allowed in it past seven o'clock night and stuff. That might be exciting. It might also be too late. We'll see. But the thing I wanted to really mention is something I haven't done in a while is when I'm doing some bits of research and stuff, sometimes.

You can get a bit of methodology that fits perfectly what you want to do because it doesn't exist. And I was getting myself wrapped around the axle about particular bit of work I'm doing at the moment because there's not a lot of research out there and there's not, which is exciting because it means you are properly breaking new ground.

But also, there was methodologies that I wanted to use, but I couldn't because either there weren't valid enough or whatever. But fundamentally, there wasn't a methodology that existed to do what I wanted to do. Now, I don't know why I had this mental block because I'm ne it's never normally hit me in the past where I've just turned around and said, Hey, I'll do, I'll carve my own path here and I'll create something new.

But it hit me. I was standing in the shower frustrated with what I was doing and think thinking about it. And I was just standing in the hot shower and I was like, I could create a new process here. I could create a new methodology. And by the time I got outta the shower, I had a new name for it. I had two versions of it and also how we could go and be deployed in a civilian market and everything.

And I'd just forgotten the fun in developing brand new methodologies with a view to then being able to go and validate them and go and do that. So I had to, I, it was the best shower I've had in months.

[00:49:45] Nick Roome: That's gonna be a clip.

That's exciting. That's awesome. I can't wait to read it. You are gonna publish it, right?

[00:49:52] Barry Kirby: I may or may not be able to, depending on why, but what we are trying to do is to get it to a place where it is publishable. And I've got a twist on it, which I think will do that. And actually it's completely inspiring as well,

[00:50:02] Nick Roome: awesome. My, one more thing this week is I talked about it a couple weeks ago. I got the steam deck. And I wanna do a little update. So this device is a handheld gaming console gaming pc. And it works very well for steam games. There's a lot of setup to do with non-team games, but actually the thing that I have found the most interesting is that I have got it set up to do cloud gaming on Xbox.

Okay. And that has been phenomenal. Because the way in which this device operates is it's a handheld pc. And so like a lot of it, a lot of the battery power is going to processing. And when that battery power is going to, just looking at a browser and accessing a stream, it's not using all that battery power.

Power so you can game for longer. And the latency is one thing, but it's not really that much of an issue. I'm on my cloud gaming high again, and just to be able to play anything without needing to download is great. And it's, I just to follow up weeks later, it's been great to put my own things on there that are not on the steam store.

And so it's flexible in that way, but you have to you have to modify, like it's weird because you have to plug in a U S B C. Dongle so that way you can get like a keyboard and mouse to go into desktop mode and then do things behind the scenes. So it's like an actual computer. And then you're setting everything up.

And then when you go into like the actual gaming mode, you can get things to work and there's a bunch of add-ons that make it much better to use. Anyway, if anyone wants to talk about Steam deck, let me know. Happy to do that, but that's my experience anyway, that's it for today, everyone. If you like this episode, enjoy some of the discussion about Barry's alarms going off.

Or rather, how about this? If you enjoy some of the discussion about architecture, I. We did an episode just recently on this called Antisocial Architecture. So go listen to that. It's episode 288. Comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the story This week for more in-depth discussion, you can always join us on our Discord community.

Visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news. You like what you hear, you wanna support the show. You can leave us a five star review. Like I said, that really helps other people find the show. You can always tell your friends about us. That helps us grow.

And if you have the financial means to help support us on Patreon, all that goes back into the operating costs for running the show. As always, links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode. Mr. Barry Kirby, thank you for being on the show today. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about methodologies?

[00:52:33] Barry Kirby: You can still find me on X at the moment. Though I must say my interest is wind waning on that, but then threads isn't really taking off either. So I'm in a bit of a place. But if you conversation on Discord you can go on the Discord, but if you want to come and chat about a big building with a X on it, that gets taken off because of the weight layers at you.

You can find me a Baard go k almost on most socials. Or if you wanna come and have a chat or listen to me doing interviews with interesting people around the human factors community and beyond. Then I'm on 1202, the Human Factors Podcast, which is 1202 podcast.com.

[00:53:07] Nick Roome: As for me, I've been your host, Nick Rome.

You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick Rome. Thanks again for tuning into Human Factors Cast. Until next time, it depends.