E303 - Human Factors Buffet

[00:00:00] Nick Roome: How about that for a proper intro? We're back. Welcome back to another episode of Human Factors Cast. This is episode 303. Yes, we're back to numbered episodes, everyone. Look at that. We're recording this live on October 10th, 2024. Like I said, this is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host, Nick Rome. I'm joined today by Mr.

Barry Kirby. Barry, how you doing?

[00:00:22] Barry Kirby: I'm good. This feels so old school now.

[00:00:24] Nick Roome: It doesn't it? But I'm jazzed for it. Let's do it. We got a, we got an awesome show for everyone lined up tonight. We're actually going to be talking about the human factors buffet. What does that mean? We got a couple of different topics for you.

We'll be reflecting on aspire. This year HFES is Aspire. We'll also take a look at what's coming for the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, 75th anniversary, and to round everything off, we haven't forgotten the news stories. We'll talk a little bit about Notebook LM. Google's latest acquisition for was it aggregating sources?

We'll get into all that and more, but later. But first Hey, look, we're back programming notes. This is the thing that we're doing. We're back. We're back in the seat. I'm going to talk a little bit about this later in our reflection on aspire. But I think think we're back. So like Barry said, this is old school.

So Barry, what's the latest over at 1202? You got anything for us?

[00:01:17] Barry Kirby: We do. We've got a, I think since the last time we did live episode, we've got two episodes out on 1202. One is looking at a when a podcast collide episode. And so we bringing in another podcast. Human factors podcast, which we might've spoken about before.

I'm can't remember. So that's one, but then the latest one is talking to Andrew Thatcher. And for those of you who are not familiar with Andrew Thatcher, you're soon going to be, cause he's the new president of the IEA. And so he's going to be the president there for, he's got a three year term.

And so I had to chat with him about what his hopes, dreams, ambitions are for the IEA in during his term. We also had a bit of reflection on what the IEA is about, because I don't, Really know a vast amount about it. And if I don't know much about it, then I'm sure a lot of the listeners don't too, so we delved into a bit of that and yeah, really good to listen to, so go over to 12 or two podcast.

com and listen to them. Excellent.

[00:02:14] Nick Roome: And just speaking of episodes I think it's pertinent to announce that we have a few of them out there from. This year's aspire, which will serve as a good transition piece into our news stories. But we have a couple of episodes out there. They're shorter in form, but I think we've had a couple of programming scheduling issues over the last couple of weeks, but we are attempting to be a little bit more regular about our production schedule.

So with that being said,

that's right. This is the part of the show all about human factors news. Mr. Barry Kirby. What is our new story this week?

[00:02:46] Barry Kirby: So we are hitting three stories this week, but the first one is a reflection on the Aspire conference. So for those of you who are unaware, what Aspire is the new name for the HFES conference and was held this year in Phoenix.

Arizona from all accounts. It was not held in a, what was traditionally being a a normal hotel type environment. This was more of a motel type environment, so it's bought more where you had to walk between buildings and things like that to be able to get to different bits of it. So I think at that we obviously had the entire show the live stream that we had with ourselves with Heidi and who else was with us?

I've completely Frank was with us as well. Yes, Frank was with you because you guys got to do it live. Me and Heidi were both coming in remote. And So I'm really keen to hear about your reflections, what it was like actually being there and now you've had time to almost relax, chill and go back because during the live event itself, you tend to run around like a run aroundy thing.

getting everything organized, gathering lots of a role B role doing the interviews, talking to people, trying to organize things, trying to work out how to make the wifi work. What was it like for you when you got back, you got home and you could sit down and go, did you have the, how did you have the warm feeling of what a successful event?

It was amazing. Or did you have the, Oh my God, thank God that's over.

[00:04:18] Nick Roome: Yes, both. So I think this is interesting because it gets at a a piece. I'm going to speak like a human right now. Not like a podcast host. The week at HFES for me is. Incredibly stressful to say the least. Like Barry, like you said, I do run around making sure that we are capturing things to bring that content from that conference to all of you.

Whether that's, this year we did the shorter form. Interviews, which I think was great actually for a lot of that sort of bite size feedback. In the past we've done longer interviews that spanned 15 to 30 minutes. And while those were great, those are some of my best, memories from HFES.

I think this actually allowed us to get a wider aperture of what that experience is like across a whole Bunch more domains. It's a lot more editing. It's a lot more pieces to put together and put out there and organize in a way that makes sense. From a human perspective, I think my, my overall experience at HFES Aspire was great.

And truly I could not have done it without Frank, without Vianney, without Katie, because. They're in person. They were all very involved in that whole process. I think I may have mentioned it on the live stream, but the night before we went live, we were up until 1 0 AM, which is an improvement from the night, before in 22, we were up until four.

And um, we're actually getting a lot better at how we put that stuff together. And I have more reflections, but I'm curious from the outside looking in Barry, what were your sort of initial reactions?

[00:06:00] Barry Kirby: From my perspective, it's obviously very easy. I rock up, I switched my camera on and you've got everything sorted and I just slot myself in.

So from a logistics point of view, for me, it's always been very easy. I was, I've got to say I was disappointed this year, like it was last year for the last few years, I've hoped to have been there myself. My plan is for, I'm hoping next year to, to be able to be out there. And hopefully the world will cons world won't conspire against me.

But I guess In some respects we've seen, was it two years ago where we saw the the president's speech, where we saw Chris doing his thing and And we had, I think, a lot more of I would say leadership engagement and stuff like that. So doing them live interviews was fun.

And so from this time, but from this time, we saw a lot more of real people rather than the celebrities, shall we say. So that was really nice. It was really good to see some of the different bits going on. One of the bits I thought was the riskiest. From the HFES standpoint was where they were doing the live testing of the new website.

Oh, yeah. And I think VNI did the went did did some actual testing, and gave some feedback and re recorded the whole thing, which then as soon as we played that segment, I was then onto the website and looking at it myself. Looking around we discussed a bit of it on air. But I thought that was a very brave thing for the organization to do, considering, they've launched the website, it was live, it was out there.

And then they were asking feedback from, was it a couple of thousand ergonomists? Wow. I would not have done that.

[00:07:36] Nick Roome: To be fair, you're going right where your users are. Like, that's, that's the other flip side.

[00:07:41] Barry Kirby: You are, but it's but I know how annoying I can be when I do reviews for other people, never mind ourselves.

And also it's a bit subjective, isn't it? Because we all do, if you reviewed something, I reviewed something, we would probably come out, it would largely be in the same beam, same ballpark. But we'd have our different nuances on stuff. But yeah, no, I thought it was a great thing to do. Really cool.

Really cool stuff for that. So yeah, it was quite a quite good from that perspective.

[00:08:05] Nick Roome: Now I have to talk a little bit about some of the interactions that I had. That were not captured on camera because I think some of those were, ironically, some of the most powerful moments that I had at the conference.

I think anyone that talks about their experience at a conference always says, it's the networking, it's the networking, and it really is. But beyond that I have to say there was A moment. So Frank being a little candid here, Frank roped me into manning the desk over at the systems development technical group at the opening reception.

So it was actually cool this year that they did was I think I may have talked about this on the live stream too, but they, During the opening reception last year, they did all the awards during the reception and this year they had, booths with all the affinity groups and all the specialty groups and all the technical groups around the area.

And they had a little scavenger hunt and you could go through and get a stamp for, figuring out a little bit of trivia around each of these different groups. And so Frank had me man, the systems development technical group. And in doing that, I shilled the podcast a little bit.

There Frank was shipping the podcast for us too. And but while we were there, there was a select few individuals that came by and there, there were a few that had lasted with me. And one of them I shared with you, Barry, but I haven't, I don't think I shared this live actually. And so I'll share it with all of you right now.

Somebody stopped by the booth and said, where have you gone? They, they flat out asked, where did the podcast go? And I know, I'm no stranger to the fact that we've been a little bit irregular on our production schedule over the last year. And I was honest with them and said, my life has been a little bit tumultuous since the last time I came to HFES, I think I've mentioned this on the show many times, but upon my return from HFES in 2023, like the very next Tuesday I got a meeting with HR on my calendar and I was part of the big, wave of tech layoffs, the latest wave of tech layoffs.

And so my priority shifted. The podcast has always been a personal project. I've never been. Paid by any company to do this genuinely all the support for this comes from my own pocket book, as well as the Patreon supporters who support the show. And so it, my priorities shifted. I needed to buckle down and find work and leverage my network to do that.

And I did. And thankfully I wasn't out of work for too long, but alongside with that, there were some adjustments, from my part of finding my role in, finding my niche in my new role at my new job and figuring out what all that means and really taking that a little bit seriously, not that I wasn't before, but it was It was just trying to make sure that I was doing the best that I could to ensure my own personal prosperity.

So because of that yes, we were publishing episodes, throughout the year we were doing hangouts, keeping this thing together on life support is what I referred to it as, but I won't forget the words that this person said to me. That made this a deeply personal request. And so when they said, where has the podcast gone?

I explained that story to them about what my life has been like over the last year. And then I said, can you share with me your experience with the podcast? And they said I'm from overseas and in my region of the world, there's not a whole lot of human factors professionals. And I listened to the show to stay in touch with the latest news.

I listened, it was like listening and engaging with my community. They couldn't get a human factors job where they were. And so they got the closest thing that they could, which was like a security engineer. And. When the podcast took its break, it's hiatus. It's shift. It impacted their life too.

And that was one of several instances that I've heard like that. And so the most important thing. And honestly, I had a number, I had a number in my head that said, if I hear This thing, something similar to what I just described that many times while I was out there, then I would double down and revitalize the podcast because it's clearly important to the community.

And that number was met, which is why we're here, which is why we're putting an emphasis on the show notes, which is why we're old school again, but I wanted to share that story for a couple of reasons. One to indicate, I hear you. I, you hear me right now, but I hear you. You stopped by the booth.

You let me know what it means to you in your life. And that sort of re rejogged my inspiration to get this thing off its wheels again. So when I say I'm dusting off the podcast shelf, I literally am trying to revitalize this thing to what it once was in terms of our production schedule, in terms of its quality.

We're back is what I took away from HFES this year and talking with all the folks who were at HFES and Aspire and who had, these personal stories to share with me about what, listening to us in their headphones while they're on a morning run or doing the dishes.

I'm not offended by that. I'm actually very flattered that you choose to spend your time with us while you're doing chores or while you're working out. And those types of things were deeply impactful to me on a personal level. And that stuff was not captured on camera. And you can't really capture that stuff on camera.

So I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who stopped by and let me know your story. And if you have something that you would like to share with us, that's similar to those stories, Like I always said, we see the numbers, but until people stop by and tell us those stories, it doesn't feel real.

So I'll just stop there.

[00:14:05] Barry Kirby: It's interesting, isn't it? Cause it, as you say we do this for fun. We do it cause we enjoy doing it. And like I said not cause we get any other sort of reward for it. And I like it because we sit, we sit in our virtual room here and we've come together over this our love of our profession and have a bit of banter, have a bit of a laugh but also cover some serious topics.

It's not until you start meeting other people in social environments, face to face things that, and they go, Oh yeah, I've been listening to your say your interview on this or what you're, when you and Nick were discussing such and such or whatever. And you're like, Oh, people actually listen to this stuff.

People actually get something from it. And it's, that's where, when we ask, we say, look, just tell us where, if you're listening live, tell us where you're listening from this, that, and the other, because it means that we can connect with the outside world in that respect. So yeah I'm completely stoked for you that you've had somebody you've had, People come up and share their experiences of of the stuff that you put so much time, effort into planning and putting together.

And I get the joy of just coming on here and abusing it all completely. I've been able to talk with you. So that's a really good an awesome output. So are you then spire next year as well? I

[00:15:16] Nick Roome: am. And I think there's a lot of things that we'll do differently next year. One of the things that I'm consistently, I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to, one of the things I'm consistently disappointment disappointed with from our end on the podcast side is the production value.

I think there's a lot that we're trying to do there. And so I'm going to try better to get us better equipment. That does mean a financial hit on my part, but if we can get better equipment, if we can get a better setup that is mobile and we tried to do the multi camera thing this year, which worked until it didn't, but, if we can get a true setup that is actually going to work for us in that environment, which.

If you see that next year, you'll know that I've forked up the money to do that because it is important to me. I think the last thing that I'll end with and on the reflections from Aspire is that given everything that we do here we're just two people on a podcast, but there is a whole bunch of other people backing us.

Whether that's through Patreon support, but we also have a lab full of people. The activity levels have waxed and waned over the years, but having the support of Vianney and Katie, and especially Frank on the front lines with me this year was really important. And so with that I'm going to reopen the door to the human factors, cast digital media lab.

So if you want to get involved with the podcast, if you have A desire to help out and assist with the production of the show with various efforts, there are things that we can put you on and that will get you some experience. It doesn't matter who you are. We'll we'll, I'll have a chat with you.

And if it's a good fit for you, it's a good fit for us, then we'll make it happen and we'll get something on the books. So the lab doors are open. Come on in, just send us a there, there's a couple of ways you can reach us, but our website's probably best or human factors cast at Gmail.

That's you can get to us there. All right. So we've talked about aspire. This is human factors buffet though. So we have other topics to get to Barry. I'm going to let you drive for most of this next conversation. Can you tell us a little bit about the next story?

[00:17:30] Barry Kirby: I can. So it is 75 years since the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors in its original guise was started, was launched.

So not only is it 75 years since it was launched, it's 10 years since it actually obtained its chartered status. So that's almost like a double celebration that we're doing here. And so the Chartered Institute is celebrating this in a number of ways. The first, the biggest one that. that people will see and is over social media and things like that is the Think Human exhibition.

And the Think Human exhibition is a human factors based exhibition. It's a physical exhibition based in the Museum of Making in Derby in the UK. And the idea is that it's bringing together people, products, Places procedures to celebrate the world that is a design both to be safe and productive, comfortable and enjoyable.

We, it was launched a few couple of weeks ago. One of the reasons why we didn't have one of the weeks on on here in the podcast, cause I was at the launch event where there was a number of a large number of VIPs and key people within the within the human factors world, as well as a whole bunch of students, graduates current students and graduates from the university universities around.

So that was a a brilliant event that took us on a bit of a journey. We heard from some of the sponsors including the likes of the Liverpool university around why they got involved, why they were keen on engaging with it. We heard from the current president, launching the event and really invited us in to go and look through it.

Now, what they did at the museum of making was not only did we have a floor. So the third floor of the museum is taken over by this exhibition. And when you, if you just go straight up there, you would be taken on a journey through the floor that has all sorts of exhibits that have been donated by companies that show everything from.

PPE to how you use or how you could design table tennis bats to be better for better use. And there was actually a table tennis table there with balls. So you could actually have a bit of a hit around yourself. Weirdly, there was some stuff there that showed different bits of clothing and that, and a lot of the exhibits had signs on them saying, Please do not touch.

As ergonomists and people like who do the one thing we like to do is to be able to get hands on with things. So that felt really weird. So that this this exhibition is open between now until mid December. So if you're in the UK and you want to go and have a look at it, I strongly recommend you do so alongside that.

What is also happening is they've managed to get funding to run a whole bunch of STEM based workshops. So we are. we are inviting schools in or that schools have been invited in to run a whole bunch to run, have workshops where they learn about ergonomics. They learn about why we do the, why we do what we do.

And one of my team Jim has been one of the ambassadors who've been, has been running one of these workshops and he's been there this week to to have his engagement with schools. So that's fab. What the other bit with it is the way that the museum is set up. It's some of it's quite in, in disparate and interdispersed.

And so there's some elements there that are on some of the other floors in with some of the other exhibits. And one of the bits, which is absolutely fascinating is a a napkin. And it's a napkin by that's been written on by Huell Murrell, who was one of the founders of what was the, the ergonomic society that then turned into the CIHF.

And this napkin has a doodle of his evolution of what he thought that this thing called, what we now call the human factors and ergonomics, what should it be called? And you can see on this It's got things like anthropogenics. It's got ergotology and loads of other words until he got to human ergonomics.

And so you can see how that has then led on to. human factors and ergonomics and and all that sort of stuff. But it's really interesting to see some, or just to see, we do it all the time when you're thinking about new things, just doodling away what am I going to call this thing? And then to see how now that's evolved and what we take for granted has been this thing for ergonomics had such a such a beginning.

So that's all about the think human exhibition. That's not the only thing that's going on. There's been, so the the. The EHF conference this year was based on on celebrating the 75th. But the other thing is, if you've ever read the journal ergonomics they are doing a special edition to celebrate the 75 years of the CIHF.

And so if anybody has got any thoughts, ideas, or. things that they want to write. So it's not, they're trying to bring together, some of the more fundamental things about where ergonomics has been and where ergonomics should go. If people want to put together a journal article, then that is now open to do I think you have until mid December to submit a journal article. So I think that's a well worth doing exercise. And in fact, maybe we should be doing one on something about communicating human factors, just a thought, just to lay, I like it. Given that it's a journal article, we would need to base it in some facts, some things, but we have statistics coming out of our ears with listenership.

And then you could also bring in some of them stories like you were, like you just discussing from Aspire. Yeah. So I think it's overall, it's been a really interesting time because being able to reflect on the, where economics has been in this journey for the past 75 years, seen some of the things seen some of the journey has been humbling and quite exciting because there's still loads of people come together to try and drive some of this stuff forward.

The, and so that with that, I get the, there was also a paper going out about where we think where we think ergonomics is going in the next 10, 15, 20, 50 years, and whether you, whether people will think it will still even be around in the future. And I'm not going to talk that much about that paper, because I think that's something we could talk about on a future episode in our new new old look shiny new old look.

So I, I'm. I know you've seen some of the photos and some of the stuff that we've been and stuff like that. Have you, from an HFES perspective, have you had these types of events before? And do you think they compare?

[00:23:59] Nick Roome: You know what? I'm not entirely sure if there's been a partnership with a museum in this type of way.

And if there hasn't been, kickstart something like that over here in the States. Because one of the things that I've. From some of the photos, like you mentioned I've been following the, all the fun stuff from it. I know I saw a bunch of your pictures come through on my feed, but one of the ones that stuck out to me that was interesting, and it's interesting for a variety of reasons, but you might think that, Oh, it's like a A piece that is about documentation, but in a lot of ways, it's an interactive exhibit.

And I think that to me is the most compelling part about this. I'll just talk about one example I saw which was two, Two sheets of paper side by side. And one of them said, what scares me about AI and what excites me about AI. And just to see people participating, or at least faking to participate on your picture, I don't know but actually to see people write their thoughts about it.

I know there was something like that at HFES. What are you excited for? What do aspire to be, or what should HFES do or something like that? I don't remember exactly what it was, but to see that in a museum, that everyone has access to, especially if this is a free exhibit that to me says a lot about is there any data collection that's happening there?

Can we even look at that? And it actually speaks to the. human element of thinking human, which is cool. So I want to say that it, from the outside looking in, it excites me. I wish I could go because it, the way that you talk about it, the way that the pictures that I've seen makes it not only interesting from a documentation, historical perspective, but also that interactive piece like that is what is exciting to me.

Cause I would want to know from. The layperson who's unfamiliar with the field of human factors and ergonomics, what their thoughts on some of the stuff is. It's all really cool stuff and I wish I could be there.

[00:26:02] Barry Kirby: Yeah, it definitely has been a labor of love to get it to where it is.

I think certainly one of the big driving forces behind it has been Dr. Mark Young, who's the current president. It was his baby. He's ran with it over a number of years to get the funding in place and that, but then there's, he's brought together a team. And we had a a specific event organizers to help put this on a lady called Ellie King and she I think has done nothing but live and breathe almost every word that's been written and that's been published that goes on and chatting to her on the night, you must be so proud of seeing it all come to life.

And she, I think, I don't know about you, but when you launch a project or something, it's almost once you get it over the line, you're there and you're just almost everyone else is enjoying what you're doing, but you're sat there going, Oh, thank God. Goodness that's out. She was completely up.

She was absolutely bouncing off everybody's feedback and stuff. And he was just such a delight to see what she, her being able to enjoy what she's achieved in that respect. And yeah, it, that, from that whole point that, that was really good. And then what is going to be good going on is that it doesn't just end in the physical event.

what they're going to be doing as much as they possibly can is taking all of the textual stuff that's been written, all the pictures, all of the artifacts and generating and creating an online version of it. So after this event's over, it doesn't just disappear. And that was one of the, one of the key things I was, Keen to make sure that happened with this was that it isn't just the physical event.

It is more It has more longevity. So when at the end middle of december when it finishes, it doesn't just that's it all over one of the Discussions that kind of freaked me out if i'm honest was it was with ellie and And people have been saying to her what you're gonna do for the hundredth, it's and it's like Games what you do for the hundredth And I was like, Oh yeah, why wouldn't we?

And I'd actually only in a meeting, was it a couple of weeks previous? It said, we need to make sure we learn the lessons we make, we actively capturing what works, what doesn't for the next one of these that we do. And so she's going, Oh, what do you do? And it wasn't until, and so it was like yeah, great.

We'd all been drinking champagne and stuff. So you sit in there going yeah, of course I can't wait for the hundredth. I suddenly dawned on me when I was driving home. When it comes to the hundredth, I'll be 70. That was like, I don't want the hundredth. I don't want to see. I know that can wait because it's only 25 years away and I didn't like that.

But what I loved was the fact that people had seen it They've been motivated by it and they were like right when you know What are we doing for the next one because clearly this is a good thing yeah, it was a bizarre. It was bizarre, but brilliant at the same time So what we're going to do with it is I'm hoping that we all as a team, so I'm going to take my entire team either for the day or for an overnight.

We talked about doing it maybe as part of our Christmas gathering. I don't think we're going to do it like that anymore, but we're going to try and take a couple of days. Go to die because it's about four hours, I think from where we are, but take the team go and have a wander around and enjoy it.

So not in the pressure time of a launch event, go and wander around it and enjoy that, go and have some food. It will be a massive talking point and actually be able to go and see some of the exhibits that I didn't just, cause I was that busy. I know you find this hard to believe talking to loads of people.

It was hard to actually take in. I think a lot of the stuff that was there, I'd like to do it again in slower time.

[00:29:31] Nick Roome: Yeah. The thing that's interesting to me beyond the interaction piece of this whole thing is that what we do as a profession is, Goes largely unnoticed if it's done, right.

And so how do you document that and present that in such a way to the, where you put stuff on display, and that's just cool to me because it's an appreciation of the things that we got, and it's as a profession, the things that we have. Done correctly and and the sort of bringing that visibility to the invisible heroes that the unsung heroes of human factors and ergonomics.

And so I just, I really appreciate you sharing. And I think for anyone who's in the area or can make a trip out it sounds like definitely do it on my behalf and tell me all about it. Cause I would love to hear about

[00:30:21] Barry Kirby: it. Maybe if I do get to go, maybe we should live stream. a visit with you so you can tell us what you want to see and we take you to it through some sort of with like more an iPad or a phone or something.

And that could be an interesting way of doing it.

[00:30:37] Nick Roome: Remind me in the

[00:30:38] Barry Kirby: post

[00:30:38] Nick Roome: show, just make it like a little footnote in here that I need to tell you about a certain shot that we got from the conference that I was really proud of. All right. I think we're going to take a little break. And Thanks to our friends over at HFES Aspire and the Chartered Institute of Human Factors, Ergonomics and Human Factors in the UK for our stories this week.

We're also going to be talking about Google's Notebook LM in just a moment. We'll post all the links to all these in the description on, on, on this episode, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back to talk about the last news story right after this, if I can find the button, where'd it go?

Where did I put that button?

Yes. Huge. Thank you. As always, to all of our patrons, you truly do keep the lights on over here. I see you. Those of you who have kept subscribed through our drought appreciate you. Thank you for sticking out with us. We're back. All right. So let's talk about this last news story here that we have this one's about notebook L M.

AI on the show. And it's because the AI is rapidly changing. And we're at this point in time now where it's all, everyone's trying everything with AI, but I felt like this one was one of the ones that made it above that threshold for worth talking about because of what we do here. And so what notebook LM is, if you haven't heard about it, is it's the latest gen AI tool from Google.

And basically what it does is it helps manage it. You put all these different sources into it, and it helps you condense that information into some sort of easily understood. It's like a summarization tool. Okay, so you can imagine you put in all your school notes from school along with, some textbook chapters that you have PDFs of, maybe some papers that are augmenting that.

Okay. And then you, it'll summarize all the important pieces about it. You can chat with it, ask it questions about all that stuff. So what makes it different from chat GPT in that regard? It actually built to look through all of those documents in such a way that chat GPT is more generalized to it can actually push out.

Personalized guides like study guides or briefings. And here's the real interesting one, Barry, that I thought you might enjoy. It can actually take all that content and generate a podcast based on it. So I'm going to, we're going to try this live, actually. We'll do a live demo because this is we're risky and this is what we do.

But it'll be interesting. Cause I, I am curious on what we can. Truly test out here, but it, it'll also do things that I think chat GPT kind of fails to do where it'll actually grab the citations of where it found that point from and point to the piece of the source that you had actually uploaded to it.

So if, source, your notes or source, here's this paper that says this thing about it. And right now I think it's available as like an experimental preview. So again, we're going to, we're going to live demo this and we're going to see what it looks like, but Barry, give me I don't know, a topic that we could maybe Here's what I'm going to try.

I'm going to just see what it says about human factors cast. So let me see here. I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to go to a notebook LM here, and I'm going to share the tab audio because that'll be important. All right. So we have this thing up here. Let me get rid of some of the gunk. All right.

So I have a untitled notebook here, and I'm going to just call this human factors cast. And now you can come in here and look at the sources. I think, I don't know exactly. Oh, there you go. So you can add sources. So let's do colon slash www dot human cast media. All right. So now it is pulling in information about that website. And. You can see here that it is pulling in various things. But it. It also has this option here, deep dive conversation, and I'm going to see, I don't, this is completely live. This is, I have no idea what's going to pop up when I press this.

So just be aware. So it's generating that now, but you can also ask it questions about some of these things. I also wonder if, uh, let me do another thing here. I'm going to download these show notes and upload them as a PDF and see if it does anything else with that information here. Let's see if I can throw it in there.

No, there's our show notes. Everyone. I'm going to add a source here, take that show note, throw it in there. So you can see which you can see all the sources and it'll select which sources. I think it failed to generate because I'm adding stuff to it. So let's just retry one more time and we'll see what it actually comes back with, if it's somehow more entertaining than us, then we'll just stop talking right now.

And we'll. but I think the way there's been a couple of interviews with the person that with the CEO of this company who has talked a little bit about some of the the prompts that it's using for this podcasting piece, because it's actually, Heard a couple of samples and it's actually very convincing the way that they do this.

So I just really curious as to what's going to come back, but given all this Barry, what are your, your initial thoughts here?

[00:36:03] Barry Kirby: It's interesting, isn't it? Cause like you say, it, the initial question you ask is what's the difference between this and chat GPT, but this does seem to have. Certainly that element of being able to bring sources together, because ChachiPT's got, got limits in that respect.

And the ability to bring together a bunch of guides, standards, or whatever, and then be able to interrogate them with a decent focus around them seems to potentially be quite a useful thing. I do use Chatt PT in that way. So I think we've spoken before, ages ago around the way I did some interviews where I did some interviews through teams.

Got the transcriptions, took the transcriptions into Chatt PT and got it to do an initial rinse on on the themes I was look looking for. Now, if this will do, the way that this looks like it works, it could do a similar thing, but be a lot more concise and perhaps be a bit more secure as well.

So it looks like we have the test here.

[00:37:04] Nick Roome: Would you like to hear it? All right, here we go. Welcome back to the Deep Dive. This week, we're diving into a new story that feels like it's straight out of the future. Notebook LM. It's this AI tool from Google, designed to make working with information crazy efficient.

And I know you hear AI everywhere these days, but this is different. Imagine reading something complex and having an AI study buddy right there with you, able to analyze the text alongside you, pull out the important stuff, even create summaries or answer your questions. Okay, so it's pulling from our show notes that notebook LM stuff because we put in the So those two let's see if they talk about human factors cast at all

[00:37:42] AI Female: learned study guide just for you Highlighting you do which is powerful tool right and critical thinking that we can use it to challenge rules to enhance We're creating generating a research.

So we use this

[00:37:53] Nick Roome: right? Yeah. No, that's a whole other deep dive

[00:37:55] AI Female: exactly Yeah

[00:37:57] Nick Roome: Wow okay if our listeners, okay, so it did not do the thing that I wanted it to do which is talk about human factors cast. So let's let's see here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take out the show notes really quick and I am going to try to I'm going to try to delete this and we'll see if we can generate it one more time with here, I'm going to delete this source too, just in case.

And we'll generate and we'll see what comes up. I, there are some like materials that I could dig around and try to find. I should have those. Hang on maybe while it's going, I can search for some of those to see if we can augment it. Let's see, where do I store those things? Let's see here. I wonder. Okay. So it's failing to generate and let's see, hang on. I'm going to look at something.

Okay. Okay. I got something good. I got something good here. Let's see here. This is an article we put together a while ago. I don't think it was ever published, but I'm going to put it in there because it gives a background on the podcast digital media lab and what it's all about. So I'm going to see if it actually does its job here and pulls in.

Um, pulls in appropriately, because I would love for y'all to hear about the lab because this would be really great if they just sat here and talked about the digital media, but you can see some of the interesting things about that. Just very quick sample that we heard is that you could hear them talking over each other.

You heard them talking with natural I forget what they call them, but they're natural interjections like

[00:39:36] Barry Kirby: so the breasts and. I was gonna say they both had a more natural cadence than I would have given it credit for. Because it sounded, yes, you could tell that it was, it was artificially generated speech, but it's, it wasn't robotic speech.

It was, it felt more natural than you could probably listen to it without getting annoyed at the at the way it was working. So yeah, that's the, this whole audio generation idea I think is fascinating because certainly from a research perspective. So a lot of the work I guess I do is gathering together research papers and I never have time to truly sit down and read the mind.

I would say a lot of time I end up skimming them and pulling out the important ones. But there's I often think that there's probably nuggets that I'm missing because, you skim read and you quickly go, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And then go and do dive onto the, on the big one. This could be a way of.

Almost a second analysis way, pulling it all together and seeing if there's any nuggets, but, treating it like a, almost like a podcast, listening to it when you're driving in and it summarizes, I don't know, 10, 20 papers or something like that.

[00:40:52] Nick Roome: You can imagine this with anything. Like I'm thinking about this in terms of the stories that we put together, like a frequently asked questions.

Let's see here. What is the frequently asked questions say that it's generating right now? I wonder where's, how do I get back home? Where is it generating the, it's generating it right now. So there's the frequently asked questions. There's a study guide. Where did I go for that? Was it notebook guide briefing doc.

I'm just going to generate a couple of these right now. Oh, come on. Why are you doing this? Is it, am I asking too much of it right now? Yeah. So we'll start there. Here's a briefing doc deep dive, short answer quiz, instruction to answer the two to three sentences each. What is the primary mission of the human factors cast digital media lab?

What are the three core values that guide the team? So there's some stuff there and I'm wondering if, it'll pull it back. But this is definitely. Definitely cool. I'll tell you what I'll keep this up in the background and I'll bring it back when it comes back, because I think we, we got to get into our one more thing soon enough.

I do not know why it is having such a hard time generating. Maybe they just can't talk about the lab. Here's another one. Let

[00:41:57] Barry Kirby: me, but again, that whole thing about just basically pulling up some, being able to ask quiz questions. I know that is a absolutely key way that a lot of the school people, you know, students at school now where using this stuff to be able to do that and to be able to stuff that you're studying, just chuck it in there and say hit me, ask me random questions that, that would be a brilliant way to help or an easy way to, to generate study material.

I love that. Yeah,

[00:42:23] Nick Roome: here. I'm going to try it just with the article there without the podcast website and you could see here, it's already pulling in the summary of all human factors, cast a volunteer, run podcast that explores the intersection of human factors, science, and technology founded in 2016.

The podcast has grown significantly is now a global community of over. Is that right? Is that right? Wow.

[00:42:44] Barry Kirby: I

[00:42:44] Nick Roome: need to put I don't think that's quite right. I think that's listens and not listeners. I think that'd be quite the population if that was listeners. Yeah it's not coming back with audio conversation for this.

So that's interesting. I think what I'll try one more thing here, which is our proposal to HFES for live streaming from from there. And we'll see if it comes back or something. So once again, a live demo has failed us in that regard, but this is it's it's actually a true representation of the product.

So that's cool. Yes, I think so. But all right let's we're nearing the end of the show. So I'm going to keep this on in the background. If it comes back with something, maybe we can listen to it at the end of the show as a treat. But I think for now, let's go ahead and I'm going to cut this source and we'll come back to it in just a minute.

But let's get into this last part of the show that we simply like to call. One more thing. Yeah. There's no intro for it. I don't have, I remember I don't have an intro for it.

[00:43:47] Barry Kirby: Yeah, there it is. Okay. Barry, what is your one more thing this week? So my one more thing is all about these. What are those?

They're my glasses. And the reason I'm not wearing my glasses at the moment is because I don't need to work out how to wear them with headphones. Up until this point in my life, I've I've never really had to wear glasses at all. And went to get my eyes tested. Cause I was starting to do that thing where you have something in front of you.

So say it's a bit of paper, something like that. And you're like, okay, I can't quite read that. I need to do, can I read that? Oh, I can't read that. Oh my goodness. So I went and got my eyes tested and the lovely optician said your far vision is fine, but if you're reading stuff up close and stuff like that, then you would find it easier if you wore glasses.

And I'm like, okay. Fair enough. Okay. So got these glasses. So they took them what a week or so to produce. And I recently got into back into Pokemon go as you do. And. I put these glasses on. So I really, I only use them for short for work. A normally wear them in the afternoons when I'm a bit more tired, we should wear them all the time.

But it's there for reading, therefore computer work, therefore like scrolling your phone, that type of thing on your iPad. And the, my biggest moment with them so far was, I think it was, I got them, put them on, had that whole queasy feeling, I can't watch a telly with them because I have to look at the top of your glasses and stuff like that, got the Pokemon go app open.

And I suddenly realized that all the blades of grass have so much detail in them. And so then I was like picking up my my Kindle my Kindle Paperwhite. And the fonts are so sharp. And it's the sort of thing that I didn't realize that necessarily how much I was just living with it, compensating and things like that.

The, as soon as you put your glasses on, you're like going, wow. Like now, I'm perfectly fine in reading. I can read everything that's there. Cause the squeeze, you can size them and all that sort of stuff. But then when you put your glasses on, you realize that a lot of the stuff is a lot of the icons and the the symbology is way sharper than you give it credit for.

So that, that's been a revelation. The problem with it has been, I've only got one pair of glasses. And if I'm, if you take them on and off all the time, a, they're going to get broken, but B when you forget them, I'm now going to need to get a pair for the office and we'll need to get set for this studio where I'm at the moment, we need to get set for the house.

Thankfully I don't need them when driving. So that's, so I don't need that, but yeah, there seems to be a whole logistics issue here of having to keep these things around you all the time. And they're quite bulky, the case is quite a decent. So I don't know how to do all that. I know you've been wearing glasses for an awfully long time.

You're wearing them like a pro. I'm clearly in, in the amateur league, and having to learn how to make sure I do this thing properly.

[00:46:33] Nick Roome: It's funny because there's, there are the things, there's these things called bifocals. And what you could do is just wear them all the time and look through the top.

And see far away with no correction. And then when you're looking at things up close, you just, you look down the bottom and boom, there's a correction. It takes a little bit of getting used to from what I hear, but then you could just wear them all the time and never have to be like, put them on, put them off, put them on, put them off.

You could just get upset at bifocals where it breaks it right in the middle. But I commented jokingly on your post about it saying, now HD, my friend. And just like you described, it's yes, I. I distinctly remember when I was like 10 years old and I got my first pair of glasses and I put them on and I said, you're telling me that grass, you can see each individual blade when you put these things on what?

And now my vision is just so bad. I can't even, I can't even see, I can't even see what's in front of me. My, my nearsightedness is fine. I'm the opposite of you. Like I can read this close. That's fine. No problem. But even my screen in front of me. I can't read you any show notes here because it's all just a blur.

So yes, glasses, lifesaver. Anyway, that's enough about

[00:47:48] Barry Kirby: me, Nick, what about you? What's your one more thing?

[00:47:50] Nick Roome: Oh, what did I put? Oh, I put great to be back. So wrapping up the thing that I touched on a little earlier, it is great to be back in the podcasting. Seat. I think there have been there have been a lot of notes of encouragement from folks to say, get back in the game, do the thing.

And I do have to say that I have been looking at the Entirety of this process to basically try to identify what is the least amount of effort that will sustain the show at the same at the same level of completedness or quality that we've done in the past, or I guess in a reflection of this episode here, cause I would assume that this is at that same level.

What can we do to make sure that happens and, um, there's a lot that I'm looking at behind the scenes. I do have to say it's a little bit hard to get started again, but as I'm like looking at this stuff, I'm like, Oh yeah, I did. I did do all that. Okay. Yeah. No. Okay. So that, what truly needs to change from this thing to where it's at now.

And I think a lot of what I've been doing to date. Just in the last couple of weeks has been stripping out the crap what don't we need? Because if you remember what I would consider the the peak right before HFES 23. We had a lot of different things going on. That was automation.

We had a lot of different things going on that were helped facilitating some of those easy things. Managing that process actually in hindsight was a lot more difficult. And so right now I'm looking at how can we go back to basics and build upon those basics to where it's a foolproof thing. So just know that I'm looking at that.

And if you want to help, we have a human factors cast digital media lab opening the doors there. And truly looking for folks who want to be involved and have the time to be involved. If you don't have the time to be involved, that's been a barrier in the past. So if you're able to and are willing to.

Give your time to the podcast. That is what I'm looking for right now. So please reach out to us if that's something that you want to do. And we'll work closely together to find something that we can get you working on. And that's my one more thing this week, a little bit of a plug, a little bit of a insight into what I've been working on.

A multi tool. A multi

[00:50:27] Barry Kirby: tool.

[00:50:28] Nick Roome: A multi tool. All right. And then that's it for today, everyone. If you liked this episode and enjoy some of our discussion around conferences and AI you know what? I'll encourage you to go watch our live stream on HFES Aspire 2024, or check out our Either of the two episodes we have out there right now, we will be uploading more over time.

So go check that out. Comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the stories this week. Are you glad we're back into this format? Are you disappointed in us? Is there something we can do better? Just let us know. For more in depth discussion, you can always join us on our discord community.

That's also a great place to get in touch with me or Barry. If you want to get to be involved with part of the lab visit our official website, sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news, if you like what you hear, you want to support the show. There's a few things you can do.

One. Wherever you're at right now, just leave us a five star review whatever platform it is. That'll always help to tell your friends about us. That costs nothing for you to do. It has a huge impact that is immeasurable in a lot of ways. Three, if you have the financial means to, and you want to support us in that way, to make sure that we have great equipment going into HFES Aspire 2025, you can always support us on Patreon.

As always links to all of our socials and our website are in the description of this episode, Mr. Barry Kirby, thank you for holding down the fort with me and talking about all this fun stuff. Where can our listeners go and find you if they want to talk about

[00:51:52] Barry Kirby: think human. So if you want to come chat about that, you can find me on most socials.

Interesting. Cause we do have X listed down here and I'm not as active on X as I used to be. Cause I'm not liking the way that it's going. I know, we'll do politics in the post show. The, but fundamentally, if you want to hear about fantastic people in the human factors domain interviews with them, their thoughts, their, how they got into human factors and what they currently do.

Find me on 12 or two, the human factors podcast at 1202 podcast. com.

[00:52:19] 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 underscore Rome. Thanks again for tuning into human factors cast. Of course. It's great to be back until next time.