Human Factors Cast E006 - Design

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human factors cast episode six we've neglected design so let's cover it

welcome to human factors cast your weekly podcast for all things human factors psychology and design here are your hosts nick Rome and Billy Hall hello everyone and welcome to human factors cast episode 6 Billy we're on Episode six already I am surprised you haven't killed me yet this has got to be the favorite episode right because you know what else is the favorite episode six ah Return of the Jedi oh you got me there you got me there okay well I was thinking there for a sec you were gonna say Empire which would have been totally acceptable because there in my book tide I like I like both of them and say what you want about me walks hey you know what I really kind of dug Ewoks I found out though that they never actually said the name Ewok so they do and here okay so we're not gonna have any Ewoks in this show but anyway you're listening to Nick Rome Agricola all hi you're Billy Billy host co-host a crow and today we're gonna be talking about design yeah because I mean you know in the intro you hear human factors psychology and as on yeah and we've covered human factors we've covered a bit of psychology yeah yeah yeah you know we've covered a bit of design but I feel like you know we owe it to it always feels like design is like the toppings on this pizza that we have like you could either cheese pizza but but it's not nearly as good without the pepperoni sauce mushroom yeah yeah that's what I'm saying that's that's the design part yes I completely agree and you know what we have some exciting news Billy what's the exciting news you know by the time this show goes live we should be up on a ton of podcast directories yes and on YouTube yeah yeah so now I'm pretty sure you can find us on iTunes we're on the Google Play Store for sure we're on soundcloud mm-hmm stitcher tuned in Spreaker blueberry and player FM that is a lot of places I mean it's gonna be really easy for people to find our podcast which is great because we'll be reaching more people around the world I completely agree and you know what if we've missed one I I thought it was pretty thorough but we may have missed one and I know there are a ton of apps that will find these things for you like podcast attic I love podcast attic there's a ton of them out there but you know if we if we missed a distribution service please let us know we'll try to get it up there ASAP so you can listen to us through your favorite medium we need your help spreading the word of human factors cast so you know it's all about that word of mouth let your friends know about us and and you know what once we're out on iTunes please leave us a good review let everyone know you know how how you feel about us yeah tell us what you think also because this show evolves around you yeah you know the show is really about you guys on what you want to hear obviously we'll provide some content and kind of shape it but we we try to be truly interactive with you guys um so so please let us know what you want to hear but anyway Billy our topic today it is designed you know we talked about it before but I've always been really curious about the design aspect you know like you said it's in our intro and we've covered it briefly but it's just it's the toppings on the larger piece right right and but we need to incorporate elements of design and we haven't talked about it enough know today's topic is design design what do you know about design well I mean like I know graphical design you know making pretty pictures I know about interior design you know putting out nice curtains but and then compete and then website design you know putting up a nice website making it look pretty and appealing to the people but how is a big thing right yeah so so designs are really important for like really important process in any any piece of any system any product anything it's your modern-day storefront it is and and you know what's interesting too is is design can be driven by a lot of things a design can be driven by the requirements for a project like it must do this this and this and those are the only things you have to design a product can be or the design of something can be shaped by even even something as you know even it's something no I don't want to say is simple but let me try a guess here just you know tell me if I'm right or wrong on this like for example I go to a lot of like form boards things like that things like that right okay and a lot of people like to use dark black some colors on and I feel that that's a bad design choice you know things like that is that kind of the idea of like at least for like web addresses and things like that I'm kind of getting to that I'm what I was trying to say earlier was I feel like design can be driven by the need to look good uh-huh but you know there's not always this marriage of looking good and functionality uh-huh right sometimes something can look great on the screen but it could operate like like trash right right that doesn't it doesn't work but it looks pretty Yeah right and so you know all these things are sort of go into design and and design can even be driven by the user requirements and that's that's what a human factors practitioner would do or somebody who engages in UX or user research they are typically helping aiding the design by you know determining what kind of requirements the user has but we'll get into that later okay okay all right but let's start at the beginning like break it down what is design at its basic level right design is any sort of plan mm-hmm right or or mock-up or idea basically to show kind of what the finished product might look like or how it might function or how something works within the thing right but and this is all before it's made so all this stuff it's kind of the planning of you know how something in the end would look okay so websites apps a way of controller or cell phone looks right well yeah the design part of it would be you know drawing what the cell phone looks like or mocking up what a website might look like mmm-hmm before you actually go out and code it up okay you talked about the idea of like engineering what is the design process in engineering so there's this kind of cyclical process which which people who design these systems go through and basically what they do is they go through and identify what needs and what constraints they're working with right so this is this is what I was talking about with the requirements right so like what does this thing need to do what am i limited by am i limited by a budget almost always am i limited by you know the technology that's that's around it almost always am i limited by the circuitry within it you know the electronic component like what am i limited by so you first need to sort of identify what you're working with right you need to get all your materials together and say okay this is what I have right and this is what it needs to do so the means yes you got it so then what you need to do is you need to go in and sort of take a look at what the problem is sort of with everything as a whole like what's what's the problem with how they do it now what's the problem with you know putting these things together in such a way that's gonna make it easy for this person to use you got it you got to research what problems people are having with the current design and why you're designing another solution so like so is that what you do as a scientist you research and research and find the problems or how to make things better yeah well get into human centered design a little bit later but that is basically their bread and butter okay okay so yeah we've worked closely with designers but again we'll get into that a little later so after they research the problem all right you need to sort of id8 and this is this is a fancy word for saying you need to generate ideas did you make that word up no it's a real word oh I swear okay okay you basically need to sort of develop different solutions to this problem right you research the problem mm-hmm first off you you understood what your needs were and then you researched your needs and what constraints you're working with and then you've researched the problem and now what you're doing is you're developing possible solutions based off those needs based off what problem you need to solve mmm right see it's it's like adding another layer to this pizza yeah there you go I'm bringing it back you need to add another layer to this every time okay so after you've developed these solutions what you need to do is is kind of plan out how you're gonna reach these solutions using the constraints and the needs that you need to meet right using that information that you researched so once you've made a plan of action mm-hmm then you go and build a prototype now this is like a very early version of whatever the final product is and the idea what the prototype is that it's functional enough to test whether or not it'll work properly okay okay okay so so again you've got the needs and constraints you went and research the problem then you developed a solution you go and make a plan for that solution then you build a prototype off of that plan right now you're gonna test that prototype uh-huh you're gonna go and test it and to see if it works right right right make sure this thing works fine fine jill and joe and ran a cue random or cue public and and test it out on them see what they think about it get the feedback you can you can do that and that's advised that's called usability testing we'll cover that later not everyone does that okay sometimes the developer goes I know how this works and this is a very dangerous trap and this is part of the reason why we do this show is to let our listeners know that if you are developing something don't test it yourself because you know how this thing should work and you know how you know if you press the sequence of buttons that's how you get there but if you're developing this thing for other people let them test it we'll get into that later it might be intuitive to you right exactly because you built it you know what's going on Oh so yeah you test it right either with yourself which is not advised or with actual people who might use the thing right so then after you've tested it you kind of evaluate what the results were right like oh that did not work as intended or you know this button did something way weird so what you do is you sort of redesign mm-hmm right and and kind of fix those solutions and then go all the way back to the beginning and sort of all right does this meet my needs and constraints and then you know do I need to research more basically it's it's called iterative design where you keep going back through this process and you keep going through it and say look here's a problem I tested it it didn't work as I thought so I'm gonna go back fix it and then retest it again and it just keeps going through this cycle so just kind of like creative writing or or the idea of like a first draft second draft third draft type of thing you go through there you keep perfecting it you might perfect the glaring errors but it might not work or it might just be too long or too wordy or things like that same right the idea of creating something yeah you got it okay okay okay so what do you think what do you think the developers of no man's sky were thinking when they went through and hired a bunch of QA testers the day after that thing went live they had they did that after the fact they did it after the thing I think it was the idea that maybe they only got a certain amount of money I bet they were exhausted and tired I mean they were working long into the night that was one of their constraints yeah there you go right what did you think of no man's sky it's the best thing I ever played really yeah it's one of the best things I've ever you're that crazy about it I love it I I think it's mostly because of the fact that I don't own a computer so maybe I haven't been able to get used to the idea of a MMO type of world or things like that but the idea of exploring being an actual Explorer having to deal with actual things like that it's pretty amazing you dig it man my predictions last week we're way off you think yeah well I was saying like there's rating in the center of the galaxy and then you know we're gonna find each other but that's clearly we don't know we don't know what's in the yeah no one's gotten there yet yeah they have there's a couple people who are I'm not gonna spoil it for our listeners but there's a couple people who have gotten there really yeah oh that's pretty insane dance Deb they showed yeah I'm aware of what's at the center I don't want to know I know you don't I'm really it's I'm more excited to help okay I swear if it's a monkey on a unicycle at this point I don't care it's not that it's not anyway I'm kind of lukewarm to it now I'm just going through to get the trophies at this point but you know a year from now it might be a totally different game yeah minecraft when it started out was pretty much just stacking blocks on top of things yeah minecraft a totally different game than it was in the beta no definitely all right let's bring it back to design all right all right so when making a product where does the design process come in well so this process that I just described right the you know all those steps right that we just went through that kind of plays in throughout the entire thing and one thing you want to do is you want to make sure you do heavy design towards the beginning of a project especially with human centered design and again we'll talk about that in a bit but yeah the design process should be happening throughout the thing mm-hmm you should always be revisiting like is this working yes or no do I need to change things do I need to go through and edit you know and and the life cycle of the development of a product can be from days where hours even in a hackathon yeah to two years right and and you need to incorporate design in all steps of it so never done the planning stages of what we're going to do especially in the planning stages that is where it is most crucial there's there's a whole bunch of politics with return of investments that I won't get I won't get into that that's that's that's a whole different type of podcast I don't even want to talk about that on the pause like that's not even our podcast any other podcast it's a it's a challenge that a lot of UX people deal with is like we can have stroke with that briefly when we were talking a little bit about UX design well okay so I'm gonna mention it briefly okay I go into this just so that the listeners know what we're talking about so there's there's - there's this thing called return on investment right and a lot of companies and they're getting better now but a lot of companies don't really see the value of getting involved with design before the thing is even conceptualized but the truth of the matter is you have the most impact on the success of the product if you look at what kind of needs and getting any human Center design again but if you if you identify what your product needs to do before it actually comes out right and that sounds really simple but actually incorporating the human element is what a lot of companies have problems with or had problems with I like I said they're getting better but proving this like if you spend money on me to do this it's gonna be worth your time it's really hard to do because how do you how do you measure that yeah you don't know if this projects gonna be a huge success for a big flop type of thing well even if it is like how can you attribute that to the person who researched at the beginning like it's a big problem for UX people and so that's that's basically what I'm talking about but let's let's I want it okay look we've mentioned it time and time again but I want to talk about what this Center Center design thing is what is that you know and and how does it differ from regular design because we keep touching on it and I keep mentioning you kept saying though that's this you know yeah and you as a human factors practitioner this is this is what you do right yes yeah so human centered design is exactly what it sounds like right you design around a person you design around the needs of that person mm-hmm and it sounds simple but there's a lot of things that go into right and what makes this different from regular design is if you're just using the constraints and the needs to make it make a design you can design around that right but it won't necessarily fit to the human okay what you're saying i I'm kind of getting this okay so for example let say you build a cellphone alright alright we always use cell phones in our podcast yeah ok so let's say for example you build a cell phone and I'm talking about like one of the 1990s cell phones or I guess flip phones Nokia phones things like that no I don't know let's go back even further let's go 1960s cell phone Wow yeah handheld right landline but brick okay if you were a designer uh-huh that did not take into account human centered design aha let's say you made a product where the microphone hung down to you know where your stomach is right we're like okay let's just say for example like let's say the technology wouldn't allow it uh-huh to where you know like you had to have this long of a cable to do this thing right so the microphone would hang down by your stomach and the earpiece would be up by your ear okay that's not designed to the human because that's designed to the elephant exactly you have to talk way down and then move it and then you know and you kind of saw this with the old 80 cellphones when they were really bulky and right they looked like the the ones you always see in like army movies and something exactly and that's a matter because they couldn't fit everything have the technology that it wasn't you know compact enough like it is now for them to be able to stick everything close enough together so that the mouthpiece is right by you know the mouth and the ear pieces right by the ear so it was driven by the requirements and and and the constraints mm-hmm of the technology of the time right that's why they looked all coiled up and huge right okay yeah yeah so I mean this this difference again it's hard to quantify because it's you can't when it works well you don't notice it that's the problem mm-hmm when something works well you expect it to work well so let's say I have Billy's fantastic machine here okay Billy's fantastic machine I have been working on building Billy's fantastic machine I tended to you write a person who is a human factors practitioner and your team right of human factor practitioners and I was like does this Billy's fantastic machine right and you would then do what that's a good question so so to include basically what I would do is I would include the user in the design right so this is actually what happens a lot of the time is people have created this product and they realize oh no it doesn't you know work our users are saying this is not as great as we thought it was uh-huh it happens more often than you think so that's when people come to us at my company and and they say all right help us out with this like what what can we do right this is this is what we have please please help us out with this and so so basically what we do then at that point is we kind of incorporate the user into the design so you know and and there's there's there's a lot of ways there's a lot of different methods that you can include the user in the design right so you can do things like observation you can watch the user interact with this product right you can have them think aloud which is exactly what it sounds like you know as you use this product think aloud say out loud what you're thinking so that way I know what's going through your head as you use this product alright and that gives you insights on what to fix right you can also do things like interviews where you sit down with them and say like you just went here and did this with our thing you could do those kind of interviews or you could do the ones that kind of rework the entire problem right like sit down and say okay what are your needs what are your goals what what kind of what did you use our product for what yeah what kind of things do you need to produce from this product uh-huh right and and you know and just kind of revisit the problem from step one and sometimes it's better to just scrap an idea and start from square one if it's built from the ground up like you know assuming that you have time and resources to do this mm-hmm right if you start from from the ground up you're much more likely to get a system or a product that's tailored to what the user needs right so so that's another thing you can do is you can sit there and interview them and say all right you know what is it exactly that you need to do what is it that you're trying to do and what do you need at the end of the day to walk home with okay okay okay you can also do surveys to kind of figure out like what your target demographic is right like what's your age what your gender you know how do you use similar products this is how they people do like product testing or or a market research type of thing yeah a lot of market research uses surveys you can also use a surveys like after something's done so like there's this thing called the system usability scale but um which is it's it's a pretty thing we've mentioned it before I'm not sure if we have but it's a quick and dirty sort of way of measuring like how effective a product is in terms of usability and so it's just like a 10 item survey that you know you ask people like how cumbersome was this how you know did I feel like I need the technical assistance of somebody to help me out with this so it's not like the heuristic scale that we use when we make things like that a little bit but it's a little bit it's towards it's more geared towards the usability okay yeah yeah it's kind of asking the user and and the great thing about this is it's it's not heuristics it's just what do you as the user think about this thing like is it usable basically and that's what you're trying to derive from that survey now from surveys and interviews you can basically come up with these flowcharts that kind of go through the process of how a user might attack a certain task or or a goal they might have right and and you can lay it out and kind of go through the flow of how a user might interact well you can do it with like how they currently interact with something or how they might interact with something in the future basically you just map out these flowcharts that kind of explain you know this is kind of just gather up all the data together to come up with a larger picture of we'll what needs to be and what could be that's a great way of putting it yeah yeah exactly yeah you got it all right all right there are other methods too there's a ton of methods that the scientists use to to to help out with this right and and you know not all of it is user based you can you can even do some modeling uh-huh or simulation right so you can say like it takes the average human 0.5 seconds to hit a key I don't think that's right I think it's actually quickly right to hit a key on a keyboard right and they need to hit 20 keys to accomplish this task and then click a mouse and move it this far mm-hmm you can model that right you can say like look here's here's the way they do it now and it takes 20 seconds to do here's the proposed way and it takes 10 seconds to do that's a 50% thing and you can just do this both through computers well you can do it with anything right you all you have to know is like how how far do they have to go what's the moving speed and you know what what kind of it gets tricky when you have to estimate like how long do they have to think about something right that's that's when it gets tricky right you gotta take the average it seems like yeah and you can still model it out right so there's different ways of doing that so and then I mentioned earlier prototyping mm-hmm all right so this is this is a prototyping is pretty standard in the design process but the way human-centered design uses prototyping is a little different so they it's not much different but they they kind of just bust them out they don't really focus on the fidelity of the prototype like when you think of prototype you think of something that's actually working right you can you can have a prototype with paper right like here's my interface with sticky notes right how would you expect this to work well I would click on this button over here oh okay so kind of like if they put it on to a binder it's like all right if you go here do you know it's like actually look at choose-your-own-adventure exactly yeah you got it you make a choose your own adventure story for the user to do and it still gives you you know insight as to where they will go on this paper or on this you know on the actual interface once but the beauty of this is that you don't use valuable resources in man-hours and licensing you're literally just cutting out pieces of paper and the great thing is like if they say well you know what I would like that better if it was over here guess what you it's a sticky note so you can pick it up and put it over there and say okay now how does that feel oh okay kind of like in all those old eighties sitcoms when they learn how to drive they use like a couple of cans for the gas and the brake and things like that and they move it around to try to make it feel like a car without actually going to the car yeah okay yeah yeah all right so you mentioned usability testing yeah so usability testing is when you basically take a user through the prototype right and huh and this is basically where we're just talking about right you have the user say I'd perform a task alright and these are the tasks that you've written up in the flows or you know the tests that you're expecting them do mm-hmm you have them sit there and you basically go through this task with them and say alright where are your trouble spots where you know where are your pain points where are the places where you're having trouble mm-hm and you can you can you know ask them questions during it this is where you would do all the things that we just talked about this is where you would observe this is where you would have them do a think aloud right this is where you sort of interview them afterwards and ask them how they thought you know the the thing was going you know this is this is basically where everything comes together mm-hmm and based on this usability test you basically can can sort of gather these tasks performance metrics right so how well do they complete this task and some of those would be like how long did it take them to complete the task right we talked about that with modeling and simulation but this is actual user data right how long does it take this user to get from point A to point B uh-huh right you can also measure things like completion rates how long it takes them like we were well that's that's that's time on task but come okay completion rates would be did they finish it or not were they able to complete the task mmm right you know like 80% of the people were able to do it that's is that good it depends on what you're trying to do all right and the difficulty of it depends it always depends on human factors caste and in real life it always depends there's never a cut and dry answer to anything it all depends on a certain a certain point of view did you see the rogue one trailer yeah yeah yeah yeah I was kind of floored by it floored you were too big like in a good way or a bad way well because I was a little worried about it you were worried about rogue one yeah I wanted worried about it I wanted I wanted Saving Private Ryan okay and when I saw the first trailer it just seemed like another Star Wars Episode okay which is fine which I would have fun about but I was a little disappointed because I wanted like you know the average you know rebel soldier versus the average stormtrooper going for an objective or maybe a bunch of boffins which I thought were giant black fire looking creatures there's okay so Bothans have been represented in a variety of different ways throughout the old expanding universe which is now legends uh-huh but yeah anyway so you liked the trailer I liked it I it brought me back to the idea of what it's going to be which is a military epic I want a military epic for that show I want a military and you think it's gonna happen I think I'm starting to believe it more and more I still think it's more gonna be like the Dirty Dozen which is great for me or inglorious basterds was that's something on those lines ya know it looks great and so I actually recorded a reaction video and if any of our listeners want to see my beautiful face it's a beautiful face remind me in a second Billy to to talk about something that we did before the show today that I want everybody to know about but okay so I did a reaction video if you guys want to see this reaction video to the new rogue one trailer you can check out my youtube channel Nick our that's ni c kar 1 2 4 uh-huh so I posted this reaction video I was I was we excited for this I am so excited I can barely started by doors all the time I love Star Wars we had to start wars reference at the beginning of this episode six rogue ones gonna be awesome I'd really like to go back and listen to all the podcast and see if there was ever a podcast that we didn't have a Star Wars but first - remember I said I can't believe we're the third one in we have ha ha ha and you're right absolutely you're right uh-huh yeah all right so yeah uh to get back on that thing I wanted to plug so before the show today we actually did this really cool thing where we hung out on Facebook right yeah we we hung out on Facebook and said hi to some of our listeners was really awesome it was you know I was I was sitting around a little bit for waiting for Billy to show up so you'll just see me for a little bit but that's okay bye towards the end there yeah I mean he comes through by California traffic 45 minutes long and I didn't even realize it was that long we were just hanging out yeah it was great so I mean we're just hanging out with you guys and and it's a great chance for us to all interact so please next week just look out for it like we said in the cast this week you know it it really kind of depends on the day that we're available but keep keep an eye out you know whenever you see us active on Facebook that's a good tell you've been always like our Facebook page and get a notifier and it'll notify you when we go live absolutely yeah we went live so yeah yeah we said hi it was really fun and I think I think we'll do it every week be just a good way you can hang out with us not to mention the fact that if you can't like say for example you're in the middle work you we always save these things our face yeah yeah we're watching go check it out on Facebook mm-hmm so uh where were we test performance metrics so okay so we went over time on task and completion rates right right the last one would be well not the last one but one of the other major ones that I typically collect is like measures of efficiency right and this would be like how many errors did they make while going through this task so so all that to say there's a variety of different ways that you can basically include the user into the design process right they're not designing it themselves but their input is invaluable to you in how you sort of go the process of design and sort of incorporate what you know and how you research the problem and and you know develop it based on the user needs uh-huh okay that's that's ultimately what makes a great product is is you know if it like I said earlier if it works great you hardly realize that it's it's doing its job because it's doing it it was kind of like the idea of like yeah you when you give it to somebody to actually look at to check out to see if they can do it right you go and you hand them the thing and it's like okay they hit the wrong button there or they would won't go back when they intended to go forward and you keep all that data of how does it work how does it do things like yeah you got it yeah exactly that that's exactly what we do and we make yeah that's that's at the base right and then we do it's so weird when people do that especially like things in video games it seems like because like actually you know the lower button was always the button to jump and sometimes people put it as like another button or or or like a prince in no man's sky why is that on the right sick is weirdest thing in the world isn't it it takes me so different to or the idea that boost is is square and send a circle that's so weird to me cuz I keep trying to land when I trying to boost yeah so that would that would go into the idea of completion rates right I mean time on task what would the idea of like how it mapping goes and things like that that would be more of measures of efficiency right are they able to do this okay yeah yeah yeah okay because they are they're able to do this without creating errors right all right what are you learning I'm learning this I get this now exactly yeah with you if you you probably make a lot of errors and that's not your fault that's not your fault Wow way to throw me in there and bust me I feel stupid it's not your fault yeah look it's it's the Devore does it depend

we're really milking this it so it is the developers fault in some sense for not playtesting that enough and saying oh look a lot of our players are pressing circle demand and or just circle the boost instead of immense or whatever whatever yeah whatever and whatever you said yeah and you know if they looked at that and said okay wow a lot of our users are doing that then we should probably make it that way mm-hmm that's so yeah that's that's all usability testing and so what we do on top of that is basically incorporate that all into the next iteration of the design mmm and I'm really simplifying it there and it's hard for me to detach myself and say like you know we take a lot of time and care and and put thought into where you know these buttons go and wear what visual systems are being used in the product and it's I'm really simplifying this you're right well yeah I mean we know the problem with our podcast is also the fact that we talk about these things we go over these details and we try to get into a much detail and research as we can Billy I'm gonna stop you there because you said the problem with this podcast there is no problem oh I guess right you're right but the shortcoming is that we there is no shortcoming at the goal the goal of this podcast is to kind of break this down and into its most simple form and let everybody kind of be aware of this and know that these things exist and to think about it when you're it's like a delicious box of chocolates we just never little pieces here and there and then we like oh my gosh I love these caramel filled ones and then you get a whole box of them yeah and I mean we'll get into the caramel episode later all right look like we're nibbling the caramel right now yeah we'll do a whole episode on on tascam test performance metrics I love that I'm excited about somewhere down the line I get excited about pretty much anything but I'm always excited about things on this podcast I'm always excited about tests performance metrics party yeah he doesn't pay me or nothing no I'm kidding man III I do get excited no I'm legit man dude we've movements in for a long time I mean you know we're in six episodes you know and we've talked about things some people would find really Drive but the problem but the great thing about it is is that you make these things accessible and entertaining like I enjoy my time no I really do enjoy my time doing this like some people might sit here like tasks time on task or metrics of performance and be like wow that just sounds dull but no these things are actually really interesting because they fit in to every aspect of our daily alive they do and it's things we don't think about but it's amazing it's kind of like a li ck one set it's like we're not impressed that there are is a big giant two-ton hunk of metal that flying through the sky you know the sky we are breaking the laws of an planet flying but people are upset about the packs of peanuts yeah you know that's the thing I'm excited about the fact that we are rocketing through the sky right now a design right and and that's the thing too is like like I said like two or three times already if it's working properly you don't notice it exactly you are an unsung hero of modern technology oh thanks man mm-hmm no all I'm saying is that that work does go into this and that's what we're trying to bring awareness to yeah I think so too but awareness to it what are the benefits rather including a user well I mean we kind of covered this but the the benefit obviously and this goes back to return on investment but basically if you include the user you will end up with a product that is tailored to their specific needs uh-huh for the task that you're hoping to accomplish or that they're hoping to accomplish right and so yeah if you keep all this in mind it's it's just gonna be a better product all around for them but everybody should keep this in mind even big companies hire huge teams but if you're just working on your own with your own little invention website or anything if you're an indie dev working on a game if you're an app developer working in Silicon Valley you know seed money from your parents then like keep these things in mind like I'm I'm not being derogatory at all toward anybody I'm just saying if you're doing this stuff just try to keep this in mind and your product will be leaps and bounds better because you have huge developers those huge developers that you're talking about they may have someone tapping on their shoulder saying hold on a minute you might not have that opportunity but you're right really hard to make the best product you can if you're freelance if ya if you're if you're by yourself like this is this is the best time to kind of take into these things into account because you can be so wrapped up like I said earlier with the design of something that when you make a prototype you know how it works and if you test it of course it'll come off great user testing because it's you and you know how that thing works but the second you show that to somebody else they might not know they might not get it in the right or they might see through something you didn't even see coming right you know I mean that's just and and and that's that's such an important thing that's overlooked and it's best intentions you know I know this works I believe in what I'm doing but no one's to stop you and be like you forgot to put this there or you put everything on the left side but most people are right-handed you know it's yeah yeah exactly exactly stuff like that and you know it like I said it can be used anywhere and I bet you I I I don't know for a fact with this but I bet you it could even work in like entertainment so obviously it works in video games because it's interactive I bet you it could work in like TV and movies too have you seen stranger things yet yeah I thought you told me to watch it and I I've been sitting watching the episodes it's really great I'm really happy that the three synth players that exist in our world have gotten a lot of work in that TV show they did it's really creepy not to mention that I can look at all the little nerd games and boards and old second edition D&D stuff they have there and I look at it and I'm like I know that thing I know that thing oh my gosh I've always wanted that thing plays on your childhood plays I'm really excited as they focus on the demagogue I mean you don't get it you don't get it I but I get it the demo Gorgon was the scariest thing on two legs or four if you if it was charging we should do a D&D game like a D&D episode I would love to do something along those lines maybe I would talk about how you would have liked I would love to be able to present you with a thing with a thing with a thing like here's the thing if you could be like look at how they did this so look how they did that or maybe like what kind of put your scientific mind to how would we do it like if someone presented to you with like a project you know what I just got an excellent idea ah we should have our listeners send us in a board game oh that would be awesome it could be anything from like it can be like a ten dollar board game like chutes and ladders or something you even made yourself or you could send us your apps yeah or your websites yes we you know I would look over that just send it to us we'll review it we're kind of short on things to review just because we've been talking about some really heavy stuff yeah we've been getting through we've been getting through the good stuff we have then so that more people can be informed when we go into reviews right right exactly yeah we we kind of put reviews on the back burner but I think we're gonna start bringing it back so if you guys have anything you want it to review let us know just like we were talking about earlier when we were talking about the idea of design you know you might believe in this project and it still might be an amazing awesome thing but some but but Nick is one of those people he is one of those human factors practitioners who could tap you on the shoulder and say hey you might want to consider this you might want to think about that and that's expensive in the real world I would imagine that's it's pretty pricey yeah it's pretty pricey you should see the Tesla he drives no I'm lighting okay someday alright so anyway no review today but this is the part of the show where we take questions from you guys our listeners Billy our question today Samantha writes you guys are awesome and make my week Wow Samantha that's right wow that's that's a pretty generous that's pretty general we make her week Wow have you heard the Nerdist podcast No you're one of my new favorite podcast are you guys going to HF es this year and if so are you presenting anything that I can come and see what is i shortened it to no because I don't even know within hf e asses and if you kidnapped me again Keys gonna have a problem with that I'm not gonna kid I think it's good that you don't know what H FES is because if I read this question I'd be like yeah of course I'm going ba ba ba and to our listeners that might make no sense at all so yes HF es that is human factors and ergonomics society and I'm guessing by it sounds fancy like you're all meeting like mad science is all meeting together in your fortress of doom you know you know what that's almost exactly what it is it's a bunch of human factors practitioners yeah human factor scientists psychology scientists all meeting in one building sharing their ideas and taking over the world and taking over well this year it's in Washington DC so we're starting in DC and that'll eventually spread wow that's going straight for that brass ring there huh last year it was in Los Angeles but yeah so so H FES it's it's basically we're yeah all these scientists get together and share their ideas and and there's a poster presentations where it's basically the academic version of you know when you were in high school or middle school and you did those threefold oh my god Jerry's me about you guys are gonna have a science fair basically hi I'm so cute I hate the greatest to that level but that's exactly what we're doing and you know the ideas on these posters are so sometimes can be so you know fundamental to the way that we conduct research in the way that we do these methods and our jobs that this this is a great opportunity for professionals to generate a lot of ideas and for professionals to network with each other mm-hm and so like I met up with probably LinkedIn account probably went up by like 20 30 people last year because of its like MySpace back he's in there you're rubbing elbows with the human factor early yeah well it's like MySpace back in the early 2000s you know oh I barely know you let's be friends on MySpace and so this is the LinkedIn is like that now so human factors elite society yeah what it sounds like is either that Samantha is either a graduate student or she's a scientist as well asking if we're going the short answer is Billy's not going because it's it's way too expensive and honestly I really don't like being the dumbest person in a room Billy you're learning so much that by the end of this podcast in like 20 years you will have you will think they're gonna give me an honorary degree in human typing practice or me maybe who knows it's like what's your job experience I heard a really smart guy for like 20 years talk about this stuff just you know we kind of just glanced over it's doesn't talked about Star Wars a bunch but really there was some meat to those conversations real meat so so yes I am going I will be there and if you see me please say hi I don't bite and really friendly love to get to know you have a conversation but I'm not presenting anything I'm mostly going there in a network and kind of to develop professionally so and and when you guys are all hanging out outside the professional thing you might be dropping a podcast maybe

you know I don't know cuz I'll be gone that week we should we should either record in advance or maybe like Skype together and and do it that way well probably record in advance just to have something down on paper you know it's always good to have that and then sky can be so problematic I don't know it would be it would be really cool to do a live you don't wanna hang out with me anymore do you no I'm just saying it would be a cool thing since this is a human factors cast to do a live from H FES podcast I mean are you supposed to that would be really great how would we hook up the idea I mean we would have to discuss how we'll discuss an offline okay that's fine that's fine look forward to it in the future we might do alive from H FES podcast but anyway I think that's gonna be it for today if you guys want to be featured on our show like Samantha today we are all over the social media and we are all over the internet now yeah again you can find us at itunes google play store SoundCloud stitcher tune in Spreaker blueberry player FM podcast addicts Facebook Twitter go ahead and send us an email at human factors cast at gmail.com with all of your questions don't don't be afraid we read it all and you know we go through them all we might not answer it on the show but we do go through everything you guys send us and you know what even if you have an interesting anecdote or story about something that we talked about on the show that resonated with you send that in - we love reading that stuff and we might actually read that on the show or if you want clarification and anything that we talk about absolutely show ideas or something we can cover I've listened to our podcast and I've been wrong a couple of times so if you want to call me out on it email me - oh go get them trolls oh man so yeah peace be sure to like follow subscribe all that stuff on all the social media we're always trying to keep in touch with interesting topics that you guys want us to talk about like I said earlier we're gonna be on Facebook now mmm every week at some point so check us out there we'll hang out with you I've been your host Nick Rome you can find me on LinkedIn comm slash Nick Rome Billy Hall where can I find you they can find me on Twitter or they can find me streaming on YouTube at comstar Clara your streaming on YouTube hoodie streaming right now it's no man's sky no man skate on they actually do love the destiny we're gonna be probably doing a lot of that when the new game comes out well I like just being able to play a lot of different games so we'll see what we can do all right well thanks again for listening to us here on human factors cast until next time yes