Media: Alertbox on Medical Unusability

Another goodie from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is this piece on safety-critical usability. He reviews situations where saving a second can matter, then takes us through a study of medical usability, where an extra second's thought can matter because the design is so poor.

For instance, the study he's talking about brings up the issue of memory overload. Nielsen comments: 'At times, users had to review up to twenty screens to see all of a patient's medications. The well-known limits on human short-term memory make it impossible to remember everything across that many screens. In a survey, 72% of staff reported that they were often uncertain about medications and dosages because of the difficulties in reviewing a patient's total medications. Humans are notoriously poor at remembering exact information, and minimizing users' memory load has long been one of computing's top-ten usability heuristics. Facts should be restated when and where they're needed rather than requiring users to remember things from one screen to the next (let alone twenty screens down the road).'

Associated Link: Alertbox: Medical Usability - How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design

Study: Mobile Web sites need Improvement
Source: CNET, 13 October 2008
 
A new study suggests that the usability of many mobile Web sites still needs improvement.

Better Usability makes Online Backup more Appealing
Source: UN, 11 October 2008
 
Repeat after me: "Backup via the Internet is for everybody."

IBM Task Modeler version 6 now Available
Source: Unknown, 10 October 2008
 
The latest release of IBM Task Modeler is now available for download. This includes many new features to support efficient and collaborative task analysis and synthesis.

Caroline's Corner: Design to Read - Designing for People who do not Read easily
Source: Caroline Jarrett, 9 October 2008
 
Reading is a skill many of us take for granted. Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’re one of the lucky ones who read easily.

Bill Buxton to change Microsoft from within
Source: The Register, 8 October 2008
 
"Last year Steve Ballmer said to 85,000 employees 'If you don’t change and you don’t go in this direction, we’re dead, and I don’t want to die.' I wanted to go hug him when he said that."

New Report: Innovative Marketing in the Digital World
Source: E-consultancy, 7 October 2008
 
A new report from E-consultancy provides a distillation of ideas and suggestions provided by digital marketing experts.

Linking Industry with Academia
Source: unknown, 6 October 2008
 
Customer experience research consultancy, fhios, based in London, has just launched an innovative internship programme, aimed primarily at postgraduate students.

Online Travel Booking: What influences Consumers?
Source: Webcredible, 4 October 2008
 
What influences consumers when booking a holiday? How can travel companies offer the best user experience?

Getting the Word out
Source: UN, 3 October 2008
 
I SAID, I'M ON THE TRAIN... Voice recognition technology can now translate all those pesky garbled voicemails into manageable text messages.

Mobile hardware outpaces Software and User Capabilities
Source: ComputerWorld, 2 October 2008
 
The main issue dissuading users from employing all the capabilities of their mobile devices is the complexity involved in operating them.