The cup-holder quotient

Cars are a fascinating platform for user experience design.  From the aesthetic and reflective value of a flashy or quirky car to the behavioral considerations of the interior design (can you tell I'm a Don Norman follower?), there are so many factors to the design of an automobile and so many ways in which a car interfaces with its owner's life that the challenges faced-- and often the solutions created-- can be quite intriguing.

Also, they can be quite shiny.

I've read plenty of material on the various human factors of cars and their design.  Also, I've been in a car or two in my day, and I've come up with a theory quantifying how carefully car manufacturers design for the user.

The kind of experience anybody would want.

http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=391

A very brief, but very valuable look at how we all want things to operate.  Imagine that before you went to bed, you went into the bathroom and streamlined every aspect of your shower-taking experience so that it would be as effortless as possible when you woke up the next morning.  Now imagine that someone snuck in and did it every day while you were away.

Actually, that's creepy.  Go back to the did-it-yourself version.  Nice, isn't it?

Voice-operated vs. voice-augmented interfaces

Mention the term "voice control" and one of two scenarios usually comes to mind.  The first scenario is of stilted, error-prone interactions, often involving the user repeating himself as the computer dumbly responds with "I don't understand."  Worse, it can lead to the user shouting, "No!" as the phone asks if he would like to call the ex-girlfriend he hasn't gotten around to deleting from his contacts yet.  This would be the "real world" scenario.  The second scenario that may come to mind is of magical understanding, where the computer has all the language comprehension of a fluent speaker.  It readily parses natural language and produces instantaneous results to any query or command.  This is the "Star Trek" scenario.

"Computer, calculate warp trajectory."

"Did you say, 'Call Charlotte Padalecki?'"

There's a pretty wide gap between the two scenarios, and there has been a tremendous amount of time and money invested in pursuing the second scenario.  The idea of controlling a computer with voice commands is an enticing one, to the point that it is in fact often referenced as an archetype of "futuristic" interaction.  This is for good reason: it's not going to happen anytime soon.

Hot-bliggity blog

Welcome to Argh-onomics.  It's my new blog for musings on interaction design, user experience design, usability, ergonomics, user-centric design, human factors, user interface design, or anything that may fit in, on, near, or under any of those categories.  Here's a Venn diagram for those who are confused:

It works just as well in four-dimensional space.

The name of the blog is derived from the term "ergonomics", which is the study of work.  The Greek root -nomos means "laws", while "erg" is the sound I make when I work.  Hence, understanding the laws of work becomes the field of ergonomics.  When I get frustrated while working, I make the sound "argh", and that's where we get our blog name.

I've got plenty of thoughts on interaction design and the pursuit of the ever-elusive smiling user, so if you can count on one thing, it's that there will always be things to talk about for as long as there are people who want to throw their computers out the window.  I hope you enjoy your time here and I hope I manage to update consistently enough to make you want to come back.  Cheers!