Human factors
-
The present study was designed to examine the impact that walking has on performance in auditory localization, visual discrimination, and aurally aided visual search tasks. ⋯ The results have potential applications in virtual and augmented reality displays where audio cues might be presented to listeners while walking.
-
The objective is to provide a review of ecological interface design (EID), to illustrate its value to human factors/ergonomics, and to identify areas for future research and development. ⋯ EID provides a single integrated framework that is (a) sufficiently comprehensive to deal with complicated work domains and (b) capable of producing innovative support that will generalize to actual work settings.
-
The authors aimed to identify ergonomic smartphone forms by investigating the effects of hand length, four major smartphone dimensions (height, width, thickness, and edge roundness), and smartphone mass on grip comfort and design attractiveness. ⋯ The dimensions and mass determined in this study should be considered for improving smartphone design grip comfort and attractiveness.
-
This study reports current status of knowledge and challenges associated with the emergency vehicle (police car, fire truck, and ambulance) crashes, with respect to the major contributing risk factors. ⋯ This information is helpful for emergency vehicle drivers, safety practitioners, public safety agencies, and research communities to mitigate crash risks. It also offers ideas for researchers to advance technologies and strategies to further emergency vehicle safety on the road.
-
Objective Four sets of eight audible alarms matching the functions specified in IEC 60601-1-8 were designed using known principles from auditory cognition with the intention that they would be more recognizable and localizable than those currently specified in the standard. Background The audible alarms associated with IEC 60601-1-8, a global medical device standard, are known to be difficult to learn and retain, and there have been many calls to update them. There are known principles of design and cognition that might form the basis of more readily recognizable alarms. ⋯ Conclusion Known auditory cognition and perception principles were successfully applied to an existing audible alarm problem. Application This work constitutes the first (benchmarking) phase of replacing the alarms currently specified in the standard. The design principles used for each set demonstrate the relative ease with which different alarm types can be recognized and localized.