Whenever I’m a little busy, I lose things. First my mind goes, then the physical things around me go. I don’t know where they go. If I did, they wouldn’t be lost. So for me the human factor and car keys is just one example of how I’m failing to keep things together: like my hands on my car keys.
Last night I was listening to Kim Vicente on CBC talking about his book The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live With Technology.
I was in the car, which meant I’d found my car keys. Vicente was talking about how technology fails us. For example, car dashboards on BMWs that allow you to check the oil from inside the car but not in any sort of intuitive way.
Vicente also mentioned ways technology is fixing usability problems. For example, did you ever notice that your car key is symmetrical? You can put it in upside down. It works. I never gave that a second thought, of course when something doesn’t work, I give it a lot of thought.
Do you have any good examples of quiet technology saving the day, or examples of technology wrecking havoc. Mmmm havoc. I can feel myself returning to my nature state.