Bicycle ergonomics

I've been getting back on my bike lately, after a long absence that I'd like to say was enforced through some sort of heroic injury, but it's really just down to laziness. Anyway, it's been getting me thinking about the ergonomics of my bike, and bicycles in general. Apart from the obvious pain in the bummular region when you've been out of the saddle for a while, there are other physical and cognitive ergonomics issues on your bike that can impact on safety, efficiency, and satisfaction.

First up, let's look at the handlebars – a company called Ergon position themselves as specialising in bike ergonomics, with their flagship product being a range of ergonomic bar grips. The "anatomically optimised grip shape" is designed to relieve pressure on the ulnar nerves in the wrist, reducing pain and numbness by, it seems, supporting the heel of the hand. In my experience, and I'll agree that this is an unscientific sample size of one, I've never found this to be an issue. Possibly a cheaper and simpler alternative, as recommended to me by a keen cycling colleague I used to share an office with, is to adjust the standard setup of the brake levers that bikes are often sold with. Rather than having them at the horizontal (i.e., parallel to the ground), just droop them a bit for a more neutral hand position, eliminating the unnatural dorsiflexion which the standard setup enforces. I don't want to take too much away from Ergon's bar grips - I'd like to be clear that I haven't reviewed the evidence myself, and although I have a bugbear about claims of 'ergonomically designed' products, these guys seem to have a bit more credence than most.

On the cognitive side, I recently read Richard Guise's enjoyable and laid back novel, 'From the Mull to the Cape', charting his bicycle travelogue up the West Coast of Scotland. I was enthused to find that he'd picked up on an ergonomic issue with the gear levers on the handlebars – an issue I wholeheartedly agree with, having experienced it on my own Shimano set. There is inconsistency between the switches for the front and rear mech, which are controlled by levers on the left and right handlebar respectively. On the left, a flick of the thumb lever will take you up a gear, while the opposing lever takes you down; on the right, this arrangement is reversed. It sounds trivial, and if I understood the mechanics I'm sure there'd be a very good technical reason for it being this way. But from the user's perspective, it does make you think harder than you probably need to – and, even after much experience on the bike, this still confuses me from time to time (I even had to check my bike to make sure I had it the right way around before posting this).

Next up is the LightLane virtual bike lane, an innovative laser light mounted on your bicycle, which projects your own personal bike lane around you while you ride. It looks good, but I think the jury's out on its effectiveness. Potential ergonomic issues include drivers' perceptions as they approach you – this being quite an unusual product at present, and so they might not know what they're dealing with. Perhaps more insidiously, I've read comments on biking forums that cycle lanes actually serve to marginalise cyclists as 'non-traffic', creating a false sense of security and almost ratifying some drivers' attitudes of only giving cyclists the room they've been allocated (which is often less than they might otherwise allow if they were sharing the same tarmac).

Finally, something of a plea for my own personal ergonomics, now that I am back on my bike. Until our British weather finally sorts itself out – if anyone can recommend me a decent, windproof, breathable and high-visibility soft shell (most of my commuting is on-road), I'd be a much safer, more comfortable, and, I'm sure, efficient rider. As for the pain in the rear, I'll just ride it out thanks.

Driver distractons - the next generation

Hot on the heels (well, at least warm on the heels) of my last post about texting and driving, news from the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas is that Ford is blazing a trail with a whole new raft of potentially distracting technologies.  "MyFord" essentially offers mobile phone apps through the car using wifi or 3G technology.

I don't need to go into detail about why this might be bad - partly because I don't want to invite trouble (at least until we get the libel reform through), but mainly because the points have been well made elsewhere.  In this article, parallels are drawn with the mobile phone problem, which we already know so much about.  Meanwhile, the Consumer Reports Blog makes some excellent points about how MyFord has been designed according to principles learned from household and consumer products.  But, and I'll quote, "should portable electronics and home appliances really be the benchmark for automotive interface design?"

In all fairness, I haven't even seen the interface myself, so I'm just speculating, and I could therefore add a little balance to the argument.  Perhaps, if the interface is well designed, it might reduce distraction by bringing all the drivers' in-car infotainment interactions in one place.  The ergonomic view argues that an integrated interface is better than lots of disparate systems dotted all over the car, vying for attention with their bells and whistles.  And if, as we might as well accept, drivers aren't going to stop using their phones and will invariably bring other nomadic devices into the car, maybe it's better that we have a bit of control over that and design it into the car?

Probably this is clutching at straws.  But who am I to say - we should let the research sort it out.  And for that, maybe we should thank Ford for putting more research opportunities out there...

Texting while driving

Okay, so I'm catching up on stuff after the Christmas break, but this is one paper that's made quite a splash - I'm certainly not the first to be blogging about it.  The latest issue of the journal Human Factors features a paper by Frank Drews and colleagues which, I gather, is the first peer-reviewed study on the effects of texting on driver performance.

As you might expect, texting and driving is bad.  Worse, in fact, than talking on the phone - and we already know that's bad enough, having been equated to serious drink-driving.  Texting slows brake reactions, impairs longitudinal and lateral control, and increases crash risk.

The study has already attracted some critcism for only involving young drivers - but I'd say that if young people can't text and drive, then the effects would be worse for older drivers.  The research will, I'm sure, be done in time, and this paper will no doubt become very heavily cited.

One other implication in the media coverage which concerns me is the potential for this to drown the effects of talking on the phone while driving - some of the articles I've seen are spun to suggest that because texting is so bad, phoning isn't so bad after all.  We (as a community) need to make sure that we don't forget how bad phoning and driving is - whether handheld or hands-free.

Surprisingly, you can download this paper for free here - though how long this will be available I don't know.

Review of the decade

At the end of every year, there always seems to be a contagion of top 10 (or 100, or 1000) lists in the media reviewing the previous 12 months - usually on TV, featuring various rent-a-quote nonentities.  Naturally, at the end of 2009, there were even more of these to ensure we'd covered the last 10 years.  However, a couple of websites have caught my eye as they've been reviewing the technological progress in the 'noughties'.

I must have a short memory, as I was quite surprised to see just how many gadgets that we now take for granted are less than a decade old.  The iPod and iPhone, Freeview and flatscreen TVs, and more recently the Kindle and other e-book readers have all been born since 2000.  Perhaps with even more impact, the rise of the social web started in 2000 with the launch of Friends Reunited.

Obviously I'm interested in the human-centred design implications of such advances.  It all serves to reinforce my long-held conviction that with the world getting more technological, the implications for cognitive ergonomics are ever more significant.  I'm sure I said somewhere that the 21st century is the century of the user...

The end of the 60th

So 2009 is coming to an end, and with it I think a rather successful 60th anniversary year for the Ergonomics Society - or should I say, the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (IEHF), for on 20th October the change of name was officially approved by Companies House.

Naturally I'm biased towards the exhibition at the Design Museum - which runs to 7th March 2010, so we are prolonging the celebrations a bit. Trying to be as objective as possible, 'Ergonomics: Real Design' has gone down pretty well so far. Last time I reported on the excellent media coverage at the opening and the VIP reception a few days later. Since then it has been picked up by other national and international listings (including the Wall Street Journal), and the other day I learned it was even getting exposure in New Zealand courtesy of Dave Moore of the NZ Ergonomics Society. By all accounts visitor feedback is good and footfall at the Design Museum is up, though we're in the process of conducting our formal evaluations to see just how big an impact the exhibition has had.

Next year we plan to keep the momentum going through (hopefully) touring the exhibition internationally, and an IEHF campaign to better integrate ergonomics into design process. Despite the fact that it's "just another year", I'm sure we'll be just as busy and I do, of course, plan to keep you updated here!

In the meantime, it only remains for me to wish everyone reading this, a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Ergonomics: Real Design

Well, it's finally arrived - all of our hard work over the last year or so has paid off, and the Ergonomics: Real Design exhibition at London's Design Museum is now open.

There was a media preview last Tuesday, which generated us some excellent coverage on the BBC and in The Independent, as well as several popular design magazines. Then it opened to the public on Wednesday, and by all accounts the feedback is good, and people are engaging with the exhibition as we hoped.

Last night was the big fanfare though - the Ergonomics Society (now officially known as the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors) held a private VIP reception for over 100 people, which - in my humble opinion - went down very well indeed. There was certainly a real buzz about the place, and for me it really brought it home that the exhibition had really happened. I think until I saw people actually going round it, it hadn't quite sunk in with me. All very exciting.

I must say thanks again to everyone who pulled together to make it happen - Fergus, Gemma, Margaret, Laura, Roger, Colin, and of course Reg, who got the ball rolling in the first place and has stuck with the project all the way through. Finally, a nod to the sponsors, the EPSRC, who are evidently quite pleased with it as it's currently featuring on the front page of their website too.

For more info, see the Design Museum's website.

Human-centred ketchup!

I just couldn't resist following up with this little tidbit I heard on the Chris Evans show on Radio 2, on the way home from my driving meeting I just blogged about. His theme for the show was red vs. brown - that is, in terms of sauces. He had a representative from Heinz giving us the history of ketchup, but the bit that pricked my ears up was his explanation of the design decision to turn the bottles upside-down. In almost his exact words, basically he said that it was designed by the people - their customers, the users. They'd observed and listened, and decided the upside-down bottle would satisfy a key user need.

Who'd have thought it? Human-centred design in action at Heinz. Marvellous.

I'm sure you can listen to the show on BBC iPlayer for a little while, but I couldn't tell you exactly when in the show this interview happened - it was definitely in the first hour, but I was too busy watching the road rather than watching the clock, of course.

New cars, new toys

I’ve been playing with new cars again today – one of the few perks of the job which crop up from time to time. I can’t give too much away as it was a closed meeting, but most of the cars and their associated technologies are already on the market so I can talk in general terms. Suffice to say I got to drive several cars much more valuable than my own (some would even pay off my mortgage…), and each jam-packed with active safety gadgets. In fact, that was one of my first observations – the sheer amount of technology and computing power now being rammed into cars, with radars, cameras and sensors literally everywhere.

Anyway, that’s not what I really wanted to talk about. I’ve aired my thoughts about vehicle automation before on this blog, so I won’t go over old ground, but there was a couple of new observations I wanted to pick up on.

One or two of the vehicle manufacturers are using speed sign recognition cameras, sometimes coupled with a GPS map database, to display current speed limit information inside the car. I can only think this is a Good Thing – I don’t have evidence, but to my mind many speeding offences aren’t for lack of restraint, rather are to do with drivers missing or forgetting the last sign they passed. Sometimes the road environment even tries to trip us up, with outdated laws preventing the use of repeater signs for 30mph limits, for instance. I for one would really like one of these cars with a speed limit aide-memoire, and would much prefer that over an ISA system which just stops me from speeding. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a speeder, it just makes me uncomfortable to take control from the driver in that way. And this is a personal and professional opinion, as I’ve written about in this paper.

Which brings me onto my next point – who’s in charge? The same paper talks about philosophies of ‘hard’ vs. ‘soft’ automation – basically regarding who has the last power of veto, the computer (hard) or the human (soft). We’ve seen aircraft manufacturers take different approaches based on these philosophies, and it’s now fascinating to see vehicle manufacturers doing the same thing. My view is the same as it’s always been – we should support drivers, not replace them. But I qualify that in the paper by talking about ‘below the line’ vehicle operations (such as ABS, ESC – and I could now include last-minute collision mitigation in that) which can be automated since they don’t consciously affect the driver’s task.

It seems that many of these technologies are going down well with the customers. My concern is whether that translates into better (safer) driving (for which we don’t have the data yet), and if there are any longer-term behavioural compensations that might cancel out any beneficial effects.

One thing I certainly didn’t expect from the day, though, was for the cars to be groping me – one of them had a seat massager (for passengers), while another had a ‘dynamic seat bolster’ to stop you sliding about in corners. Definitely a new experience for me…

Ghosts of transport yet to come

I had the privilege this week of presenting at the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety's (PACTS) conference on 'Beyond 2010: the challenges ahead'. This was largely centred around the proposed road safety strategy for the future (which I've commented on before) and had a very much 'what are we going to do about it' feel. Interestingly, the opening sessions were largely focused on the environmental aspects of driving and promotion of eco-driving, as opposed to safe driving. I found this surprising given the context, but perhaps represents a shift in emphasis for transport policy. Naturally I was banging the drum for human-centred design and how it can solve all our problems for safe and eco-driving in the future. Simple as that.

One of the most memorable presentations from the day was the last one (probably a recency effect...) from ACPO's Mick Giannasi, talking in part about Gwent Police's recent campaign on texting and driving. The 'Cow' video has made it around the world already and has had some ten million hits apparently, even though it was only supposed to be a local thing and was done on a budget of about £10k. (Excerpts are on YouTube - link above - though you have to log in as it's deemed to be graphic material.) This is just amazing impact from both road safety and public engagement perspectives. Mick also showed evidence of how it's already working locally, with its first screening at an event for young drivers in South Wales - cameras were trained on the crowd to record reactions, and interviews afterwards showed the effect it had on those present. It really is hard-hitting.

After the PACTS conference I went straight to Imperial College for the Lloyd's Register Educational Trust's Annual Lecture in Transport Risk Management. Gretchen Burrett, Director of Safety at National Air Traffic Services (NATS), talked about human factors in aviation and air traffic control. She gave a really splendid exposition of the benefits of human factors in safety-critical systems. One of the stand-out points for me was how they're actually recording positive changes in behaviour as markers of effectiveness for HF in the cost-benefit analysis - that's as opposed to just monitoring reductions in errors or accidents. I was really impressed with this approach - I've long thought that one of our biggest barriers in uptake of HF is persuading people of the benefits. Since nobody notices the absence of accidents, people like Gretchen are otherwise the unsung heroes of safety. Measuring positive changes that people will actually notice is a great way for HF to hammer home its message.

Distracted and inattentive

Last week I attended the First International Conference on Driver Distraction and Inattention, held at Lindholmen Science Park in Gothenburg. The site is next door to Chalmers University, which itself has good links with Volvo research – so it was an excellent choice of venue, and as you can see from the pictures, a very pleasant setting to boot.

The conference itself was top notch too, with some high profile speakers and delegates, and a programme jam-packed with interesting papers for people of our ilk. In fact, there were often too many to choose from, with three parallel sessions meaning I missed a lot of stuff I wanted to see – and the proceedings aren’t going to be out for a few months either. But I’d rather have too much choice than too little – sign of a good conference for me.

We were well represented for the HCDI at Brunel – Stewart Birrell presented a paper on our Foot-LITE project, while I got involved with a symposium on roadside advertising. This is still a very hot topic, and quite timely for me as my paper has just been published in Transportation Research Part F.

The ever-ebullient Peter Hancock gave a philosophical perspective to open the conference, arguing that it is perhaps driving which forms the distraction from life, rather than life being a distraction from driving, and how the different roles we play in life can affect our role as ‘driver’. Coincidentally, these kinds of thoughts are reflected in a recent post by Tom Vanderbilt as well. I like the notion of driving being a distraction from life – it accords with what a lot of people argue about life being too busy and everyone being time-poor these days (which brings us full circle with the ‘need’ for the car to be a mobile office). However, I’m not sure where it gets us in terms of solving the problem – however you view driving, it’s still a safety-critical task, and our job is to make it as safe as possible.

Other interesting themes emerged from the conference; as you might expect a number of papers looked at the effects of in-vehicle technology – both positive and negative – while there was also a reasonable amount of research on older drivers. Perhaps disappointingly, given the great efforts of the organisers to include inattention in the conference title, most of what I saw focused on distraction rather than its cognitive cousin.

Overall they packed an awful lot into two days that it felt like a longer conference (in a good way!) – including a great social dinner at the Universeum science centre, which was duly sold to us as having a traffic safety exhibition … and sharks.

An autopian future?

I don’t feel right snaffling someone else’s blog posts, but I just had to pick up on this gem from Tom Vanderbilt, as it’s so close to my own research interests. (Tom’s is an excellent blog for driving buffs, too, and he’s always got something interesting.)

The ‘Autonomobile’ from Mike and Maaike is a design exercise to come up with a driverless car. This kind of thing comes around from time to time, and the Autonomobile is reminiscent of Concept 2096 (not a great link, but the only one I could find with an image) – another one developed to mark 100 years of the automobile, and an early inspiration in my PhD work. Interestingly, as I remarked on Tom’s blog, these are very similar but the anticipated timeframe is coming down – by 50 years, as the Autonomobile is apparently set for 2040.

I’m less convinced. Yes, these guys are right that technically speaking, we’re not far off. In controlled, closed-loop systems it is possible – see the Heathrow Personal Rapid Transit on their website, which we’ve been looking at lately. But there’s a bunch more human factors which mean that last 20 per cent (or 10, or 5) will be the real struggle. Mainly it’s the reliability issue – until the systems become so good that we can literally sit back and read the paper, there’ll always be the expectation of a human being there to supervise and save the day. And if there’s one fundamental which has come out of all the research on automation – vehicle or otherwise – it’s that humans don’t make good supervisors. We’re meant to do, not watch.

Besides, as others have pointed out, such ‘fully automated’ cars already exist to let us work, socialise etc. during the drive – they’re called taxis. And that’s the other side of the human factors equation – the social acceptability of automated cars. For one, a lot of people drive because they enjoy it. But the harder one to crack will be trust in these systems – will people ever really let go and switch off? And what happens if(when) there’s an accident – who’s to blame?

Driving Ergonomics Special Interest Group

Yesterday I went to the inaugural meeting of the Ergonomics Society’s newest Special Interest Group (SIG) – the Driving Ergonomics SIG. This was hosted at Cranfield University, though the SIG has been set up and chaired by Nick Gkikas of Loughborough University.

There’s currently some 20-odd members in the SIG, and more than half of those turned up yesterday. It’s a really good mix of academic and industrial members too, with representatives from the likes of Jaguar, Nissan, and TRL.

The meeting had a speed-dating feel to it, with rapid fire presentations from a selection of attendees – Steve Summerskill from Loughborough, Chris Day from Nissan, me, and Nick Reed from TRL – all in less than an hour! But this was quite nice to get a sampler of the backgrounds of members. And whether by accident or design, there was good balance between physical ergonomics (Steve and Chris) and the more cognitive side (Nick and me).

It already promises to be a highly active SIG, with much discussion (at the time and afterwards via the new LinkedIn group) about the objectives of the SIG and what various members want to get out of it. We’re planning to meet quarterly, and longer-term ambitions are to have some outputs – maybe a conference session, for instance. I certainly think it’s a Good Thing, and with such an enthusiastic membership it has a lot of momentum behind it.

I’m only sorry I couldn’t get to the pub for more discussion afterwards – but then I was driving home, so couldn’t have sampled the local’s finest anyway…

HCI International 2009

So this is slightly old news now, but seeing as I've finally got over the jet lag and on top of my inbox, I'm just about in a position to tell you about the Human-Computer Interaction International conference I went to last week.

HCII is a series of conferences which has assimilated nine other conference series over the years. I started going to Don Harris'

Engineering Psychology & Cognitive Ergonomics conferences from

the first one in 1996, and then at the 4th conference these came under the HCII umbrella. Interestingly, this year saw the first appearance of a conference track on human-centred design (though they insisted on using the US English spelling, with an extra 'e' in 'centered').

I was privileged to chair a session on each of the EP&CE and HCD tracks, also presenting on our Foot-LITE project in the EP&CE session. Both were interesting sessions with a varied set of topics; the EP&CE session focusing on transport automation, with examples from rail, road (two wheels and four!) and air, while the HCD session covered applications from mobile phones to web design.

The rest of the conference was packed with interesting papers and posters - indeed, the biggest problem with this series is that with

so many tracks, it's hard to decide what you want to go to (let alone keeping on top of the timetable). And it was in a great location - the Town & Country resort in San Diego. The hotel is a little removed from the downtown centre, but next door to a couple of big shopping malls - which offered good eating and drinking options. San Diego is just lovely, a perfect climate and a really good feel to the town.

Curiously, I quite often bumped into the odd superhero around the hotel. I did ponder for a while what interest the Watchmen might have in HCI, but then I realised there was also a big comic conference in town at the same time...

Ergonomics in the news

As I'm sure many others do, I subscribe to Google's news alerts looking out for media stories on ergonomics and/or human factors. When I first signed up, there wasn't a lot of activity, and the stuff they picked up on was pretty obscure. More recently, though, there's been a lot more substantial pickings coming through. Whether this is due to Google getting even better at what they do, or more ergonomics stories in the news, I don't know, but either way it's a good sign in my book.

Then the other day my good mate Steve Shorrock sets up a couple of blogs to help the cause further – Ergonomics & Human Factors in the News, and Ergonomics & Human Factors: Research into Practice. Both of these are going to be great sources of info on popular applications of ergonomics for those both in and outside the field, and I highly recommend them to you. It’s kind of half what I had in mind for this blog, actually, but Steve’s doing a far better job of it than I would, so I’ll leave that to him and focus on other things.

I can only see these kinds of developments as good news for ergonomics – getting the stories more widely distributed and making them more accessible to the people that really matter – the end users!

Human factors is back in business!

I’ve been getting a bit more into this blogging lark, realising that it’s more about participation in the ‘blogosphere’ than just standing on a soapbox. Preaching to the converted for anyone reading this, I’m sure, but setting the context for this week’s post.

The fact that we’ve had a couple of major air accidents in recent weeks has resulted in the usual rash of media stories (and now bloggers) commenting on whether the skies are safe any more. What's good about these is they get people thinking about the human factors involved - for good or ill.

This commentary on FastCompany (with thanks to Ferg for flagging this one up) is trying to say the right things, but for me they’re just not getting their teeth into the human factors at the heart of the issue. And, according to the pilot who comments on the post, it’s ill-informed.

Anyone interested in aviation human factors please have a look at the post and see what you think. I for one couldn’t help but join in and have my tuppence worth.

On a more promising tack, this Reuters article picks up on the Air France and Yemeni airliner crashes, seemingly for no other reason that they were within weeks of each other. And both involved Airbuses, but that’s a different story.

Encouragingly, this one does report better on the human factors issues, alluding to mental models and human-machine cooperation. Whilst I wholeheartedly support the promotion of HF on the safety agenda, I do find it difficult to see the link between the facts and the story here, though. As far as I gather, the Air France crash is still a mystery (and looks set to remain one, which befuddles me in these modern times), and I’m not sure we know what happened in the Indian Ocean yet either.

But what really hit me about this particular article was the quote from the President of the Flight Safety Foundation, who says, “We’re back in the human factors business”. As I teach my students that aviation led the way in a lot of human factors, I wonder when they were ever out of the HF business?

Armchair ergonomists

I’ve been to a couple of events this week that have inspired me to think more about how to engage a wider public with ergonomics and human-centred design issues.

The first was the British Science Association’s Science Communication Conference, an excellent event with a star-studded list of presenters, including Lord Professor Robert Winston, Professor Kathy Sykes, and Professor Jim Al-Khalili. One of the key principles of this whole area is that we (as scientists) don’t just sit in our ivory towers and assume everyone’s stupid and that we have to teach them. Science Communication is a two-way process, and actually most (non-scientist) people are starting from a baseline with a bit of knowledge about a lot of things.

This is something I think wholeheartedly applies to ergonomics. In fact, most people are amateur ergonomists – everyone knows, on some level, when they’ve used a product or system that has been well (or badly) designed. A lot of them would have a good idea of how they want it fixed, too. I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? A human-centred design process starts with identifying the users’ needs, and who best to tell us about them? So the only problem, as far as I see it, is that these amateur ergonomists just don’t call it ergonomics – and consequently might not think to turn to ‘professional’ ergonomists or The Ergonomics Society.

And that brings me onto my second point – which was inspired by discussions at The Ergonomics Society’s awayday, where Council met up to discuss our vision and strategy for the future. The old ‘ergonomically designed product’ chestnut was rolled out (which I’ve blogged on before – and will come back to later), and that set my train of thought off on armchair ergonomists again. Because it’s about understanding what ergonomics is really about – so not only are people sometimes acting as ergonomists without knowing it, they’re also being sold a perception of ergonomics which is inaccurate.

There’s a great little anecdote from our experience at Cheltenham which illustrates this nicely. I got talking to a little girl and her family about our stand and what ergonomics is all about, and they told me a story about a design exercise the girl did at school recently, to design a pencil that’s easier to use for people. She explained how she made it slightly bigger so it’s easier to hold, shaped for the hand, and grip areas for the fingers. I told her she was being an ergonomist without even realising it! The best bit was that she refrained from just putting a bit of rubber on the pencil…

Distracted drivers

Something I’ve been meaning to post on since I saw it a month ago, is a story on ergoweb with a new perspective on the perennial problem of driver distractions from mobile phones. As the article comments, and as I’ve mentioned here a few times before, the fact that mobile phones are distracting is nothing new to ergonomists. But this new research from Liberty Mutual suggests that drivers aren’t aware of how much they’re being distracted.

I think this is interesting from a number of perspectives. There’s all the deep psychological stuff, such as the interaction between mental workload and situation awareness (that is, the fact that they’re loaded with a distracting task possibly affects their own self-awareness of their performance, let alone awareness of the road situation). And there’s the practical implications, like how drivers will be more willing to engage in these activities if they don’t see them as a problem – also relevant to drink, drugs, fatigue, and any number of driver impairments.

The story focuses on in-car distractions, but it’s also piqued my interest in outside distractions to – relevant to a study I conducted on roadside advertising in our driving simulator at Brunel, which has just been published in Transportation Research Part F. I was stunned by the impact this study had with people on both sides of the argument – safety campaigners and advertising professionals alike – and the preliminary report I produced has been widely circulated while the paper was in the publication process. In fact, the advertising industry commissioned an “independent” report specifically to discredit my report, which mainly criticised the study on the grounds it hadn’t been peer-reviewed (which it has now) and that it was conducted in a simulator (which I defended in the paper). I should probably be upset that they commissioned this report, but it’s actually faintly amusing that they took the study so seriously.

Anyway, I see a clear link from this to the Liberty Mutual findings about awareness of distractions. Advertising, by its nature, is designed to attract attention – almost without us knowing it, otherwise it hasn’t done its job. So it’s a double-whammy if drivers are unwillingly being distracted, and then being unaware of how that’s affected their driving. But it’s not just that – if there’s an intuitive belief that distractions such as advertising don’t seem so bad, then it means there’s an even more pressing need for hard quantitative data to close the case.

Cheltenham Festival of Science

No prizes for guessing what this post is about – last week we took a sample of the Real World Design exhibition to the Cheltenham Festival of Science as a sneak preview for them and a test run for us. Needless to say, this was a fantastic opportunity, afforded to us by some great work in the Ergonomics Society office, which we grabbed with both hands.

Cheltenham is one of the biggest science festivals in the UK, and always attracts some star names – we caught a glimpse of Robert Winston floating about; also in attendance and giving lectures were the likes of Richard Hammond, Carol Vorderman, and Alice Roberts (though I'm personally disappointed I didn't bump into her).

The preview exhibit we took was related to the ergonomics of the Sky TV remote control, which is the most advanced piece of work we currently have on the exhibition project. Fergus Bisset, the design researcher on the project, did a stellar job of putting together an innovative stand at short notice, complete with interactive elements. Fergus also carried the can for the whole duration of the festival, assisted on different days by staff and members of the Ergonomics Society, who kindly gave up their time to help out (pictured right is Dave O’Neill, Chief Executive of the Ergonomics Society). Our thanks go out to all, it was an enormous help and above and beyond the call of duty.

All in all I think we can say it was a successful week – just getting the exhibit into Cheltenham was an achievement in itself! But we also had a lot of interest from children and adults alike, helped no end by being on the EPSRC’s ‘Impact Trail’, so the children were encouraged to come and see us for an answer in their question booklet. It’s also been a learning experience in taking things forward to the big exhibition in November – which I know will come round sooner than we think.

A safer way: road safety consultation

I've been meaning to mention this in my blog for a while, but other newsworthy things have been happening to report on. Anyway, the UK's Department for Transport currently has open a consultation on road safety strategy to take us beyond 2010, when the current strategy expires.

I've been feeding in comments via a couple of avenues, which I don't need to go into too much detail about here, but on the whole I'm actually rather reassured by what I've seen. The main win, in my eyes, is the key acknowledgement of the 'systems' approach in road safety - that is, viewing the road, the vehicle, and the driver as an interactive system, where you can't just treat any one element in isolation. Indeed, this is reflective of a general move towards such thinking in road safety at the European level.

Of course, systems thinking has been an underpinning tenet of ergonomics for some 60 years now (as I found out last week), and whilst I'm not sure we can claim the credit for influencing these high-level policy-makers, it's good to see the principles being taken on board. Happy coincidence or otherwise, personally I don't care where it came from, the good news is that we're all starting to think on the same wavelength.

There are also some positive noises regarding the role of technology in road (vehicle) safety - in terms of primary safety, crash avoidance systems, where they're calling for an evidence-based approach to implementation. The gloss is taken off a little as they seem to slightly overlook the ergonomics issues; the evidence they're seeking is more in terms of technical reliability. So there is room for more critical response to the consultation, after all.

If you have a vested interest in road safety I would encourage a review of the consultation document, and if you feel so inclined to respond then there's nothing stopping you. My views are just my views, and I wouldn't presume to try and sway your opinion, but to my mind it just needs a bit more of a human-centred approach.

Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture

On Tuesday evening this week I had the pleasure of attending the Ergonomics Society Annual Lecture, given by Professor Rob Stammers of the University of Leicester, on 'Kenneth Craik: a progenitor for ergonomics'. It was at the Royal Society of Arts, just off the Strand in London - a prestigious venue with very nice hospitality beforehand!

Craik was a psychologist who did his most profound work during the Second World War, and as Rob explained, was really ahead of his time in coming up with ergonomics issues and theories that we're still working with today. And remember that this is a good 5-10 years before the formation of the Ergonomics Research Society (now The Ergonomics Society) in 1949.

There were many gems in Craik's work that stood out for me, not least of all his exposition of the systems approach as necessary to understand the interplay between human and machine. For me, as someone still (relatively!) early in his career, this was a bit of a revelation as I always thought that systems thinking was a relatively recent approach - it's certainly only just getting into the minds of road safety experts (see the Department for Transport's recent consultation - I'll come back to this another time).

The other one that really hit me was how - as Rob explained it - Craik saw ergonomics as a means of genetic modification in design evolution. In other words, we can't wait for design to evolve out the bad genes, as there's too much at stake - we have to accelerate the process. This is a lovely turnaround from what I often teach my students, in that technology and design are nowadays evolving so quickly that they're outpacing the human ability to keep up.