I really enjoyed this post by the Long Dog about how Usability is not always about how best people use websites, or how people struggle with opening doors, but how sometimes usability has wider and more vital implications. Just as in the famous example of the Three Mile Island disaster, the Long Dog cites examples from the first Gulf War which really brings this idea to light.
For example, this is just chilling:
The US Air Force found that under combat stress, fighter pilots ignored alarms alerting them to an incoming missile. They tried sounds and flashing lights, but again the pilots learned to ignore these in the same was we ignore gaudy advertising banners on webpages (banner blindness). The only thing that got the pilots attention every single time was a child’s voice in their earphones saying “Help me Daddy! Help me Daddy!” – a story that still gives me goose bumps.
He also makes the interesting observation that some tank commanders now use handsets that are almost identical to those of gaming consoles handets, because they are often most easily learnt and usable due to the proliferation of these gaming console handsets. Why not utilise an already existing system to ease transition? Although this is an excellent point, I can’t help but wonder what the implications of this may be on the operators of this handsets in the field. I would worry that this is blurring even further the line between reality and playing these war games on the console. I may be over-worrying here, but it seems to me that by utilising the actions and technology that soldiers may use when blowing things up on the xbox when they are actually in the field when they may be called upon to do these things for real, may lead to some depersonalisation and soldiers feeling like they “are in a game”.
Talking of gaming consoles, I played FAR too much Guitar Hero this week. I had so much going on this week but I spent an evening with some friends rocking out on the Wii and it felt great. My friend has the latest version of Guitar Hero and I was comparing it in m head to my earlier version. I felt that the Guitar Hero team had gone a few steps back in terms of the usability of the Guitar Hero interface. It seemed quite confusing and non-intuitive compared to the older version, and there were annoying little problems such as the font used to tell you the band name and song title was too small and practically illegible – something that my friend commented on being very annoying as well. It got me thinking about the Guitar Hero usability tests in general, so when I got home, I started googling! It led me to this very interesting excerpt about some HCI research in Nevada attempting to make Guitar Hero accessible to blind users using haptic feedback. Its called “Blind Hero”! Very interesting piece of research and worth a read!
