• The original source of this document is no longer available; this is an archived version maintained on this website.
• Back to News Index

Design with a human face

By Christopher Dewdney

Originally appeared in The Globe and Mail

A few days ago my new toothbrush, one of the latest generations of the Reach-style toothbrush, broke in half as I was brushing my teeth. It's not that I use inordinate force while I brush; the plastic snapped at a weak point. What I found even more irritating was the fact that I had grudgingly bought this "ergonomic" toothbrush after being unable to find a normal, classic, plain toothbrush, the type I've been using for decades.

Without any real purchasing choice, I was forced to buy an over-designed but under-engineered toothbrush that looked like an elongated dust-buster.

This little anecdote is just one of the many types of human/technology interactions that Kim Vicente looks at in The Human Factor, though I'm not sure we're on the same page when it comes to toothbrushes. At one point in the book, he defends the Reach toothbrush as an improvement on toothbrush design. Perhaps mine was a knock-off. But that hardly matters, because what he has to say about how human beings and their various technologies get along is both interesting and enlightening.

Vicente is the master of uncommon knowledge. I say uncommon because, from the amusing and sometimes horrifying real-life anecdotes he uses to illustrate his theory — from a cockpit crew distracted by a broken control panel light bulb while their airplane crashes into the Everglades to a municipal water supply manager in Ontario who didn't know what e-coli was — it seems that a lot of people have no common sense at all.

Vicente is a professor of engineering at the University of Toronto, and for the past two years has been the Hunsaker distinguished visiting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachsetts Institute of Technology. In his capacity as systems analyst, he has advised NASA, Microsoft and NATO, among others, so he knows what he's talking about.

In his professional consulting capacity, Vicente analyzes technological systems, both machine and human, and makes recommendations based on his observations. He doesn't differentiate between technological objects and what he calls "soft tech," the organizational systems that use people as their "cogs." These "soft technologies" range from cockpit crews in airplanes to hospital administrations. Vicente is a "human factors engineer" practising "Human-tech," as he calls it. This means more than designing ergonomic office furniture; in the preface to The Human Factor he introduces his concept of the "Human-tech Revolution," a sort of grand unifying theory of all aspects of the relationship, sometimes fraught, between our machines and us.

Vicente has structured The Human Factor hierarchically, starting off with the simplest human/tool relations and working up through increasingly complex relations of people and machines until, at the end of the book, he examines politics and culture. Refreshingly, The Human Factor is not a technophile's rant. Vicente doesn't extol the virtues of the Internet, biotechnology and nanotechnology — the Internet barely rates a mention. Instead, he takes a considered look at how we can turn around our sometimes frustrating dealings with machines and bureaucracies and use them instead of them using us. And, even more importantly, how we can make all of this safer.

Vicente underlines his premise with extraordinary statistics. For example, I was amazed to discover that medical error was the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, the equivalent of a wide body jet aircraft crashing every one or two days with no survivors. Chillingly, Vicente then goes on to show how badly designed the display consoles for nuclear power plant control rooms are, showing how these awkward designs played into the disaster at Three Mile Island. He also tackles airport security and high-tech medical devices, both of which illustrate his point about how human systems and technology sometimes exacerbate errors. According to Vicente, human nature has to be included as a variable in the organizational planning of complex systems, particularly those that include teamwork and technology.

In the engineering section of the book, Vicente explains the engineering histories of devices as diverse as Fender Stratocaster guitars to electrocution chairs. He shows us how the counter-intuitive controls to stove-top burners could be solved by an ingenious, linear arrangement of the burners and how photocopiers would benefit from having a print preview display, a feature that would cut paper waste in North America by a large percentage. When he looks at automated phone answering systems, the current bane of consumer-service design, he quotes Ralph Nader to underline his point about their inefficient, depressing reality. As Nader relates, "Sometimes when I'm in the office working late at night and want to listen to classical music. I phone up United Airlines and use my speaker phone to listen to the music they play while I'm being put on hold." Nader's is just one of the interesting anecdotes that pepper the book.

Vicente's writing style reflects his teaching experience; he simplifies complex ideas and presents them along with simple diagrams. The Human Factor is a useful book, not just for systems managers and engineers, but for anyone interested in how technology, in all its forms, can be given a more human, and humane, face.