The Human Factor: Revolutioinizing the Way People Live With Technology

The Human Factor: Revolutioinizing the Way People Live With Technology.  Author Kim Vicente feels that civilization is at a crossroads.

Technology, he argues, is no longer the key to an improved planet or  business. Rather, improving our world requires changing our relationship  with technology and regaining control of our lives — creating  technology that works for people.

“We already know how to design technology that works for people,”  writes Vicente. “If we could just apply this knowledge much more widely,  we could help solve many persistent social problems of global interest  and improve the quality of life of everyone on the planet.”

Vicente is a professor of human factors engineering, or in his terms,  a “technological anthropologist.” He cites real-world examples of poor  product design that can help companies looking to better understand how  technology relates to business, products and customers.

The physical level is perhaps easiest to understand: a toothbrush  that fits into hard-to-reach parts of the human mouth is better tailored  to the human body than one that cannot. At the psychological level,  technology has to take into account how people process and remember  information — from designing voicemail systems to power plants. He notes  the awkwardly placed and uninformative gauges in the design of the  control room at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station left even  highly trained engineers uncertain as to the status of the reactor,  contributing to the infamous accident there.

Without understand technology, Vicente warns innovation is  progressing so quickly that we are falling behind in our ability to  manage it, eliminating the “human factor” from devices originally  designed to make our lives easier.

“Technology — with all its promise and potential — has gotten so far  beyond human control that it’s threatening the future of humankind.”

Kim Vicente was chosen by TIME magazine in 1999 as one of 25 Canadians under the age of 40 as a “Leader for the 21st Century who will shape Canada’s future.”

A professor of human factors engineering at the University of  Toronto, he lectures widely around the world and has acted as a  consultant to, amongst others, NASA, NATO, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S.  Navy, Microsoft and Nortel. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.