In this recorded BrightClub talk, post‑doctoral researcher Dom Furness blends comedy with Human‑Computer Interaction (HCI) theory. He introduces his ChiMed project, which studies how medical devices can be made more user‑friendly by working closely with nurses. Furness then shifts to the "human side" of HCI, outlining fundamental cognitive limits (working‑memory capacity, attention span, recall, eye‑for‑detail, and single‑tasking) and how they give rise to frequent human errors. He illustrates these errors with everyday anecdotes – a misplaced toilet bag after a bathroom mishap, forgetting a cash‑card at an ATM, and sending an email that mentions an attachment but lacks one. He classifies the toilet‑bag incident as a "post‑completion slip error," where the primary goal is achieved but secondary steps are forgotten. The talk explains two interaction‑design remedies: forcing functions (e.g., ATMs that require card removal before dispensing cash) and just‑in‑time cues (e.g., email clients warning about missing attachments). Throughout, Furness uses humor to argue that understanding everyday slip errors can inform design of systems that work with, rather than against, human cognition.
Chapters
Hi, so I'm Dom Furness and I like to watch nurses for a living. Now I'm a postdoc at UCL and I'm studying the area of Human-Computer Interaction, and this basically has two different sides. You've got the technical side, which is to do with interaction design, and then the human side, which has a bit of psychology involved. I'm currently working on a project which is looking to make medical devices more user-friendly, ChiMed, and this gives me the opportunity to work quite closely with nurses on a regular basis. Now, I don't know whether it was my 14th or 15th birthday, but I was So I cut the cake and I blew out the candles and everything. Someone said, "Make a wish." And I said, "Well, I'd really like a closer interaction with the nurses." And, but this isn't really what I had in mind. So working in healthcare and human-computer interaction means 3 things. It means that I'm really interested in the design of technology and how it could be more user-friendly. It means that I'm really interested in the psychology of human error. And because of these two interests I have, it means that nurses aren't interested in me. So I make a living out of studying people pushing buttons, but I don't seem to be pushing the nurses' buttons. In fact, it appears that I'm turning them off. So we're going to concentrate on the human side of the man-machine interaction. And so it's said that on the 6th day, God made man. And by all accounts, if we look at all the evidence we've got and the research that's been done, he actually did a really bad job. Now, the key word here is limited. We've got a limited working memory that can only process 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information. We've got a limited attention span, we've got poor recall of information, we've got a poor eye for detail, and we're error-prone. On top of all this, the male element of the population can only do one thing at a time, which is pretty bad. So if God made man in his image of himself, then he's not looking too good either. Now, my guess is, is it is the 6th day, he's already had a hard week, you know, he's just made everything, and then we've got his Friday night hangover, wakes up Saturday and then he's got to make man. I mean, no wonder he did a bad job. So what does this mean for us on our everyday basis? Well, it means that we make errors and we actually make them quite frequently. And if you've ever recorded the wrong TV program, maybe BBC News instead of Hollyoaks. And if you've ever put a Goodfellas pizza in the oven for a bit too long, made an error. Probably if you've ever tried to assemble any piece of IKEA furniture, then you know what we're talking about. You always have spare parts that you're not meant to have. And leaving your umbrella on a train or the number 29 is a common one as well. Now, two Facebook friends of mine, they recently posted some errors which I found quite amusing. One of them got in the shower with her knickers on. I must say that I've only done that once before. And another one was decorating late at night, and while she was painting, she actually dipped her paintbrush into a cup of tea rather than her pot. So I want to tell a story, and it's going to be a real story about a girl and a guy struggling to find love and getting together. And it has sort of an error involved in it, which— so you have to concentrate on the details. So I'm going to explain later why it's scientifically interesting. So there was a guy and a girl, and they're going out. They don't actually know each other, but they know each other through friends of friends, and they've seen each other out before. And they're getting on quite well and the evening's sort of like going on and they're getting to know each other more and more. In fact, they know each other, they start to get along so much that she ends up going back to his place. Now, I'm not going to elaborate on the details of that evening and I don't actually know what went on, but the important bit happens in the morning. Now, his alarm goes off, which is his cue to go to work. And he gets up and he actually really likes this girl and he says to her, you know, I'm off to work now, but you stay here, make yourself comfortable. You know, make yourself comfortable and— I've lost the— Make yourself comfortable and I just want to tell you that I actually quite like you. You're a very nice girl and, you know, like, if you want to see me again, then leave a note. And, but have breakfast, have a shower, like, relax. She was made up by this. She really liked the guy as well, and that was what she was looking for. And so she stayed in bed for a while, and then she gets up, makes herself breakfast, has a shower, goes to the loo, has a poo, and then this is where it all goes wrong. The poo was too big to flush down the toilet. Yeah, so, so you So she doesn't really know what to do. She can't really leave it there for her potential partner to come back to. He's surely not going to be impressed by this present that she's left. So she thinks, well, maybe a second flush will get rid of it. But no, the poo held strong. It definitely wasn't going anywhere. And after hunting around— this is a true story— after hunting around for a loo brush, maybe to break it up or something. She couldn't find one. So anyway, to solve this little problem that she had, she went to the kitchen and retrieved a plastic bag. She made sure that it wasn't one of those ones with the little holes in it. And she went to the loo and she turned it inside out and fished it out and made sure it was nice and tight so the smell didn't come out. Anyway, so if you can imagine, that she's done that, she's got nothing to worry about. She goes and she writes a letter to the, well, not a letter to the guy, but a short note saying that she quite liked him as well, leaves her number, and then as she leaves the house, she just hears a click. And the click means that she, well, she realizes that she hasn't got the bag. She's left it next to the note. It's got her nice message and the number. Now, whilst you ponder the mixed messages that the guy must have, as he's got back from work and he finds this lovely note and probably the biggest poo that he's ever seen in his life next to it in a bag. I'll explain why this is scientifically interesting. So this is what we call a slip error in human error. Science. And it's a special type of slip error, it's called a post-completion error. Or maybe a poo-completion. But basically, this is where you're so focused on the primary goal that you forget secondary goals that go along with it. So her primary goal was to write the note and to get out of the house, and she actually forgot the bag. Now, where do we see this in everyday life? Well, we see it every time that we go to a cashpoint. So when you go to a cashpoint, you always have the danger of forgetting your card. But no one, well, not many people actually do this because in interaction design we use what's called a forcing function. So your main goal when you go up to a cashpoint is to retrieve the cash, but you have to take the card before they give it to you. Another example is when you're sending emails and you want to put an attachment there. Lots of people might relate to this where you've said, "Oh, please see attached," and you send an email off. So actually, like, new systems, or at least some systems like Thunderbird, actually scan the email, and if you put attachment in it, then they'll remind you that there's not been an attachment. And this is called a just-in-time cue in interaction design. So what we want to do is we want to hear about the stupid things that people do every day. We want to understand them in sort of like psychological terms, and then we want to translate them into interaction design so we can make systems that work with people rather than against them. Now, when you go up to your next cashpoint, or when you send your next email that hasn't got an attachment with it, I'd really like you to think about Big Bright Club and the poor girl with the big poof.
