Way back in college, I took Stu Parsons' course on Human Factors Engineering. Prof. Parsons was one of the investigators for 3 Mile Island--probably one of the worst consequences of human error in this country. His photo of beer tap handles used on the control board of a nuke plant (used later by Don Norman in POET) still sticks in my mind today.
There's a lot of folks compiling such examples on the Web:
Mark Hurst's This is Broken:
Good Experience: This Is Broken
Michael Darnell's Bad Human Factors Designs:
These anecdotes are always great for pulling out of your...hat (ahem) in a meeting with knuckleheaded folks.
Posted by jameshom at August 25, 2003 12:39 PM | TrackBack