popular logistics

This bandage - in a shape designed to be useful in more than one configuration - was covered with language-free instructions for use. From the amazing (and amazingly wide-ranging) “Ideo Selects” exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt.

[singlepic=219,320,240,,left] If you’re in or going to be visiting New York, the Cooper-Hewitt is at 2 East 91st Street - that’s at Fifth Avenue on the East side (just east of Central Park). Their number is 212.849.8400 - hours and directions here. To be candid - I love the Cooper-Hewitt - but I’m not sure why - as part of the Smithsonian, a publicly funded museum, it charges admission. But one suspects this is more a legislative/executive branch decision - the Smithsonian museum system, alas, not described in the constitution as a coequal branch (but it might be an improvement).

For our readers concerned with disaster preparedness, there are (at least) four other items in the Ideo show that are worth a look, and in at least one case, of substantial historical significance:

Laurence Gonzalez, the author of the new book Deep Survival, has a piece in the on-line edition of National Geographic Adventure. From “How to Survive (Almost) Anything,”

Accidents of all types used to be analyzed in terms of their physical or mechanical causes. When the cause was clearly human error, they were often written off as the result of foolishness or lack of training. But among those who investigate accidents, there is an increasing awareness that this type of analysis does not fully explain why otherwise rational people do what may seem irrational.

For example, in May 1989, Lynn Hill, the winner of more than 30 international rock-climbing titles, was preparing to climb what she called a “relatively easy” route in Buoux, France. She threaded her rope through her harness, but then, instead of tying her knot, she stopped to put on her shoes. While she was tying them, she talked with another climber, then returned to climb the rock face. “The thought occurred to me that there was something I needed to do before climbing,” she later recalled, but, “I dismissed this thought.” She climbed the wall, and when she leaned back to rappel to the ground, she fell 72 feet (22 meters), her life narrowly saved by tree branches. In her case, more training would not have helped. In fact, experience contributed to her accident. She had created a very efficient model for tying her rope to her harness. She could do it without thinking. So the act of tying her shoes may have been similar enough to tying her rope that it allowed her to reach the unconscious conclusion that her rope was tied, even while leaving a slight residue of doubt.

The December 2007/January 2008 issue of National Geographic Adventure has an excellent piece by James Vlahos about the SAR (Search And Rescue) effort following Steve Fossett’s disappearance. “The Vanishing” appears on page 68 of the print edition - but not at all on National Geographic Adventure’s on-line counterpart. Vlahos makes some interesting points about the human factors issues that are likely to have led to Fossett’s death, and suggests that decentralized - and perhaps somewhat uncoordinated - efforts - may have overlooked some portions of the area in which Fossett was most likely to have crashed. This is worth a read - especially if you’re not familiar with the large area/small target search problem.

The National Geographic Adventure website does have a great piece on survival skills by Laurence Gonzalez. About which more shortly.

Also of yellow dots.

From Redundant Coding - Individual Sensitivity Differences

(photo credited by FAA to Armor Tile)

Which is part of a training module on the FAA’s Human Factors Research and Engineering Group website. I’ll cop to it: I didn’t know the FAA had this sort of resource. But this section, at least, is well-written and well-illustrated.

If you’re interested in human factors engineering - and we all are, aren’t we, even if we don’t know it or won’t admit -  it the FAA Human Factors Workbench  is pretty cool. And the more use it gets - the efficiently our tax dollars are used.