It's a cliché, but honestly, can you program your VCR? Sure, being unable to work our gadgets is annoying, but technology's negative impact on society can be deadly serious: Think Chernobyl, the aviation safety reporting system, tech-based medical errors, and hanging chads.
So what's an engineer to do about it? Kim Vicente, a professor of engineering at the University of Toronto and consultant to NASA, NATO, the U.S. Air Force, and Microsoft, offers some insight and ideas in his new book, The Human Factor. His goal is to "give a sense of why technology is wreaking havoc, and provide a new way of thinking that makes the human factor central to the design of effective technology in the modern world, whether it be a gadget or a more complex system."
Human factors engineering starts with the premise that engineers should "tailor the design of technology to people, rather than expecting people to adapt to technology." Makes sense to us.—Wendy Guild Swearingen