News and Insights

This presentation was delivered by Adam R. Shames at IBC’s 2nd Annual Human Factors for Drug-Device Combination conference, on May 19-20, 2014 in Philadelphia, PA. Click here to download a copy of the presentation (PDF).

Fink, N., Cartee, N., & Pak, R. (Accepted). Using focus groups to examine prospective memory demands in the medication management of older adults. Submitted to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 58th Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Margolies, R., Gurnaney, H., Egeth, M., Fink, N., Soosar, J., Shames, A., & Rehman, M. (Submitted). Positioning patient status monitors in a family waiting room. Submitted to  Health Environments Research and Design Journal.

Soosaar, J., Margolies, R., Fink, N., Egeth, M., Shames, A. (2014).  WARNING: This poster contains important information and many users will skip it . Poster presented at the HFES 2014 International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care: Leading the Way. Chicago, Il.

by  Marc Egeth In the human factors business, we are always up against leading-edge technology. This naturally makes us think about where technology comes from. Knowing where technology comes from might provide insights into how to improve it in the future. One answer, that might be obvious, is that people are smart and creative, and invent lots of things, and that is where technology comes from. However, some so-called cultural transmission theorists provide a different sort of explanation, one that is so counterintuitive, yet so explanatory, as to be worth dwelling on, even if it is not the final answer. In a nutshell, their suggestion is that technology emerges through an evolutionary process, and that the resulting designs, just like in biological evolution, are brilliantly genius, but they need no brilliantly genius intelligence to create them. Below, I will provide some brief background on how biological evolution works to produce designs without creativity, with an ey...