November!

November

Happy Birthday Adam, Andrea, Erin, & Marc! 

What drew you to human factors and what drew you to Core?

Adam: Human factors is one of those wonderful fields that brings together a diverse group of people to learn from one another. As a human-factors engineer (or “engineering psychologist” as my alma mater called it), I saw an opportunity to apply engineering principles to help people by working directly with the people who could benefit most from these principles. Take a typical usability study of a medical device used by patients, for example. In such a study, I get to work directly with product designers, marketing specialists, and clinicians, literally and figuratively on one side of the glass and with the patients (the study participants) on the other side of the glass. One minute I’m learning from the patients about the product, seeing it through the patients’ eyes; the next minute, I’m learning about the design of the product, seeing it through the eyes of the designers. That is so cool! Each interaction is an opportunity to learn and grow, while developing the product and my own interests at the same time. Creating Core was a natural extension of my desire to learn from others. At Core, I’m surrounded by the smartest and most caring people in the field. I’m forever thankful for the opportunity that human-factors engineering provided me in building this company.

Erin: I found out about human factors in college and was drawn to the idea that there were people who did not see humans as machines. I wanted to be part of the people who had a sense of understanding that stress and certain policies and "red tape" structures within an organization can make it hard for people to work efficiently or work well at all. I was introduced to a Professor who also worked for a small consultancy who used the idea of a "Just Culture" in high stress environments like Emergency Departments in hospitals to help reduce medical errors and miscommunication. Ultimately, I came to Core because I wanted to be part of a team that helped to communicate how patients were using devices and to be a patient advocate.

Marc: I’ve always sort of loved gadgets, science fiction, and rigorous experimental psychology study design. Core brings me prototypes of next-generation tech to design studies around. I started working at Core part-time around taking care of a new baby and adjunct teaching psychology, and kept doing more until soon it was full-time; now that was 7 years ago.

What is one fun fact about yourself?

Adam: I met the love of my life while studying in Paris. As it turned out, she grew up 20 minutes from me outside of Philadelphia. But, it was Paris that brought us together. I guess it’s true what they say—Paris is the city of love.

Erin: One fun fact about myself is that I love cars!

Marc: I really like wandering around a city, any time of day or night.

What is your educational or professional background and how does it relate to your everyday job at Core?

Adam: I have a dual bachelor of science degree in human-factors engineering and psychology from Tufts University and an international master of business administration from Temple University. In the former, I learned about the limitations of human cognitive, perceptual, and physical abilities, and how to develop products and systems that don’t punish people for these limitations but instead support them when, where, and how they need it. In business school, I learned how to build and run a company, which is not all that different from what I just described having learned as human factors engineer.

Erin: My educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Flagler College in St. Augustine Florida, a Master of Science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Science Education from King's College London. I believe the foundations of Psychology and Human Factors principles help me to understand how people interact in their environments, man-made systems as well as social systems. I believe it all helps me to understand what questions to ask participants to better understand their root causes.

Marc: I grew up learning experimental psychology from my dad Howard Egeth, currently who studies attention and who had been a student of Paul Fitts, of Fitts’ Law. I briefly tried to pull away from psychology as an undergrad at the University of Maryland and follow my interest in evolution - There is grandeur in this view of life ... endless forms most beautiful - but got pulled back in through evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience which I studied as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. I had a great class there with Saul Sternberg, previously of AT&T’s Bell Labs, the first industry HF lab. I still see Saul in my neighborhood sometimes in Center City when I’m walking around the city. I then moved on to more medically applied forms of psychology, in large part because there were funded opportunities there, including a postdoctoral fellowship at CHOP working on autism and brain-computer interfaces. That’s where I worked on designing a particularly difficult UI, a communication system for children who are completely paralyzed, locked-in, cannot move even their eyes, but still can think. From there, a postdoc in anesthesiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where I designed experiments and apparatus to assess consciousness in fruit flies, which, to understate, is another difficult UI. Some of my most relevant experience has also come from volunteer research side-gigs: conducting formative usability testing of new prototype exhibits at The Franklin Institute; presenting dolphin cognition experiments to guests at EPCOT. Experiments sometimes included a giant underwater keyboard device, another difficult UI.

What do you enjoy doing most at Core? Have you found a “specialty” or “niche” within Core?

Adam: Watching the people at Core come together day after day to help improve the company, themselves, the products and companies we are engaged to support, and the lives of the people who will be forever changed by those products.

Erin: I enjoy seeing the development of new products and seeing how people understand them. I think my favorite part of working at Core is moderating and letting myself see the world through the participant/patient's eyes for a brief hour or so. It helps me to feel that life is really about all the people we're connecting with and that we're all trying to do something to help the world a little bit every day.

I really enjoy working with healthcare workers the most. I try to get involved in studies that involve nurses as my mom was a nurse for over 40 years and I have a sense of empathy with people who are trying to help patients -- I want to understand how their world works and how to best help them give the best care.

Marc: Psychology is really only interesting, useful, and good when it actually in fact fully logically connects study designs to real conclusions. FDA’s reviewers seem also to have a hard-nosed perspective: human factors testing is not required of medical devices just for fun, but because such tests can provide valid results. My speciality or niche might be in connecting experimental study designs to one-the-ground outcomes and next steps for new technology.

What is the worst or best design you have ever seen and why?

Erin: One of my favorite things that I own is my car. Specifically, I love the technology feature that senses when my key fob is within a certain radius of the car and unlocks the car for me without having to press a button! Makes my life so much easier when my hands are full and I don't have to fumble around for the fob to press a small button.

Marc: Best design: It’s evolutionary rather than intentional, but even under a microscope the mosquito’s proboscis just keeps getting thinner and thinner. The proboscis it “bites” us with includes count ‘em 6 spearate long, thin parts with specialized functions. It saws open our skin, finds blood vessels, inserts tubes into our blood vessels, injects anti-coagulant into us through one tube, withdraws blood through another, and then disengages and flies away, all without us even noticing when it happens.

Worst design: Same thing. Ugh. Mosquitoes are the worst. Swat ‘em.

Or give them something better to eat instead.