309 - We're Baaaack!

309 (FAV) - We're Baaaack!

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Speaker 3: [00:00:00] Welcome to Human Factors. Cast your weekly podcast for human factors, psychology and design.

Nick Roome: Oh, it's so good being home. Episode 309. We're here, we're back. We're recording this episode live on November 13th, 2025. This is Human Factors Cast. I'm your host Nick Rome, and I'm joined today by Mr. Barry Kirby. Barry, how the hell are you, man?

Barry Kirby: I am awesome. It's great to be back in the, uh, back in the studio and God, I've missed this.

Nick Roome: Me too. We're backed by Popular Demand. We got an awesome show for you lined up. We're gonna be catching up with all the human factors, trends in the news that we missed while we've been gone for the last year. [00:01:00] So what do we got? We got AI video, we got new extended reality stuff. We got cars and how they're putting physical buttons back into them, which a big win for human factors.

And then of course we got robots. But first, uh, we always gotta talk about the programming notes. And, uh, you know what, if you're a long time listener of the show, I wanna thank you. Thank you for sticking with us, and thank you for sticking through the hiatus, uh, sabbatical's over. We're back. But I do wanna bring up a couple things here.

So why are we back? Why now? What happened? Well, I am, I'm truly inspired and thankful for what has happened at Aspire this year. Uh, if you're not aware, we did put out a big long live stream from Aspire this year. Talked to many great folks, had a lot of great conversations, but I think some of the conversations that happened off camera are some of the more interesting ones because a lot of folks have stopped by the podcast booth and asked a few questions.

Mainly what happened to the show? Where were you guys? What, what's going on? Why are you not producing? What [00:02:00] happened to Barry? Is, are you guys okay? And my answer to that is yes. We had, we both had some life stuff come up. I've relocated. If you're watching the video, you can see my fancy new digs in my background here.

But I think one of the things that really humbled me is that despite not producing for the better half of a year, we had more people show up at the podcast booth this year than in any of the years past. And the show has been a continuous part of folks' lives. So just thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you. It's made me rejuvenated and inspired and, uh, I guess as they say, the show must go on. I also want to like, welcome a couple new folks who we picked up at HFES to the lab. So welcome to Rida, ESHA and Jasmine to the lab where we are working on some really cool stuff, one of which I will tease in just a moment.

The other thing that's exciting news, uh, since we've been gone, you know, I have been, I have been keeping an eye on a Chinese oil drilling company. Now, Barry, do you have any [00:03:00] idea why I might have my eyes on a Chinese oil drilling company?

Barry Kirby: No, and I can't wait to find out.

Nick Roome: So there, there was a Chinese oil drilling company that took our domain, human factors cast.com, back in 2019.

And it's been a vicious fight. A vicious battle. But I can, I can confidently say that we are now the owners of the human factors cast.com domain. So you can go there and check out all our stuff. It still redirects you to the media site, but take that Chinese drillers. Yeah,

Barry Kirby: why

Nick Roome: do

Barry Kirby: Chinese

Nick Roome: drillers need

Barry Kirby: the human?

Nick Roome: I don't know. It's the strangest thing. It's the strangest thing. Anyway, as I mentioned, we have that HFES aspire live on our video platforms now. So go, go check that out. And if you want a little sneak peek of some of the fun stuff the lab is working on, here's, if they say there's no more original thoughts in the world, let me propose to you this sentence, Chris Wickens thirst trap video.

If [00:04:00] that's not enough to entice you, go check out our TikTok and watch the thirst trap video. There you go. There. Barry, it's been a long year. What's been going on at 1202?

Barry Kirby: At 1202, pretty much the same has been going on as what's been going on in human factors. Cast I not a lot. So 1202 is still in a pause.

I know the last time we spoke a year ago, we were looking at, uh, rejuvenating what was going on, and we still talk about that. And in fact, the team has come up with a, the list of topics and about how we gonna re-bring it back. But we wanted, we wanted, we wanted to be more planned, more considered, and a more sustainable because as we found out when it's just a few people doing a lot of work, the ability to effectively burn out and lose the, lose the fun is real.

So we want to make it more sustainable and make that work. But in, other news, which I think we spoke about a bit the last time we, we were around, one of my other hats that I'm now taken on is I'm part, I'm a co-chair in the [00:05:00] IEA public relations and commu and communications committee.

Which is a, a sexy sounding title. Um, but basically we do try to develop a new comms strategy new and a comms policy and, well, I say new, there's never actually been one in the past, so I'm trying to take us into, into new places. So hopefully with the work that we are doing there, then we'll see encouraging more, more people to do the sort of thing that we are doing.

Share work, share what they're doing in different ways. And then the big thing coming up, which I'm going to be pushing people to be talking about quite a lot over the next 12 months or so is IEA 2027, which is the IEA Triannual conference. It was in South Korea a couple years ago and it's now going, it's now coming to London.

So yeah, it's, there's been a lot going on as well as work, um, been getting in the way work has been really, really heavy. But I'm so pleased to be back here where we can actually do the fun stuff. 'cause I think that's the big thing, you know, it's all work and no play, whereas I've really missed being able to just chat [00:06:00] and, you know, have a bit of fun around the, the human factors piece as well as bringing seriously dedicated, uh, reviews and insights into human factors news.

Nick Roome: Yeah. Well, speaking of the news, shall we get into it? Let's do that. Let's hit the thing. Go hit it. Hit it. Go.

Yes, this is the part of the show all about human factors news, and we've certainly missed a lot of it over the last year. So, Barry I, I think we have a couple stories tonight. What's the first thing we wanna get into?

Barry Kirby: Yeah, so as you say, we are gonna talk at least about four stories tonight. So the first one we're gonna look at is AI video.

So the artificial intelligence landscape continues its rapid evolution and the latest developments in AI generated video represents a significant inflection point for human factors practitioners. We're seeing major players like Google and open AI release, increasingly sophisticated video generation tools.

Google's video [00:07:00] three and open AI's Soro two that can create high fidelity video content from text prompts, compete with the synchronized audio and precise physical modeling, AI video generation versus fundamental questions about how humans will interact with, evaluate and trust synthetic media. We talk about cognitive load issues when users need to distinguish from real, uh, distinguish real from generating content, potential shifts in video liter literacy requirements and entertain and entirely new interaction paradigms for content creation tools.

The democratization of video products could reshape everything from training simulations to user testing methodologies. There's the erosion of visual truth. Accessibility concerns around generat generated content and the ethical minefield of deep fakes and misinformation. And as you can tell that this, uh, this video is certainly not AI generated.

'cause it wouldn't make as many mistakes as I did during that, that first reading. And what do you think? I haven't done it for 12 months.

Nick Roome: You know what? It's all right, man. You're good. You're good. You [00:08:00] know, I think, um, it's been a minute, so it, I I, I forgive you for the, uh, for and the blurbs need work.

The blurbs need work anyway. AI video. Yeah, that's a thing. How crazy is it? I that we've been gone for that long, that both VO three and SOA two have come out and have hit like mainstream ish trends. Like I'm seeing, I'm seeing these videos everywhere now. Some, some, some of them are hilarious, others are concerning.

Um, and we'll go over all those. But, you know, I think in general, it raises a lot of questions certainly around trust in who's sharing what and what can we can believe on the internet. And, uh, I, I don't know, man, where, where, where's your head at all of this? I think,

Barry Kirby: I think

Nick Roome: when

Barry Kirby: you start off, so if you take the.

Very simplistic view that it's all entertaining, right? So we all watch shorts now. You sit there scrolling through your, uh, through [00:09:00] your, um, reels or your shorts or your uh, or your TikTok and you see short bits of media that give you a laugh or maybe you shed a tear or something like that. And there could be either real videos or AI generated.

Does it really matter? As long as you are entertained at that point. So that, from that really simplistic perspective, more power to your elbow, I think is brilliant. However, as was raised in that, um, really badly red blurb, the, it's, it's when if, if people start then believing and taking the facts from these things you used to be able to tell a video quite easily.

'cause it would have, you'd have eight fingers on one hand or three arms and, and two heads. Whereas now it's really, really sophisticated and you, you see yourself having to look towards the tags to see where there's been ba uh, tagged as AI generated because, it's conceivable what it is.

And then when you, when you then talk about speeches from, uh, political leaders and you are having to seriously sit there and go, is that AI [00:10:00] generated or is that real? Because you just don't know. I think the from a very simplistic perspective on, it's all just entertainment.

That's absolutely fine. That's cool. But you're right we right in, in being concerned about it in terms of how do we trust what is being said and at what point does it matter? What do you think? Uh,

Nick Roome: yes. So let's I'd like to talk about the breadth of what's out there, right? So on the funny spectrum, some of the things that I've seen are like, have you seen the chiropractor videos?

No. The chiropractor videos, they're taken like, two by fours and smacking people in the back and throwing 'em into the wall. Just completely ridiculous scenarios that you would never actually find in real life, which those are hilarious to me. Then they're sort of in the middle, which is like convincing but not meant to be [00:11:00] inherently deceptive or dangerous.

So this is like the kittens jumping on the trampoline or something? I, you know, it's like a ring camera footage of kittens jumping on a trampoline. I don't remember that one. Bunnies. Was it bunnies? It might have been bunnies, yeah. Bunnies jumping on the trampoline. And that's not inherently like something to promote misinformation.

It's probably just something that somebody created, like show me bunnies jumping on a trampoline through a ring camera. And then there's sort of the the other more dangerous, sinister end. And I've seen all three of these on, on those platforms. The last one that I've seen is people going around and taking an image of somebody like store and then, giving an AI a prompt to have them do something like show their belly or like climb on top of something in the store and show it to 'em and be like, is this you?

Mm-hmm. Yep. You know, and I, I've seen that trend and that one's a little bit more dangerous because now you're actually trying to convey that [00:12:00] somebody did something that they did not do. And you can go even further too, right? You have, um, I think at one point during the year you had a, a, uh, some AI video of Donald Trump licking Elon Musk's feet at, played in some federal government building, right?

And so like, if, if, if you believe that type of thing. You know, it might be convincing, but then, so I think there's quite a, a broad spectrum of how to use this in terms of how we actually discern. There's a really good account, and I wish I had his name handy. But he goes through and, and looks at videos and kind of gives you information about the tells for AI videos.

And you can look at things like the fuzzy edges and staying on top of that stuff is gonna make it really apparent. Who knows? Who, who, who is able to discern real from generated? I don't know. I have a lot of like con concerns I guess if, if this is used for nefarious purposes in the past.

But I [00:13:00] guess the sort of default that I've taken over the last couple months has been default to no trust, in what I'm seeing. If it seems like it's too crazy, it probably is. Uh, and I know that's not true for all videos, but that's sort of the approach that I've sort of found myself in is I used to go, wow, that's crazy.

They caught that on camera too. Did they really? I don't know. What, what's been your sort of shift over the last few months?

Barry Kirby: I think there's been a, a definite 'cause, certainly, and we, we've gotta take this into, into account where politics is as well, um, or general people's belief in what's going on, because I don't think that necessarily people are using these.

Videos as sources of truth. I think they're using them as strength as strengthening their own beliefs. So if they see something that they believe in, then that just reaffirms what they already believe in. And if, if they see something that is not necessarily against, uh, sorry, is against their beliefs, then their, um, users said, oh, [00:14:00] that's fake.

That's fake. If the, it's now entered General Lance or certainly has in the uk, I dunno whether it has in the us where younger members of society are now if, if they think something is wrong or fake, it's now called, oh, that's ai. Oh, that's ai. Yeah. And that, and that's that piece. But I think we, I mean, in past episodes, if we think back that far, it's been a while.

We have, I think I, I don't think anything's changed in this, in, it's just Got it. The technology's got better. But I think we still in that phase of there's, you know, distinct we should be careful about what we're watching. What I'm really interested with this is how could we use this in the HF world?

Because I was thinking about it in terms of if you, could you give it a sufficient prompt for it to, you know, give you a user run through of maybe sort of a process or a procedure, or could you give it a, um, a UI you've designed and that, and could, it could you get it a, uh, a user to maybe interact with it in a way that you weren't thinking of?

And things like that? I, I haven't, I mean, uh, cards at the [00:15:00] table. I've not tested it in this way. So chat, GPT we've spoken about at length that, um, we've used it for, um, doing HF analysis, using it for white boarding, all that sort of stuff. I've not used this in this way, but the stuff we've been talking about tonight makes me think that maybe we could use it in a really, positive is maybe a strong word, but can we use it as an HF tool in a way that we haven't been able to before?

Nick Roome: Yeah, I, I get that approach. I mean, I, I wonder, you know, the thing that I, I would wonder about is like, could you potentially like model a safety video or something, for somebody like let's say you don't have the resources to create a safety video. Could a one person human factors team come up with a safety training video for a product that actually uses it in a way, or is convincing in a way that is approved by the human factors person that then they can go off and, and say it's out there.

I mean, they still, there's probably still like. You need to disclose that it was ai and [00:16:00] speaking of disclosures, like there's a whole realm of laws and safeguards and guardrails against AI that we could get into. But that's, I feel too much. That's a whole new episode. Yeah. We, we talked at length about that in the past, but I mean, it goes to say, you know, like you require people to label it as AI generated, but they don't always.

And so what's the penalty for that? Uh, slap on the wrist, a content violation, that type of thing. But really I think the power in this is going to be, uh, it will create a divide between those who have media literacy and those who do not.

And it, it's really gonna be interest to see I've even had this happen a couple times where my wife has shown me a video and she hates AI with a passion.

And she like, like I, I love to kind of poke at her about it. 'cause I'm like, you, you know that it could be used for good stuff too. Um, she hates it with a passion. And so she shows me a video and I'll flip it on her and be like, that's ai. Right?[00:17:00]

Barry Kirby: But it is, and it, it is. It is interesting. I think it's the it's, it's a new, it's, it's almost, it's a new age, isn't it? It's, it's about how do we use this stuff for good and what is good because actually like what, what you are, what we've described in the past is to do some of this. We we're taking away work from videographers.

We're taking away work from people who do this stuff professionally. But then the other argument is true that actually we wouldn't be using it if it wasn't available. So if I could, you know, have a, uh, a, a cognitive walkthrough of a, of a website that is graphically produced by some sort of AI tool or a walkthrough of a, of, of a user trial or something like that I wouldn't be doing that in any other way.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't generate a video as evidence in, in the same sort of way so cheaply. So I don't think you're taking [00:18:00] anybody's jobs away as such. 'cause the jobs wouldn't be there in the first place, but. Will this get good enough that we can seriously, as HF practitioners, HF scientists, HF engineers use this in a, in a meaningful way.

I think, we'll, my gut feel is that we'll get somewhere where we use it as a good interaction tool as a, you play a bit of video and look, this is kind of the sort of thing we got up to and here's the analysis, um, which has huge value. Um, whether we gets any more than that, I don't know. Be cool if it did

Nick Roome: though.

Yeah. I, I wonder, so I mean, there's, there's some, some safety elements here. You with soa, at least you have that SOA logo. I mean, you can remove watermarks fairly easy, but that one at least is good to see. It's there. I wonder, um, you know, as we start to think about what this actually means for society and, and the long-term effects as I said, I'm kind of switching [00:19:00] my default mode to disbelief.

Uh, you, you, I'm disbelieving that you are in the dark right now. You are, you are turning on the lights.

Barry Kirby: Yeah.

Nick Roome: No,

Barry Kirby: uh, my, um, my, my studio isn't used to actually me being in here doing this. So, yeah, that's ex

Nick Roome: that's exciting. But I think, you know, what would it take for us societally to to, to.

Have that media literacy, you know, should, should education systems like test whether or not children are able to discern something. I've, I've had these conversations with my son. I say, do you think this is real or fake or real, or ai? And, and I ask him why, you know? And he is like, I don't think that would actually happen.

So I'm having these conversations with a 6-year-old. But I think I, I wonder, uh, that's where my head's at, you know, what type of things can we do from a society to, to protect our own interests from falling victim to these artificially generated videos?

Barry Kirby: Yes. And I guess there is [00:20:00] an element there of, of truly understanding impact.

And we've gotta be able to, I, in the same way that I guess during a court case, we have to un, we have to understand, you know, what damages to, uh, of slander and liable. Because it's, it's in a similar vein. If you are, if you, if it's fraud in many ways, but we've gotta understand what, what the impact of that is and that, and be able to quantify it in order for, for legal cases to be, um, um, to start ruling through.

Yeah, no, I think interesting times. Yeah. All right. Speaking of time, why don't we move on to the next story. It's almost like we can't keep to, can't keep time and, and understand. We've got four stories. No, I'm keeping

Nick Roome: time Very well, Barry. I'm, I'm timing this out,

Barry Kirby: man.

Nick Roome: We, we got

Barry Kirby: it. Oh, you are? I'm not, I'm, I'm just here for the ride.

So let's talk about, um, extended reality. So we watched Extended Reality headsets absolutely explode over the past year, and honestly it's been a wild ride for us Human Factors folks between meta pushing their RayBan smart glasses with AI [00:21:00] integration and Apple upgrading the Vision Pro with their M five chip.

We've seen this fundamental shift from VR only experiences to mixed reality becoming the baseline expectation. The hardware is getting lighter, more comfortable and way more capable. If you're in human factors, you're not paying attention to extended reality right now. You'll probably miss the boat on what could be the next major computing platform after the smartphone.

So claim there Meta Ray bands and at a Apple Vision Pro.

Nick Roome: What do you think? I think that's a, that's a pretty bold claim that these are the next platform after smartphones. I think. Um, that's wishful thinking, but I think we're heading in that direction. I don't know. I think that glasses are much more easy to put on than a headset is.

And, and just generally my.

Faith and interest in VR have waned over time. And that's VR for sure. Xr, I, I consider them all part of the same vein, but my faith and interest in, in [00:22:00] XR has, has, uh, waned over time. But maybe that's just because I haven't had a chance to use one of the most advanced systems. Uh, if anyone's listening wants to send us a copy, you can do that.

I won't, I won't say no. Yeah. I, I don't know. What, what are your thoughts? Have you, have you used any of these

Barry Kirby: advanced systems? Uh, not, not yet. Like, say, if anybody wants to send me some to try out, then um, I'm more than happy to give you an honest review. But I think in principle I'm quite excited.

So when Google last came, first came out, do you remember Google last? That was a while ago, wasn't it? So when Google last first came out, when he came out to the uk, I bought a set. Then they canceled the program shortly after. Not that I'm bitter but the idea behind what that was the fact that it wasn't, you weren't put on a headset that excluded your vision and you were entering into the world.

It was part of your world, I quite liked. But the big pushback against it at the time was everybody you knew, uh, everybody knew you wearing Google Glass because it was bulky. It was very specific and it looked exactly like what it was. Where I [00:23:00] see the Meta RayBan display in particular, changing the game here is be, it's just another pair of shades.

Unless you know what you're looking for. It's just another pair of glasses which I think is really cool. There's there, there's, there's a flip side argument to that though, that again, one of the, one of the big arguments against Google Glass was people's safety, pri privacy and all that going on with the cameras and, and, and whatnot.

Um, now I don't believe, and I could be wrong, um, the Metro Ray Band has the inbook, all the Inbook cameras in the same way as Google Glass had. But you are still having a level of your privacy being invaded, but the, in this time you don't know that it's happening. Um, because yeah, the technology's got so much better.

Um, and unless you know that it, that the, that it's happening, then what does that mean for us? Because if, if anybody's wearing body cameras or anything like that, it's blatantly, obviously wearing a body cam, it's a big square thing on, on, on, on your [00:24:00] chest, et cetera. So there is elements around that.

But also there's the societal issues here where if you are, if you, if somebody's wearing, it's bad enough at the moment when you're in a teams meeting or, or zoom meeting or whatever and somebody hasn't got the camera on you dunno whether they're paying attention to what you're saying. You know the about you, you're not getting them societal cues with these more realistic, believable headsets.

Providing the augmented reality, you have no idea really the person you are talking to, what do they actually look at that? Are they paying attention to you? Or actually, are they reading the news on the, um, on through their extended reality because they're bored of you, but they're just showing you a polite face?

Or are they, are they getting better cues on how to react and engage with you, um, using more information as it comes in that you just don't have, so in all sorts of meetings, et cetera, et cetera. You, they may be unleveling the playing field. That said, I'm quite excited by them. I [00:25:00] think I'd like the idea of them, particularly from us, from an human factors perspective.

We love doing eye tracking, um, experimentation. And I think though allowing these type of things to, to exist a helps us with queuing and things like that. So the, there's all sorts of good stuff we could do with it for as far as enhancing tasks. But there is, yeah, I think there's some real issues to, to grapple with.

And this is now is not going to go away. Um, I think these are now here too. These have now been the first ones that you can look at and say, XR is here to stay.

Nick Roome: Yeah. A few things. I think the first thing with regards to privacy, safety is that these glasses have a. A visual indicator on them that indicates that you're being recorded.

I think it's a red, little red light. The problem with that is that you can hack this thing to, to disable the light. Um, you can put over a piece of electrical tape over the light, so you're immediately [00:26:00] being deceptive when you do those things. There's also, when it comes to privacy and safety, I think there's there was an article in Forbes, uh, a couple months back that looked at a group of college students, I'm trying to look at the article right now.

Yeah. Harvard they, they had they had hooked these RayBan smart glasses up to a, a facial recognition system that they had built. And what it did is as you were talking to somebody, it would recognize their face, look them up on social media, and you were able to pull up details about them live in the moment.

And they call it i x-ray and that also, we all need to take care of our digital footprint, but it just goes to show how big our digital footprint can be. If somebody were to look at me and go, oh, hey, you're the host of Human Factors Cast, I don't, I wouldn't know if they've actually know that from listening to the show or if their glass has just looked it up.

So [00:27:00] there's a ton of privacy concerns a ton of security concerns and I think that's a lot to think through. I don't know all the answers, but feel we open the can of worms on this show and don't put 'em back in.

Barry Kirby: Yeah, I, I think there's a lot of, I mean, just think about work I'm doing at the moment.

I think there is massive amounts of positive roles. I can see this being useful in. So any sort of maintenance, maintenance activities, any sort of maintenance tasks. So you've all, it acts like that virtual mentor, virtual virtual assistant. It can recognize what you're looking at, help, you help, uh, guide tasks and things like that.

You could have it in medical, um, medical settings where I think paramedics being able to identify things by it, seeing what it can see through the cameras a slightly more. I guess in the uk I'd be, I'd be ha happier with this, um, than what's happening in the US at the moment, but how the police forces could be using it.

So when, when you have to, I, police pull you over, you have to give them identification. Actually, they could probably get that [00:28:00] fairly quickly using these type of devices rather than having to go through and, and look up and all that sort of stuff. Whether that's a good thing at the moment, I don't know.

So I think it's interesting. The one I haven't really seen, if I'm honest. So I've seen a lot on the, on the meta ray bands. I've, I haven't seen, I've seen very little on the Apple vision comparatively

Nick Roome: Yeah. So really what, what the Apple vision thing here, they, they added the M five chip and they've added some comfort features.

But I think what's interesting about both of these the, they've, well, also with the Apple, they've added some additional features with being able to show more pixels to the eye and to do a higher refresh rate, which is better for things. But I think the, um. The interesting thing to me across both of these stories is that the default has now gone to mixed reality.

Yes. Where the default in the past had been like, oh, let's look at virtual reality and see how, how we can throw on a headset and get transported to this other world. But now it [00:29:00] seems like that's kind of like a it also has this too, and that's kind of nice in some scenarios, like where you can watch a big screen TV or something in, in a virtual environment.

But I, I think the interesting thing is the default towards the mixed reality. And that's, that is exciting to me. I mean, you imagine a world, you, you started to bring up some of these like use cases. You imagine a world where, um, you have onboard captioning for somebody who needs accessibility features, right?

Like you're sitting in a panel and you have onboard captioning right there. Like you said, I think there's probably a lot of good that we can do data collection wise in terms of studies and tasks that we could use to better make things for humans. And so I I, I don't doubt the positive upsides to these.

I, my brain tends to go towards the darker, darker side of this. It's like, you know, there's a story about a guy walking around a a a A water park. With these RayBan and no one thinks [00:30:00] otherwise. The, there's still a novel enough technology to where people won't look twice at you for wearing raybans.

I think it will be quite interesting once we get to the point in the future where this stuff is more ubiquitous to where everyone is wearing a pair, right? There was a point where not everyone had a smartphone. There was a mix of smart and dumb phones. Uh, and, and it was not that long after where everybody had one.

And I'm wondering if we'll encounter something similar here. You know, are there going to be things that we attach to our glasses that then operate the same way that give us that same advantage as the built-in, the built-in Ray band stuff. Will glasses come with this by default?

Are there going to be pairs that people can wear that don't have lenses in them, or have lenses that don't have magnifying qualities for the vision impaired? Like it will everybody have a glass pair of glasses in the future? I don't know. But it is [00:31:00] kind of interesting to think about where we would go if this technology became more affordable because I, like I said I can see the upsides

Barry Kirby: mm-hmm.

Nick Roome: Being able to display my calendar on the wall, or, you know, whatever it is. I think there's the

Barry Kirby: interesting bit with Bo with both of these examples is they, as you quite rightly highlighted, they're al, they're almost two ends of a spectrum where the Apple Vision Pro is still in that headset. You know, it's big it's ugly.

When you compare it to the set of Raybans, the Raybans is looking like it's, it, it's part of you. It's, it's, it will end up being a fashionable product because of what it is. And you know, and I think what you just said is right. You know, you, we'll almost have the element of like, oh, what do you mean you're wearing dumb glasses?

Um, as opposed to a, you know, as a smartphone. I think the other bit that you mentioned as well about the Dr the move away from virtual reality, and I think it's about, for me, it's about how we mer how committed you have to [00:32:00] be to do a a virtual reality headset. You have to put it on, you have to disappear in the world.

You have to prep, prep yourself beforehand to make sure you're not gonna run into anything. And then also you had to trust the people around you that they weren't gonna do anything silly. Whilst, you know, you basically could cut off all of your senses, whereas XR is merging your senses. It, and I've seen some of the games and things that make use of the space around you rather than cut you off entirely from it.

So it's obviously safer in that as well. Yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. And I'm, I'm really keen to try out some of the, particularly the Raybans, I think.

Nick Roome: Yeah, it'll, it, it will be interesting. For now though, I think we'll take a quick break and then we'll be back to talk about more news stories right after.

I find the button for this

Speaker: Human factors cast brings you the best in human factors. News, interviews, conference coverage, and overall fun conversations into each and every episode we produce. But we can't do it without you. The [00:33:00] Human Factors cast network is 100% listener supported. All the funds that go into running the show come from our listeners.

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Nick Roome: Have I mentioned lately how wonderful our patrons are. I haven't because we haven't been on, but I I don't think you mentioned that in about a year. Sincerely, thank you for those of you who did not unsubscribe from re Patreon. Thank you. I understand that we've been gone [00:34:00] and I appreciate everything because we wouldn't be able to keep the same amount of setup that we had without that.

I can commit that we are back. We are back, baby. We're, we'll make it, we'll make it worth it. So thank you. Thank you. I have nothing else to add. Just thank you. The show is supported by people like you. Okay. Let's get into our last two stories here. You wanna read the next one for cars?

Barry Kirby: Yep. So, in a a revolution for common sense, the automotive industry has experienced a significant course correction in interface design, marking a rare victory for human factors principles over aesthetic minimalism. After years of migrating crucial vehicle controls to touchscreens a trend that prioritize sleek d dashboards over driver safety manufacturers are finally acknowledging what ergonomics researchers have long warned.

Eyes off Road Time matters. Euro end cap's decision to require physical controls for five star safety ratings coupled with major automakers res uh, reversing their touchscreen only [00:35:00] strategies represents more than just a design trend. It's a validation that evidence-based human practice engineering eventually prevails even against powerful market forces.

So, Nick, what's your car look like now?

Nick Roome: It's still got a lot of physical control. I still drive a 2015 thing. Cool. I'm not, I don't have that much Patreon money, Perry.

Like, yeah. My mine personally doesn't have all it. It has, it does have a touch screen for things like the audio controls.

But I, I think the physical controls, the climate control, the fan e there, there's still a lot of physical controls even for the audio playback. I think this is a good thing generally.

There, there's been a lot of push towards the unified touchscreen over the years, probably for profitability profit margins. If you can put all the controls in one touch screen, then why would we need to make controls for every little [00:36:00] thing? Whether or not that's the right approach, that's the approach that I think many decision makers have made at car companies.

I think they have long thought that some of the solutions to a touch screen were going to be things like voice commands or you know, steering, wheel mounted controls, which do work. But I think the thing like voice commands, you know, there's, there's an inherent difficulty with trying to communicate while you are driving and to make sure that the system understands what you're saying and to make sure that, that, that system interprets what you're saying as the correct action.

There's just a lot of places where it can break down, and I'm, I'm just happy to see that like you said, common sense is winning out here. I don't know what, what are your thoughts on it? You had some, uh, pretty strong thoughts in the pre-show.

Barry Kirby: Yeah, no, I, so I've always been a, a, a bit of a touchscreen fan [00:37:00] within reason.

So from a design perspective, as soon as you commit to a hard button, you cannot change that design. You cannot play with it. You cannot evolve it. You can't improve it. It is once, once you've committed to a hard button, it's, it's, it's absolutely there in, I would say, in stone, probably in plastic.

Uh. And so for, from a a future looking perspective, I do think that that touchscreens have a, a huge amount of value in, in evolving systems. But that is, all that is always got, has to have been traded off. And particularly when we, I remember doing this work years ago in, in civilian cockpit space that it was, right.

What can you put on a touchscreen? What has to stay hard as hard buttons and why? And so it's things like where you are, you are needing to do stuff, but you need to keep your eyes on the road, eyes in the air, um, eyes outside the cockpit to do things. And you want it, you need to be able to touch it, identify it, [00:38:00] and then action it without actually having to look at it.

And so them sort of controls are really really important. So getting that balance right between what can I have on a touch screen? What could, what do I need to have physical controls, I think is, is as, as much of an art, as it was a science. And really what drove us down a whole touchscreen route was, if we've gotta be blunt about it, was Tesla.

They, a lot of other companies were I guess playing with touchscreens were, and putting more onto it. But it wasn't until you got to Tesla pudding, all the controls through a single through a single screen and a single point of failure that everyone suddenly started going, whoa, is this a step too far?

In previous programs I'd, we obviously joked a bit about the, so I had the Mustang mki, um, that had a very large screen, but also, but had a balance of of controls on the screen and, and hardware controls. And I did see through upgrades as some weren't necessarily I would consider upgrades, but yes, that touchscreen [00:39:00] environment evolved, that screen environment evolved and some of the actual hard buttons that had, um, functions were actually ended up being disabled because they couldn't get on with them.

And so they, they could have been dealt with in different ways. So I'm liking where we're at now. I'm liking, uh, an identify identification of these controls, these bits, you have to have hardwired, you have to have physical buttons because it gives the guidance to designers as well about what, what is important, but also then still allowing touch screens not just trust screens, but actually digital displays.

To allow flexibility for designers to not have to upgrade the car every time, but you can still upgrade the screens and get a new, a, a new in user experience. Um, in it, it would be really cool, and this is a slight aside, that with them screens, if you can actually get into them and maybe design, have an element of customization that you as a user can do just as a normal not as as HF [00:40:00] designers, but as a as, just as an a, a vehicle owner.

Being able to better customize displays, but that's an aside to what we're talking about with, um, with touchscreens.

Nick Roome: I think my Star Wars UI on that touchscreen. Yeah, that'd be fun. I think do stuff like that. That's cool. Yeah. I, I I think there's, um, I, I see your point about being able to update over time, but for things like the, the way that I'm thinking about it, do you really need updates for climate controls, their knobs and switches and those work, we know those work and those work with gloves on.

Yeah, that's true. So I, you know, I, um, the, the interesting thing to me is that the end cap, the Euro end cap has full out said if you want a five star safety rating, you are going to need physical controls for indicators, hazards, wipes wipers, horns and e [00:41:00] call.

Barry Kirby: So that, I've got no arguments with any of them.

I think it's when you are then looking at you know, the entertainment system. So still you, you want to have your volume and stuff. Hard wided, I think, because you want to be able to mute it quickly. But being able to change forward and moving tracks, but fold 'em back, being able to change mu music sources, things like that.

You know, being able to watch different things on there when you're packed up. I think there is, again, it's that balance. And I want to be able to take a display and make it cool and make it really per personable. And as the tech, as the technology evolves, or I guess maybe the software evolves, I want to be able to have the opportunity to upgrade that cow without having to upgrade everything in it.

Um, I think it provides a better product.

Nick Roome: Yeah. I wonder if there's some things that you can do from a safety perspective wi when it [00:42:00] comes to this hybrid approach of using touch screens versus the physical controls. I wonder if there's things that you can do, like being able to limit the amount of menus that you have to go through on a physical touch or on a touch screen while you're driving.

Right. Can you disable menus? Something that where you need to actually glance away and scroll and click and do those things. I don't know, like w wouldn't it be great if we had like human factor scores on, on, uh, on uh, these cars, right? Like instead of safety ratings, you get human factors. Human factors ratings.

Barry Kirby: Cool. I mean, what's really interesting is, so I know a lot my, I no longer have my Mustang, I've now got a, um, a Dacher big star. I don't have you, have you heard of Dacher in the, in the us? So it's a it's a, where's it from? It's a bit east European based, um, company, but actually Reno. Um, I've now either bought it out or co-own it and, um, I've, we've got, basically they started off [00:43:00] by providing SUVs, but really cheap.

So decent quality but cheap. And so you are buying a, an affordable vehicle. And then Reno bought them out, I think two, three years ago. And now, so now you're getting Reno Engineering as well in that. And what I'm quite interested by is this has got a touchscreen in it a much smaller and a lot more physical controls.

Some of them are not quite badly designed physical controls, but they've still got physical controls and it's still got some of this idea of locking some of this stuff out, locking some of the UI out when you're driving and things like that. Which I quite like. I think it just proves that we could, that good UI doesn't have to cost the earth, um, and getting, you know, both touchscreen and, and the physical bits.

You can do that. Um, you do. It's not just the purview of, of high, high-end high-end cars. I'm quite excited to see what this new view into the future looks like for vehicle ui.

Nick Roome: [00:44:00] Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where the line is. Speaking of the line, uh, do you, do you wanna talk about robotics and I'll, I'll talk about why the line is a good, good transition for that.

Barry Kirby: I'm doing that. So, one X Technologies is now taking pre-orders for Neo, a humanoid robot designed specifically for household use with delivery starting in 2026. This marks a significant shift from sci-fi concept to actual product you can buy for 20 grand or for, uh, $499 a month. What's interesting from a human factors perspective is their design philosophy.

They're prioritizing safety with compliant actuators, soft body construction, and intuitive voice interfaces powered by large language models. The robot can learn new tasks through teleoperation and includes privacy features like no-go zones. For our field, this represents a critical movement where we seriously need to address human robot interaction design trust calibration, and the cognitive load managing of AI assistance in [00:45:00] intimate home environments.

The real test won't be whether Neo can fold laundry. It'll be whether people actually want to live with it. I'll just put it out there. I want a neo, I want it now. I'll have, I'll, I, I can wait till 2026, but I, I want it in, in my life.

Nick Roome: Okay. So you've, you've seen, I don't know if you've seen the, um, the controversy around this.

Have you seen the controversy? I've just seen the

Barry Kirby: video, which looks cool.

Nick Roome: Okay. The controversy is that it's not actually robotics doing this stuff. It's a teleoperated system by an operator who is training the robot to do things in your home. Uh, at least for the early, early adopters. And over time these robots will be able to complete these tasks.

But right now it's very rudimentary. I think the robot the person who was tele operating the robot took like, six minutes to look three dishes into the dishwasher. Okay. That's still, three dishes [00:46:00] that I didn't have to put into the dishwasher is my thought on it. I would love a, a robot in the home to do some of those things, keep it tidy, that type of thing.

I think it's interesting that we're getting now into a scenario where you can either subscribe to this service or purchase it outright. And the subscription is an interesting price when you look at the cost to own. So I mean, just to what is the price to own? It's like 20,000 to, it's 20

Barry Kirby: grand or, or half a grand a month subscription.

Yeah. So, yeah. Um, you're basically 40 months you'd have, is that right? Yeah. 40 months. You, you'd have paid it off are they suggesting that probably you wouldn't keep it for, for that long? I don't know. Interesting. Yeah, you've got to, this is early adopter technology, isn't it? It's stuff that you are gonna be engaging with and you, none of us have, have got a, I don't, well, I haven't [00:47:00] done you might have, I dunno whether you swish new background and things.

Um, you've got 20 grand just to drop on a new robot just to help you around the home. Yes.

Nick Roome: This background costs 20 grand Barry.

Barry Kirby: Yeah, well that, that, that, that Patreon, you know, it's gotta be spent somewhere. Not cars background. The type of people that's gonna be dropping this at the moment is not you or I or the, um, or the general public, but, and so, yeah.

So for that reason, you know, with any sort of ai or autonomy based technologies, we've gotta be start asking the questions, right? What's the, um, what's the knowledge base? Where's it coming from? And it's gotta learn somewhere. So how that is happening is, is interesting, but go ahead. Two years maybe, uh, maybe not even that one, but say, say two years, this type of system will have changed, uh, will have graded, I mean, I guess the, where I'm at at the moment is we recently just got one of the, um, one of the automated vacuum machines, uh, vacuum cleaners.

So the, the little, um, the little vacuum robot. [00:48:00] Um, and I was, when I, when we first got it or when we first were talking about it, I was like, we don't need that. That's just silly. Why would we waste? 'cause they're not cheap. Um, why would you waste the money in doing that? But I have to say, we've had it now a month, maybe something like that.

And, and my carpets have never been so clean because it goes out every single day whilst you're out at work, whilst you're out doing whatever and, and he's just doing his thing and you've suddenly freed up time. Or you've got a, you've got cleaner rooms depending on we, which, you know, if you're like me, then it maybe just got, got slipped.

So if this is then able to do stuff like loading the dishwasher, like doing your laundry or, and that type of thing, when you are not there, that's gotta be powered to everybody's elbow. 'cause this is the whole thing about where the future of the human race and and the autonomy the machines live is that if it's not freeing up time for us to do other [00:49:00] things, then almost what's the point?

Whether people are gonna have problems with a humanoid in the home as opposed to. A vacuum a vacuum cleaner that looks like a little disc just pood around. Is that gonna cause problems? Is that gonna cause prob problems of how we perceive Neo in this case? So yeah, I, I'm, I'm intrigued to see where this goes.

Nick Roome: I am too. This one's a fun one. I think it'll be interesting to see where it goes and, and where, especially where it goes after the Teleoperation training is done, and I don't, it's not clear to me whether or not the Teleoperation training is like a mandatory thing that you have to do with an operator before it gets accustomed to your home, or whether or not they, someday they'll be able to ship it to your house and it will be able to learn based on your actions.

Like you can have it watch you and train that way. I, it's not clear to me, but that [00:50:00] it will be interesting if it's, if it's plug and play in the future. I'll mention one thing here. A lot of people say that humanoid robots are not the most efficient, and that is true. That is absolutely true.

But the interesting thing about a humanoid robot is that it can use humanoid tools. Uh, so it can use things that, that are built for us, right? Um. You imagine having, having training it to, to build a, uh, to build something with actual power tools. Uh, can you imagine one of these things coming running after you with a chainsaw?

That'd be fun. Alright, anyway, we got a couple minutes left. Why don't we get into one more thing, Barry? Let's do that. Alright, what's your one more thing? How do we do this? Do you go first? Do I go first?

Barry Kirby: Um, you go first. I'll go first. Normally we've done it came from that would've given us a little bit of a, a little bit of a thing.

Yeah. But we haven't got that. 'cause One more thing. There's one more thing and it doesn't have, um, I think just one more thing. So my, one more thing. I have a new passion. I think the last time we spoke I'd maybe just found this idea about where I went [00:51:00] for a a lesson on how to, how to do a bit of pottery, um, how to throw some clay on a wheel and make make objects.

Well this what single lesson has now blossomed into some would say a passion. I think obsession is probably a better, um, a better thing where I spend a lot of my time now, whereas I used to wa watch videos on things like AI robots and things like that. I now watch people throwing clay on a wheel and making, um, cylinders and attaching handles to these cylinders.

Then it's a mug or broadening out the top of it and sort of need to bowl. There's so much you can do with a cylinder. It's unreal. I've now spent money on a professional pottery wheel. I've now got my own kil. I've built my own little pottery. Yeah, it's, it's, it's gone places. I'm still just skimming the surface of just the depth of this type of thing, um, that you can go to.

But no, abso I finally found a hobby that I was gonna say, it isn't based around human factors. It isn't based around the day job. However, there's a lot of, look, there's, [00:52:00] you know, when you an ergonomic mug or a or a something, you just look at it or the feel of it just isn't right. It's, it's so, it's so tactile that, um, I never thought I'd be any good at, good at this type of thing.

And, um, and no, we have not had any, um, reenactments of ghost in any shape, way or film.

Nick Roome: I was gonna ask, we made that joke last time you talked about this.

Barry Kirby: Yeah, yeah. Uh, no, no, we still haven't got round to it. Amanda's not up for it, so there we go. No.

Nick Roome: You need to do, well, you need to do like a tour of your, of your, uh, of your setup.

Barry Kirby: Well, we've, I've. I mean, I can absolutely do something like that, um, for us in the future. 'cause some people say, oh, maybe you should start doing like, sort of short and stuff on the stuff you're doing. 'cause there's a lot of content out there. And I was like, well actually I do put, so I've now, my Instagram now is just purely for pottery stuff or almost purely, um, train the

Nick Roome: algorithm.

Well,

Barry Kirby: yeah, so that is, that's, that's now where I'm posting that and it does, it posts it out onto fa, onto Facebook, onto threads. But, um, I'm sort of not, I'm not polluting the other [00:53:00] streams with it. So that's now my one out bit. So I dunno, I, I might play a bit with doing bits of video on it, but again, it might end up becoming something that it's, that I don't want it to be.

So, yeah. But no, I, I, I found a new passion and it's very exciting.

Nick Roome: You can keep your hobby separate. That's fine. Uh, for me this is, allow me to be vulnerable for a moment. So we relocated earlier this year and part of the location rationale was that we'd be closer to my wife's family and friends.

And one thing that has been a little bit more obvious to me is like how much she is thriving. And I love that. I love that. Uh, she's got family and friends around her. And it's becoming more and more obvious to me that I don't have friends. Allow me to be vulnerable for a second. Right. I it's, it's genuinely difficult to make friends as an adult and particularly one with a diverse set of, of interests and [00:54:00] skills.

And I, I just, I say that to say how thankful I am for the people in my life. Even if they can't be around me physically, who are willing to like, sit and chat with me through virtual means. I think that goes a long way, uh, until I can establish some roots here. But, uh, didn't mean to bring the show down on a bad note, I just wanted to say how thankful I am for people who, who entertain a virtual meeting from time to time.

Like yourself, Barry.

Barry Kirby: Yeah, no, it, it, but it's a really strong point. I mean, we've I think it's so true, especially in today's age, whereas I think, um, because we can, we can do so much more online and things like that it's a lot harder to do the face-to-face. So we've been living in this house now eight years this year, and I would say in the grand scheme of things, I've probably got one or two.

Good friends in the village I live in and that, you know, and that's it. Whereas historically you'd have been like, around, you'd have been, you know, name all that names and all that sort of stuff. So, [00:55:00] yeah, mate, I feel for you it is hard. Um, and you've just gotta keep, keep cracking on at it to do.

But in the grand scheme of things, yeah, we're all here for you. It's all good.

Nick Roome: Thanks, man. If anyone wants to talk star, star Wars and be a friend I'll, I'll be there. All right with that that is our, our first episode back. That's it for today, everyone. If you like this episode, there are plenty of episodes in our backlog about any of the titles that we talked about today or any of the stories.

You, you can comment wherever you're listening with what you think of the stories this week. Uh, I thought they were a good way to get us back into this podcasting scene. For sure. For more in-depth discussion why don't you go and stop by our Discord community. We're trying to revitalize that a little bit.

Uh, say hi, say hello, make a friend or two you know, visit our official website. Sign up for our newsletter, stay up to date with all the latest human factors news. Hey, we're human factors cast.com. Now we got it back for the Chinese drillers. Uh, if you like what you hear, you wanna support the show, there's a few ways you can do that.

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Mr. Barry Kirby, thank you for being on the show today. Where can our listeners go and find you if they wanna find out where they can find a picture of you reenacting the scene from Ghost?

Barry Kirby: Yeah, that's Instagram. But that's just between me and Instagram. The, I've got a, so it used to be that I'll be all over all the social media channels really nowadays I'm focusing on LinkedIn and on Facebook, and you can find me on both of them channels as well as the 1202 Human Practice Podcast is still live.

It's still running, and as I know, a [00:57:00] lot of people have been downloading past episodes. They're all there, and new content should be coming either at the back end of this year, early next year, and you'll find all of that at oh two podcast com.

Nick Roome: As for me, I've been your host, Nick Roome. You can find me on our discord and across social media at Nick_Roome.

Thanks again for tuning to Human Factors Cast. Until next time it depends.