"Designing User Interfaces for Advanced Technology Vehicles"
Neta Ezer
School of Psychology

12:00 Noon on Thursday, September 21, 2006
ATDC, Centergy Building, Hodges Room 335

Many companies are beginning to realize the importance of designing user interfaces from the initiation of a project, rather than as a final thought before production. A challenge for designers is how to design interfaces for advanced technology products when the pace of the project is dependant upon engineering achievements. This talk will use two examples of such projects being worked on at Deere & Company at very different stages of design. A harvesting process will be used as an example of how interface designers and human factors experts can have presence at the very beginning of a project and help to guide the engineering side of that project. An unoccupied military vehicle will serve as the second example and illustrate how the usability of a functional advanced technology product can be assessed.

Neta Ezer received her B.S. in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech in 2004 and her Masters in Engineering Psychology from Georgia Tech in 2006. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Engineering Psychology at Georgia Tech, working in the Human Factors and Aging Lab under the direction of Dan Fisk and Wendy Rogers. Her research is in the areas of trust in automation, aging, and the control of multiple autonomous vehicles. This past summer she worked for Deere & Company as a Product Engineering Intern at the Technology Center in Moline, IL.