Why blue LEDs can be irritating and K-mart Specials

Mark Gibbs made an interesting comment on www.networkworld.com in his post on The horror of blue LEDs!.

“I hate blue LEDs. It’s not the color – I have no aesthetic problem with the color blue – it’s the brightness. I have pieces of equipment with blue LEDs so bright, if I turn out the lights I can still read a book.

In my bedroom there’s a blazing blue LED on my DVD player that sears your eyeballs if you look straight at it and another in an aftermarket power adapter (or, as I prefer to call them, “wall warts”) for an iPod that bathes the entire bedroom in an eerie glow. And walk into my office; there are blue LEDs in most gadgets and or their wall warts. It seems that everything now has a damned blue LED!

In the kitchen, there’s even a blue LED in the coffee maker! Enough, product designers! Enough! It’s gotten so bad I’ve started putting pieces of tape over the LEDs. Couldn’t we have a change of pace? Maybe a nice dull, friendly green LED or a cheery, muted cherry red one? Is that too much to ask?”

I doubt that the blue LEDs are actually brighter Mark, (Anyone want to measure LED output or know the specs?) but they may appear brighter under the conditions you describe.

You need to understand a bit about how eyes work.

Eyes are not equally sensitive to all colors or “wavelengths” of light.

The very center of the view you see is detected by receptors sensitive to light ranging from what we would call “red” to “blue”. Some receptors are best when light is between” red” and “orange”. Others are best somewhere near “green”. But making use of them all, if you have all the typical receptors (and you are not color blind) you can see an entire spectrum of colors from red to blue.

As you get further away from this central area of vision there are fewer and fewer of these color receptors (called cones), and more receptors that are very sensitive to small amounts of light and that prefer “blue” wavelengths. (called rods) These rods are also very good at detecting movement!

While the cells in the center are very good for tasks such as reading small text and interpreting a photograph, they don’t work very well unless there is a lot of light.

As it gets dark, these cells stop functioning. (This is why it is hard to tell what color something is at twilight or when there are only street lights at night.)

Because the blue sensitive cells on the side are VERY sensitive to light and movement, they sometimes don’t function as well during the day. (Though they will tell you that something is coming at you from the side…)

At night they function best. Even the tiny amount of light reaching us from a star becomes visible. (The stars are still there during the day. There is just too much other light to be able to detect these small dim lights.)

That blue LED doesn’t look brighter than the green or red one during the day, but at night, when it is the only light in a darkened room, your more sensitive eyes find it VERY bright.

Knowing how eyes work suggests some interesting applications.

• Blue light would be good for night lights if you WANT it to be bright only at night.
• Since blue light is more easily detected by cells to the side in the eye, a blue light would be good for getting someone’s attention. Thus, the “Blue light special” at K-mart. (I wonder if the color choice was made based on this information.)
• Add blinking (apparent movement) and the light is even MORE likely to attract attention.
• If you are “mature” or you have watched old movies, you may remember that the blinking light on a police car used to be red. Now most police cars have lights that have blue as well and not only do they blink, the sequence of blinking lights make an even stronger sense of movement.

I sometimes wish engineers and designers knew more about people when they made design decisions.

Thanksgiving Reflections

I have spent most of the week moving to a new apartment. This has of course meant dealing with utilities, leasing agents, and all the folk who help us to deal with property and moving.

I have had unpleasant or inconvenient experiences, such as having to go to the electric company with an ID to have the bill transferred to my name and setting up auto payment on my gas bill to have it say “pending” almost a month after I requested it.

(So do I pay the bill by check this time and possibly have a duplicate payment taken from my account or do I wait and have a “late payment” notice go on my credit rating.)

Life is increasingly complex and confusing!

Still, I am thankful to have a place to live, a job, enough to eat, clean water, an internet connection in my home and even little things, such as a washer and dryer in my kitchen instead of a damp old basement and a garage with an automatic opener. WHAT LUXURY!

While I focus on trying to make things easier for people in my work, I struggle with things in my own daily life. What worries me is that if things are difficult for me they probably are just a difficult or more so for others.

Improving how things work makes them more efficient, and less frustrating. It also is something that we should be thankful for.

If you encounter a process that is easy, a web site that is easy to use, or even something that works well AND is attractive: take a minute to say THANK YOU.

Someone put time and thought into making your life easier and more pleasant.

November 12 is World Usability Day

World Usability Day Logo

This “holiday” promotes making things easier for people to use, from products, to web sites, to even things in your environment.

The local Usability Professional Association group has prepared an interesting day of speakers and discussion.

The theme for this year’s event is sustainability and you will see this topic represented in everything from the discussions and speakers to our choices for lunch!!

Held at IUPUI for easy access, this is a good opportunity to meet people from many different Indiana business who are advocates for a more usable and sustainable world.

Check out the event page  on SmallerIndiana for more information or go to http://www.bsu.edu/forms/cics/wudreg09/ to register.

The $35 registration includes:

• lunch
• and a one year membership in the Indiana Usability Professionals Association Chapter.

I can’t wait to see you there!

DISCLAIMER: I do have an interest in this event.

Not only am I a member of the organization sponsoring it, I will be presenting on how psychology has helped persuade people to preserve the environment.

The downside of SPAM prevention

I am sure that the goal was to reduce the amount of spam.

When you have a web site that includes your email address, you can get flooded with requests for assistance with a million dollars from Nigeria or to “shop here” for drugs or lingerie.

Even a good junk mail filter won’t catch everything and it may catch things that you want. You should also scan the junk mail regularly for legitimate and wanted messages that occasionally get caught.

I can see where a service that would catch spam would be a benefit.

Sometimes it can become a barrier to interaction with a customer.

The Incident:

I sent a message requesting information about a product to a businessman I met at a networking event and received the following

I use Boxbe to protect my email address. While I did receive your email about “FW: my message subject”, you are not currently on my email Guest List. I’ll be more likely to see your email and future messages if you are on my priority Guest List.

Click here to be put directly on my Guest List

Thank you,
emaill of intended recipient

About this Notice

• This courtesy notice is part of a free service to make email more reliable and useful. Boxbe (www.boxbe.com) uses your existing social network and that of your friends to keep your inbox clean and make sure you receive email from people who matter to you.

• My email was delayed.
• I needed to complete an extra step in sending an email.
• I needed to submit information to a company I knew nothing about.

I was considering doing business with him, but I know several folks who will accept my email who can do the same job equally well.

Imagine walking up to a local restaurant or dry-cleaner for the first time.

A large sign next to the door flashes – OPEN.

You attempt to open the door and about pull your arm off when the door is locked.  Another sign on  the door flips over.  It reads:

Please go next door to the “Photomart” and have your picture taken for our customer identification program. This program allows us to give you better service as we recognize you as a customer and not a robot or solicitor when you come to our door

When your return after a quick digital photo, the face recognition program at the door recognizes you, the door unlocks, and you are allowed to enter.

I registered, and sent my message.

I also felt uncomfortable.

I would like to trust the people I do business with, and I would like them to trust me as well. Trust is reciprocal.

I followed it with another email suggesting that I  felt that this process made me question whether his company would provide good customer service.

I took my business elsewhere.

Do you want the first contact a customer has with you to be a barrier to a long term relationship?

User experience research addresses the concerns people have about security while making access and communication as easy as possible.

There are better ways to manage access. They may not be as thorough, but they will provide bettr customer service.

Sometimes it helps to talk to someone with some experience to help you to decide how to manage the flood of unwanted information in the virtual world.

A FULL MIND can provide that objective ear and help you to decide on the best services and tools.

We can help you to keep things under control while making it easy for customers to do business with you.

Social Media and Time Sheets

“If you build it, they will come.”

Photo credit: kakisky from morguefile.com
Maybe this is true of a baseball field,
but not for most social media platforms
or most business processes.

Most of us need a reason, a motivation, before we take an action.

• The Twitter feed has to have content we want or a connection to someone we care about.
• The Time Sheet has to provide something we want after we fill it in.

If not, we forget to check twitter  and fill in a time sheet when it is the end of the month or the project.

Use a little basic knowledge about how people behave.

If the outcome is something we want every time for a while, we come to expect this outcome and we are unhappy when it fails to please us – so we STOP, very quickly.

If it is great sometimes and we cannot predict when we will get something, we will continue checking those tweets and entering hours, even long after the rewards disappear.

To get people to listen to your tweets,
make sure that they occasionally get something they really want. (The first access to the latest gossip, a coupon for a discount at a favorite business, a note from a friend.)

To get people to fill in time sheets correctly and in a timely manner,
a paycheck at the end of the month may not be enough. (A thank you for submitting at the end of the day, a suprise bonus, public recognition at the next team meeting.)

(By the way. Each of us finds different things rewarding. While you might enjoy public recognition, it may just embarass others. A $10 bill might work for one person, but another might prefer a really good chocolate bar.)

The keys are:

• Expectation that reward is possible
• As soon as possible after what we did
• Unpredictable in time

Ask A Full Mind about more ways to encourage the behaviors you want to see.

Thanks Blog Indiana and Firebelly for the idea for this post