User Research by Designers
Stephen Ward · Ergonomics design and management · 2011
At a major trade fair such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the visitor can expect to see a wide variety of cool gadgets designed to excite the consumer electronics enthusiast. But at such a fair, it is not only the consumer products themselves that are on display, but also some of the technologies that make them work. At CES 2006, Philips Semiconductors 144 (now NXP) presented near field communication (NFC) ( Philips 2005 ), a technology that enables short-range communication between electronic devices, such as mobile phones, televisions, PDAs, computers, and payments terminals via a fast and easy wireless Connection. This chapter describes some of the human factors involved in bringing NFC to the CES, and also discusses some of the implications of spending human factors efforts on developing technology as much as on developing products.