Ruth Stalker-Firth

Steve Mann, inventor of wearable computing, came to the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in the 1990s when I was PhD student there. He had some difficulty getting on the metro as his head-mounted aerial added several inches to his height.

Watching him struggle to get through the door, I was inspired and excited by a researcher who wore and lived his work. Related MIT websites, where Mann was based, showed me how I could augment my reality by turning a gameboy into a wearable computer. The instructions came with a warning that it would affect my vision, though I would soon adapt to the constant red line. After all, the wearable was a lot smaller than Mann’s. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fresenius Kabi Applix Smart food pump is a masterclass in bad design. There is nothing smart about this food pump and its accessories. It has been designed without taking into consideration the context in which it is to be used. Consequently, some of its accessories are not just safe enough to used around patients and the home and could lead to the compromise of patient safety.

When designing any form of interface, a usability consultant will push for the interface to be: effective and efficient; easy to learn and remember; useful and safe.

After usability comes user experience (in this medical context perceived user satisfaction is enough, as it is never going to be fun to use a food pump on a chronically ill person) which encourages users to feel supported and motivated by a helpful interface.

Fresenius Kabi has failed the user of the Applix Smart food pump on usability and user experience. Read the rest of this entry »

I updated both my wordpress versions a while back and ever since I have had an an error occurred while processing this directive message when trying to access this blog. I incorrectly diagnosed the solution to be some conflict due to running two versions of wordpress. I spent ages fiddling with the .htaccess file again and then gave up and thought that I would fix it another day.

Today, I updated both versions of wordpress to 6.2.2 and found that everything works as it should do. A quick google about confirmed that I was getting the error message because my last wordpress upgrade hadn’t worked properly - I should have just reinstalled everything instead of fiddling where I shouldn’t.

I set up a second wordpress installation in a directory named /jasmine so that Neil and I could blog about our daughter Jasmine who has chronic renal failure. However, because I fiddled with the .htaccess this technical blog kept serving up Error 404 pages instead of the blogs I have written.

There are ways of running two wordpress blogs with one installation, but if you decide to run two completely separate installations of wordpress like I have then you will need to make sure you have two .htaccess files. One in each directory. So, in the home directory my .htaccess (or the relevant lines) looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

And, in the /jasmine directory the .htaccess file looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /jasmine/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /jasmine/index.php [L]

I imagined myself as a bit of an earth mother and did the whole yoga and practising for a natural birth thing like the true hippy I am, albeit one with a great interest in technology. However, due to complications which were anticipated by the medical teams who were looking after me, I had our baby on Monday 11th February at 1.23pm by emergency caesarian section. I cannot thank them enough. Because of the skill of everyone involved and a great deal of technology, Jasmine survived birth and her first night. She is currently in Great Ormond St Hospital.

We have set up a blog here to share our news:
http://www.ruthstalkerfirth.com/jasmine/

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us to say they care. It means so much.