Along with age-related factors, geographical settings—urban, suburban, and rural areas—also contribute to the differences in fatal crashes among older drivers. These differences in crash outcomes might be attributed to the various driving challenges faced by older drivers residing in different locations. To understand these challenges from the perspective of the older driver, a focus group study was conducted with drivers 65 and older from urban, suburban, and rural settings. Guided-group interviews were used to assess driving challenges, mobility options, opportunities for driver support systems (DSS), and alternate transportation needs. Content analysis of the interview responses resulted in four categories representing common challenges faced by older drivers across the settings: behavior of other drivers on the road, placement of road signs, reduced visibility of road signs due to age-related decline, and difficulties using in-vehicle technologies. Six categories involved location-specific challenges such as heavy traffic situations for urban and suburban drivers, and multi-destination trips for rural drivers. Countermeasures implemented by older drivers to address these challenges primarily involved route selection and avoidance. Technological advances of DSS systems provide a unique opportunity to support the information needs for route selection and avoidance preferences of drivers. Using the content analysis results, a framework was built to determine additional and modified DSS features to meet the specific challenges of older drivers in urban, suburban, and rural settings. These findings suggest that there is heterogeneity in the driving challenges and preferences of older drivers based on their location. Consequently, DSS technologies and vehicle automation need to be tailored to not only meet the driving safety and mobility needs of older drivers as a population, but also to their driving environment.

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Among the protective materials, powder coating is one of the leading and most innovative segment of paints and coats. It started in the 1950's as electrical insulations, continued to grow and expand up to the present, being used in the architecture industry. This study aims to provide manpower utilization in aluminum production line, to increase its capacity and to provide proposed production plan and production layout. Different techniques such as work sampling and time study were used. This resulted to identification of the need for additional eight (8) in powder application, additional of two (2) booths for powder application and workstation re-layout to address the critical path in each workstations.

With the advancement of technology today, various industries have benefitted from innovation of systems that have been and are being developed, with the healthcare sector being one of them. Usability evaluation of medical devices is essential to ensure its effectiveness and to increase acceptability of the technology. In the Philippines, there has been a project on development of a locally-produced medical device. Similar to any other health care applications, there is a need to ensure that this is usable for Filipino health workers. A usability evaluation was conducted on the prototype of this telemedicine device, focusing on maternal monitoring, with user testing and interviews. Another similar device (commercially-acquired) was evaluated and compared to the existing design. Results of the evaluation indicate that there were usability problems in terms of the hardware and interface for both the locally-produced and commercially-acquired device designs. The former has a lot to improve in terms of its interface. Both still needs further improvement to make it easier for users to use the device. Usability evaluation has been very useful in identifying the areas for improvement in the design of the medical device and is seen as an essential part of its development.