Gentle Readers, As you have been undoubtably aware for some time, this blog aims for audience with well above average vocabulary and IQ. You and your fellow readers are a very select group with strong interest in science and product design. You are scientists, engineers, and intellectuals. You have an amazing sense of style and fashion. You are able to see patterns and spot details that escape most of those around you. How do I know? I can see the strong engagement with the material on this blog — it’s all there in black and white numbers provided helpfully by Google day in and out. Some of you might think this letter cynical. But all of you know that this content appeals directly your amygdala — you are as happy to be recognized for your brilliance as I’m for your continued readership of my writing. You all know you are special, and you want to be acknowledged as such by those around you. And not only are you all above average, you are also extraordinarily lucky. Some might call this the “optimism bias”, but you and I know that your chances of success are much higher than the average Joe…
Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy
Special Preview: Visual Aesthetics
by Olga Werby •
Interaction-Design.org is doing an amazing job of developing a textbook for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Design. This newest chapter, Visual Aesthetics in human-computer interaction and interaction design by Noam Tractinsky works to tease out the aspects of design that make products appealing, memorable, culturally-appropriate, emotionally satisfying, and beautiful. Beauty & Aesthetics Evolve in Time It’s good to remember that what we find beautiful and appealing changes and evolves in time as well as across cultures. Here’s a wonderful demonstration: 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. What Makes Design Beautiful? In the Interaction-Design.org chapter, Tractinsky starts with Vitruvius’ design principles. Vitruvius lived in the 1st century BC and develop a set of standard criteria by which to evaluate architecture: Firmitas — durability or life-span of the building in relation to its purpose; Utilitas — usability of the building by its intended audience; and Venustas — the beauty of the building (this would be culturally-specific). 2,000 years on and we still talk about durability, usability, and aesthetics of products. Since this chapter discusses architecture, I would like to talk about weapons. Weapons pre-date architecture, but they still follow the same rules for design: durability and reusability, usability, and beauty. If you’ve…
Perception, Pipsqueak Articles, Reference, Working Memory
Memory and the Brain — Videos from Scientific American
by Olga Werby •
Scientific American did a nice little video demonstrating where in the brain information is processed and remembered. And here’s one that explains perception and social cues. Unfortunately, Scientific American still uses Flash, so this might not work on all devices.
Conceptual Design, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles
Special Preview: Activity Theory
by Olga Werby •
Once again, we get an early preview of the next chapter of Interaction-Design.org textbook: Activity Theory. The author of the chapter, Victor Kaptelinin, did a wonderful job of summarizing decades of research in educational psychology, cognitive science, and HCI — from Vygotsky to Moran. If you’re unfamiliar with the theories, research, and thinking that brought us to present day HCI design, this is a great place to start (and includes all of the references to the relevant literature). Adopting an activity-theoretical perspective has an immediate implication for design: it suggests that the primary concern of designers of interactive systems should be supporting meaningful human activities in everyday contexts, rather than striving for logical consistency and technological sophistication. While this chapter focuses mainly on human computer interaction (HCI), I would argue that we need to be broader: we need to focus on product design. And as always, I mean product to be interpreted in a very broad sense. We are moving rapidly into a world where everything we touch is a computing device. Today, I Twitted that my washing machine is an ICT device — the new ARM chip is small, requires very little power, and will be incorporated into everything.…
Anchoring Errors, Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Causal Net Problems, Cognitive Blindness, Cultural Bias, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles
Information in the Age of ICT: the Guardian Newspaper 3 Little Pigs Ad
by Olga Werby •
The 2012 Guardian newspaper ad really captures the flow of information in the age of ICT (Information Communication Technologies). The ad retells the story of the 3 little pigs, their houses, and the big bad wolf. It shows how stories change with spin and through propagation through social media: twitter, Facebook, email, etc. Well done!
Perception, Pipsqueak Articles, Users
McGurk Effect — Synesthesia in Action
by Olga Werby •
McGurk Effect is synesthesia in action. The sounds you hear depend on the visual information you’re getting through your senses! This is an amazing little video demonstration. Imagine if all your senses were so interconnected — perseptual information tangled up mid stream…
Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy
Special Preview: Disruptive Innovation
by Olga Werby •
Interaction-Design.org The folks from Interaction-Design.org have just completed their newest chapter: “Disruptive Innovation” by Clayton M. Christensen. This chapter is an excerpt from Dr. Christensen’s 1997 book “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail,” published by Harvard Business Press. His newer book, “The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators,” published in 2011 on Kindle, is a follow up to the ideas in the first book and those expressed in the Interaction-Design.org chapter. Disruptive Innovation The main idea of this chapter can be summed up by Donald A. Norman’s graph (see below). This is a graph of product performance over time — think of “product” is its most expansive form. When the product is first introduced into the market, it might not be “ready for prime time”, as we say — meaning that the product is: difficult to use, or too expensive, or replacing a well-established way of doing things, or has a high learning curve: even difficult to use products can have a shallow learning curve that allows small accomplishments right away by novice users, or requires a large ecosystem of other products and services that are not widely available: think electric cars…