Pipsqueak Articles

Posts written by Olga Werby or Christopher Werby

Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Reference

Evolutionary Theory of Beauty

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David Brooks: The Social Animal I just finished reading a book by David Brooks, “The Social Animal.” While initially hesitant, I really enjoyed reading it. The book, a fiction, bundles together a lot of interesting information on the latest (and not so latest) advances in our understanding of the workings of the human mind. So it’s easy to see why I would like it! While there are many ideas worth considering in the book, I picked a small detail mentioned in passing: the evolutionary pull towards the love of a “Hudson Valley Landscape.” The Hudson Valley Landscape has the following features: The landscape has lots of open space interspersed with tall vegetation. There’s a far horizon that defines the space: a valley, a glade, a river basin, a farm, etc. There’s a clear evidence of fresh water: a river, a stream, a pond, etc. There are a few large trees in the foreground, offering shade, fruit, safe escape, or all of the above. There’s a path from the foreground to the background. There are people and man-made structures visible somewhere. There are “safe” animals or birds visible: cows, ducks, deer, etc. Amazingly, all cultures respond positively to this genre of…

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Attention Controls Errors, Perception, Perceptual Blindness, Pipsqueak Articles

Attention Control Errors & Perceptual Blindness

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Harvard Vision Lab created a few experiments that feature Attention Controls Errors and Perceptual Blindness. Below is one of their optical illusions. Directions: concentrate on the central white dot. Did the colors of the outside dots continue to shift throughout the video? If they stopped when the dots were rotating, then you’ve just experienced Silencing—the lab’s vocabulary for individual’s inability to pay attention to both motion and color shift at the same time. Here, we mostly call it Perceptual Blindness. My Personal Experience with this Illusion: The first time I watched the video, I think the colors stopped shifting…but I don’t really remember—I wasn’t paying attention! The second time, I saw the shift. When I showed the illusion to a colorblind individual, he saw the shift from the first viewing. To read about the complete experiment and to view more illusion videos, please visit the lab: http://visionlab.harvard.edu/silencing/

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Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Advancing the New Machine, a Quick Review

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It’s been a few days, and I now have some time to write down my impressions of the Advancing the New Machine Human Rights Conference held in Berkeley last week. Like all conferences, some presentations were amazing, and some not so much. But overall, Berkeley Human Rights Canter did a great job of fitting a lot of interesting speakers into a two-day program. Most of the time, there were two sessions running at the same time—I found that annoying, since I wanted to be at two place at once on several occasions! But I got to talk to many presenters and was able to download their slides. I’ve asked permission to share a few of those slides with the ICT & Human Rights group on LinkedIn, which is what I’m doing with this blog. Please note that I’m only posting what I found to be particularly interesting to me and to the members of ICT & Human Rights group. UN Global Pulse This was one of the first presentations of the conference, part of the “Ignite Talks.” The speaker was Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of UN Global Pulse. Robert talked about how cell phones can be used to monitor population’s well…

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Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding, Users

Advancing the New Machine UCLA Law Forum Presentation

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Today, I presented UCLA Law Forum at the Advancing the New Machine human rights conference in Berkeley. Below is an approximation of my presentation. How many of you have ever used a chair to reach that jar of tomatoes on the top shelf? I do it all the time. I’m the shortest member of my family and I use chairs as my personal hight extension. And I know I’m not alone. People are opportunists. We use products to get what we want. We subvert existing technologies to reach our own goals. From phones to cameras, from crisis mapping to photo editing, from news papers to forums, we manipulate and use tools and features to accomplish what we want, what we need. And we don’t necessarily use those tools for what they were designed for originally… As product designers, we need to be able to harness this opportunistic behavior to accomplish what we want. We want to direct crowds down the path that’s most productive and more aligned with goals of our projects. Two years ago, I came to The Soul of the Machine Conference to learn who are the players and what projects showed promise in using technology to advance…

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Attention, Pipsqueak Articles, Users

Temptation and Strategy

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By now, everyone who reads this blog probably heard of the “Marshmallow Temptation Test”. The test is designed to check a kid’s ability to resist eating one marshmallow right away if told that he/she could have two in a little while. There is a strong correlation between those who can wait and avoid the temptation of eating the single marshmallow, and the those who grow up to be more successful (than the kids who give into temptation and eat the one marshmallow). The basic setup is simple. Place a kid in a room with a single marshmallow on the plate and tell the kids that in just a little while, the researcher will be back with the second marshmallow which the kids can have ONLY if the first one is still on the plate! Enjoy the video! Note: this is about attention controls; about developing coping strategies early on to postpone rewards; about controlling for impulsive behavior.

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Group Decision Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

Entropy & Design

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Entropy is the measure of a system’s disorder and it increases with time (as dictated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Once the egg is cracked open, it’s impossible to make whole again: “Humpy Dumpy sat on the wall, Humpy Dumpy had a great fall; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpy Dumpy together again!” We are taught the second law of thermodynamics from a very early age! So what about design? Surly, we steadily progress to a better and finer product, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, the steady progress is rarely the case when dealing with big company, large products, or long time frames. Big, large, and long spell out entropy in design. Let me walk you through it. We Need A New Product! It all starts with a call: “MegaCorp needs a new product!” Well, the words are sometimes different, but it is all the same—there’s change in the air. With luck, this means that various departments of the MegaCorp Inc. scramble to do some market and internal research to come up with some ideas: What does the market need? What resources do we have? What can we develop? (given time, people, budget,…

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Pipsqueak Articles, Users

Washing Machines and Education

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Hans Rosling is a professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. (He has been featured on this blog before—“No More Boring Data”.) For me, the most important point Dr. Roseling makes in this TED presentation is that time-saving technology raises the general level of education in the community and women in particular.

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