Sometimes during the design process, there’s a real tension between the audience needs and the client desires. As product designers, it’s our job to resolve this tension in favor of the user (as long as the client’s business needs are still being met by the design). But sometimes, we lose: Enjoy!
Pipsqueak Articles
Posts written by Olga Werby or Christopher Werby
Flow, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy
Emotional Design—Because Products Should Be Fun!
by Olga Werby •
“I want one!”—a reaction every designer wants! A good product design doesn’t only address the functional needs of its audience and the business needs of its developers. A good product goes father—it facilitates fun, it generates flow, it produces a visceral reaction even from people who are simply watching a demo video…
Conceptual Design, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy
ICT & Human Rights: A Round Table Discussion at IADIS 2011 Conference
by Olga Werby •
IADIS conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings, Rome, July 24-26, 2011 Proposal for a Joint Multi-conference Session Title: ICT and Human Rights: A Round Table Chair/Organizer: Olga Werby Background and Purpose Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)—internet, web, and social media—are fast becoming a comprehensive repository and soon an archive of human knowledge. With access to ICT, an individual can become informed on everything from healthcare issues to civic problems to legal concerns. One hundred years ago, people were discussing the need for basic literacy and its impact on the human condition. Today, we should be discussing digital literacy and access in the same way. Digital literacy can be seen as a basic human right. Individuals can also impact society, react, and reach out. ICT is both a powerful tool for materializing human rights and is also challenging human rights. I propose a Round Table Session, which is open to all participants of IADIS multi-conferences, to be titled “ICT and Human Rights.” This session would provide a forum on cross-disciplinary research and development, and action, in the fields of what rights are important and can be better facilitated by ICT in: e-Democracy, ICT and Society, e-Culture, e-Health, e-Learning, human-computer interaction,…
Anchoring Errors, Background Knowledge Errors, Causal Net Problems, Diagnostic Errors, Errors, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles
Alternative Medicine, Placebos, and Rasputin
by Olga Werby •
In the last few weeks there has been several articles and studies published on the effectiveness of alternative medicines and placebos: “Placebos Help Patients Even Without Faking It, Scientists Say“; “Sugar Pills Help, Even When Patients are Aware of Them“; and “Alternative remedies ‘dangerous’ for kids says report“; “Doctors warn over homeopathic ‘vaccines’“. The gist of these beliefs derives from several factors: People Tend to Get Better: most of us get well over time even without medical intervention. Colds pass; flues do too. Most infections heal with time without the aid of antibiotics. Evolution have provided the human race with a great immune system. Medicine helps, we get better faster with treatment. But in most cases, we survive. So when you hear someone recommend an alternative medicine and predict that a cold will go away in three days, chances are you will get better. And over time, we the people develop p-prims (folksy wisdoms) that link health with alternative tratments. “Natural Chemicals” p-Prims: there is a strong belief among industrialized societies, at the present time, that “natural” is better for us than “artificial”. There are many sources of this belief, too many to cover in this short article. And somehow,…
Cultural Bias, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Users
Weird Behavioral Science
by Olga Werby •
W.E.I.R.D..: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. The acronym W.E.I.R.D. describes the typical subject recruited by scientists to conduct behavioral research. Why? W.E.I.R.D. research subjects tend to be the easiest to recruit—these are the undergraduates.
Anchoring Errors, Causal Net Problems, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Errors, Group Decision Errors, Mental Model Traps, Mirroring Errors, Misapplication of Problem Solving Strategies, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding
TSA: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
by Olga Werby •
There has been a lot of stories lately about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and most have been less than flattering (to say the least). How can an agency that was designed to “serve and protect” the citizens of the United States from harm evoke such wrath from ordinarily shy and non-vocal travelers? This blog is about product design, and so my analysis of the situation will treat this as a failure of product design. Where are the failures? Mistake #1 TSA Conceptual Design: Blocking There are bad guys out there that want to do us—citizen travelers from US—harm. There are the box-cutter carrying terrorists, the shoe-bombers, the liquid explosives bandits, the underwear-bombers, the printer cartridge explosives engineers. TSA installed airport security measures that would counteract each of these threats as they revealed themselves. The basic conceptual design strategy here is blocking: identify a threat and find an effective block. This is a strategy based on hindsight: if we knew that people could sneak bombs in their underwear, then we would have had a way to block it. We didn’t know, but now we do, and so we created systems to block this threat in the future. TSA Game Plan: Escalating…
Conceptual Design, Ethnographic & User Data, Interaction Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding
Cheating by Design
by Olga Werby •
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions. This year, the Metropolitan Transpiration Commission introduced the new Clipper Smart Card. Public transit riders all over the Bay Area can now use a convent piece of plastic to pay for their BART trains, buses, MUNIs, etc. Just swipe the Clipper Card past one of the little readers, and the gates open to let you in and out of the station or pay for the bus. The cards could be purchased in stores and vending machines all over the area—$2 cards are the minimum value cards. More money can be easily added to these cards at all BART train stations. The designers of Clipper Card envisioned happy riders and happy transpiration authority. “We’ll make it easy,” the designers said. “Easy to use, easy to fill up. And if the passengers accidently run out of money on their cards, we’ll allow them some small negative balance so they can leave the train station and pay for their rides later.” In the Bay Area, the cost of public transportation is pretty high and it’s highly dependent on how far you want to go: travel from City Hall to Airport, pay $8.10 for a…