Product Design Strategy

Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Trolls, Dolls, and Poupees

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The first time I saw her, she was riding on a bus. Her hair was long and golden. Her eyes were amazing blue. She was stylishly dressed in a mini skirt and had a cool pair of earrings. But what got me—what burned that moment into my memory forever—was that her long slender legs bent without any visible joints. She was amazing. I wouldn’t see another like her until many years later, when my family was emigrating from Russia and living Vienna. Not far from the apartment we stayed in, there was a toy store and it was filled with wonders just like the one I remembered from so many buses ago: Barbie. When I was growing up in Russia, I played with dolls and poupees—all girls did. The dolls were made to resemble little kids, with big eyes, big heads, chubby cheeks, and cute clothes. I used old buttons and odd bits of cloth and lace to make them new clothes and bedding. My play mainly consisted of creating cool things for my dolls—I liked to sew and glue. And I don’t think that my play was all that much different from girls’ 100 years before—my dolls would have…

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Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Topical Iodine in Case of Radioactive Iodine Release

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It’s been difficult to get hold of potassium iodide tablets—people on the West Coast are getting worried about the possible farther radiation leaks from Japanese nuclear reactors and are trying to stock up. Fortunately, the topical iodine can work almost as well in an emergency. Betadine is a topical disinfectant and is usually easy to get. Here’s a reference to the study that shows the effectiveness for this purpose of Betadine absorbed through the skin of the abdomen: Toxnet.mln.nih.gov A 2 percent tincture of iodine on the abdomen over an area of approximately 200 mm by 100 mm works for adults as a preventive measure in a case of radioactive iodine presence in the atmosphere. When I was growing up, we were taught to draw a tic-tac-toe grid on our chests or a happy face on a tommy—it’s about the right amount and it is less scary for kids. Iodine will stain the skin and it will take a few weeks for the coloration to return to normal—be careful where you draw the happy face! A short note on use: Under no circumstances should Betadine be injested. It is poison. It is only for external use. Don’t use Betadine until…

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Conceptual Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

Information Scaffolding

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Here’s another way of thinking about crisis mapping as an ecosystem or a cell with a membrane allowing certain information to enter while keeping other out. Some data has data “receptors” in the organization and thus “gets in”. But some information doesn’t and some just doesn’t have the right format: wrong language, incomplete information, time delay, low quality, etc. Please let me know your thoughts on the communicative value of this illustration. Thank you! And here’s how Ushahidi can help.

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Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Information Architecture: Building Mental Castles

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Prosopagnosia and Topographical Agnosia Not all memory structures are created equal. Humans have an amazing variability in our capacities to commit information to memory and to use this information flexibly to achieve our certain goals. Consider facial memory: our ability to remember a face even when out of context of original interaction. Like all cognitive abilities, facial recognition spans the continuum: there are people who basically lack this capacity (Oliver Sacks, a famous neurologist who wrote “A Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and “Awakenings” is one such example.) and then there are those who “never forget a face.” Most us are somewhere in between. I’m, personally, worse than most but perhaps not as bad as Dr. Sacks. (I taught science at a local elementary school, and to this day people stop me on a street and greet me in a very familiar way while I haven’t a slightest idea of who they are, never mind their names—very disconcerting.) The condition of being a lousy face recognizer is called Prosopagnosia and it tends to come with a complimentary Topographical Agnosia (or inability to identify places and thus having bad navigational skills). If you don’t remember faces and places,…

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Background Knowledge, Conceptual Design, Flow, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding, Users, ZPD

Remarkable Design

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How does one design a remarkable product? “Well, it depends on a product,” some would say. But couldn’t we say something general? Why do we feel passionate about some products but not others? Consider conversations: some are fun, some are boring; some engage lots of people, some not so much; some result is heated exchanges, some are more neutral. Note that you can be very passionate about a topic, but don’t consider it fun: rape, genocide. Politics engages lots of people, but the details leave most bored. Some conversations generate sustained interest, and some fizzle out without a remark. What’s required for a conversation to be remarkable? That depends on the audience. To be engaged in a discussion, you have to find the topic interesting to you. And what’s interesting to you, might not be to me. Thus the topic of conversation is a variable of the targeted audience. Even if you find the topic amusing, you might not have the time to participate in the conversation. “I would love to talk to you about quantum space time, but the plane leaves in 5 minutes.” And it is so noisy on the plane that you can only hear every other…

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Cognitive Blindness, Featured, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

The Value of Trust in Search

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There was an interesting article published on the New York Times the other day: “The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.” The article documented the use of Black Hat SEO strategies on behalf of J. C. Penny, leading J. C. Penny to be at the top of multiple Google search results for months. While J. C. Penny didn’t disclose the boost in revenues that the number one placement on Google search produced during the 2010 Christmas shopping season, we can assume it was substantial. The article raises several alarms: How prevalent is the use of “Black Hat” CEO techniques among large commercial companies selling their services online? Since J. C. Penny is a customer worth several million of ad dollars to Google, did Google (for a time) look the other way? [30-11-2010, BBC News: “EU launches antitrust probe into alleged Google abuses,” last visited on 02-14-2011.] Google administers “Google Hell” punishment to the companies that use “Black Hat” strategies to beat its search ranking algorithms. There’s no court, no arbitration, no negotiation. The company simply vanishes from Google search results. These are all about trust. We—the average online citizens—rely on search results for so many needs now. We research our medical…

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