Contributor, Perception, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

RE: Is Pink Necessary?

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How many different ways can someone describe a color? There is a delightful video titled “Luscious” by the Sappi paper company Off Register. In it, the main character attempts to describe the exact shade of “luscious” she wants printed on paper. “It’s like the inside of a baby polar bear’s ear,” she tells the printer. “It’s a nuclear accident, but there’s no problem with it,” she insists. “It’s like King Kong French kissed you … stop it Kong!” All of the metaphors from “Luscious” have another thing in common: They link disparate ideas, a seductive idea with a dangerous one. This is the problem encountered with Annie Paul’s article “Is Pink Necessary?,” which is a review of the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein. What color best describes a little girl’s sexuality? But little girls have no sexuality, one may protest. Research indicates they do, that children identify with external signs to determine their sex. What then is the hue of sparkly tulle and chiffon? What is the color of a kiss blown from the palm of your hand or a coyly twirled finger in softly dimpled cheek? From the viewpoint of product design, the article is better contemplated as a…

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Attention, Conceptual Design, Contributor, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Users

RE: Preloading and The Above-Average Effect

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Valdesolo, P. (2010). “Flattery Will Get You Far.” ScientificAmerican.com. Visited on October 8, 2012: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=flattery-will-get-you-far A study suggests that flattery is effective, illustrating that even obviously manipulative comments play into the an individual’s high self-regard, affecting later behavior. This phenomenon, called the above-average effect, can be found for example in advertising. When a person views an advertisement showing an exaggerated response to a product’s use, their response in the aisle when making a choice, is measurably swayed. Sunlight, breezes, and smiling people in light sweaters walking through green pastures create a positive impression we remember when buying liquid laundry detergent of a certain brand, even if we know there is little rational correlation. Conceptual Design: The principle of the above-average effect could be used strategically. Research into a population’s background might give a picture of how to articulate a product; or, similarly, the idea of preloading expectations through associations in a programmed environment could be used to aim a particular audiences preferences or choices, or make rational jumps easier when transitioning from one experience to another. Interaction Design: “I want to be special!” Letting the user interact and uniquely configure their use of the product. Research into cultural background should be…

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Pipsqueak Articles, Reference, Users

Social Media Election

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The creative folks at Open-Site.org invited me to share the following informational graphic with the readers of this blog. Anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account has probably noticed an increase in the number of political postings over the past few years. This is due, in part, to the explosive rise in social media outlets and users. But voters are not the only people who use social media; among politicians, 9 out of 10 Senators and Representatives have Twitter accounts. However, many are starting to wonder if social media is becoming less a reporter of political races and more of a predictor of the results. In Senate races, the candidate with more Facebook friends than his or her opponent has won 81% of the time. And one email sent to 60 million Facebook users prompted an additional 340,000 people to vote in the 2010 election. This infographic illustrates just how politics and social media are affecting each other.

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Conceptual Design, Contributor, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Users

RE: Mac vs. PC gap is the narrowest since ’90s.

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Gross, D. (2012). “Mac vs. PC gap is the narrowest since ’90s.” cnn.com. Visited on October 9, 2012: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/05/tech/gaming-gadgets/mac-vs-pc-graph/index.html This article focuses on the recent trend that the ratio of Windows-based computers sold to Apple’s Macintosh computers is tightening to a 20-1 ratio. The article attributes this trend to the rise in use of portable computing and a perception that MacBook laptops are a superior product. Factoring in other portable devices from Apple such as iPods, iPads and iPhones decreases Microsoft’s sales advantage to a 2-to-1 ratio. Conceptual Design The article suggests that an integrated mobile device (laptop or hand held) that is perceived as a “better” product has led to the turnaround in sales for Apple in relation to Microsoft’s widows based PCs. When accounting for Apple’s smart phones and tablets the sales ratio tightens dramatically suggesting a post-PC era that will require product designers to think of new ways to take advantage of this portable computing trend. People spending more time on these non-PC devices threatens Microsoft’s Windows platform that has dominated the software industry for decades. Interaction Design The sales trend in a post PC world where devices are with you at all times suggests that people…

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Pipsqueak Articles, Users

Echo Chamber of Search Results

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The other day I got an email urging me to check out the search results for “completely wrong” on Google Image Search. Here they are: The results are clear: it seems like Mitt Romney dominates the “completely wrong” search results! But look closer: Eight out of twenty results shown are just screen grabs of the search results! The more people notice and talk about the search results, the more data points they generate for the search results… and here’s my contribution!

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Ethnographic & User Data, Language, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles

The Language Comprehension Continuum

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Below is an example of communication error — Penn and Teller use strong emotional language and delivery to hide the true meaning of the message. In context — a pretty young woman anxiously and passionately asking individuals at a faire to protect the environment — signing the petition makes sense. People sign many petitions. And the more people sign (or the more signatures they see on the petition), the more likely others sign as well. A woman, seemingly in distress over an environmental problem, inspires an emotional reaction — people want to help. We have a built-in social value system that encourages this kind of behavior. And finally there’s a strong p-prim that all chemicals are bad — so just hearing a chemical compound in a petition gets a response from the crowd. The result? On the language comprehension continuum, these faire goers didn’t do so well…

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Conceptual Design, Interaction Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

BRIDGE to Health

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This week, I was invited to attend a BRIDGE Summit at Stanford. I was there to represent Ushahidi’s work and wasn’t particularly sure what to expect… But it turned out to be a very interesting brainstorming session for a new product/service in the health space: BRIDGE. Dr. Stephen Friend (M.D. and PH.D., president/co-founder/director of Sage Bionetworks) ran the show. What you will read below are just my notes, ideas, and understanding of what we were trying to do. I’m sure others at this summit came away with a whole different set thoughts, but, in the interest of advancing my own understanding and sharing of ideas in general, it seemed worth putting together a narrative of the product we were designing. So what is BRIDGE? After a two day discussion, we settled that BRIDGE is a platform (rather than an app) that will strive to: help gather medical information; crowdsource algorithms that would act on collected data with an aim to make medical advances; provide services to patients (information, education, support); facilitate research and make it easier for scientists to get access to data and to post requests for crowdsourcing projects; ease communication between all individuals and organizations working to advance…

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