Tag Archive for p-prim

Anchoring Errors, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Mental Model Traps, Misapplication of Problem Solving Strategies, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Build It and They Will Come…NOT!

by  • 

NEXT logo

There’s a common misconception — a folksy wisdom, a p-prim, if you will — that in our many years of product design led many entrepreneurs astray: Build it and they will come! Oh, if only it was so… While this is a wonderfully optimistic world-view, it just doesn’t work out that way in real world. So rather than just say it isn’t so, I will give a few examples where I was personally involved either in the design of the product or the workings of the company. Please keep in mind that all of these examples were EXTREMELY well-funded, had a lot of design resources, and ALL believed that they were changing the world for the better. NEXT We all remember NEXT, right? If not, let me jug your memory… After leaving (or being forced out of Apple), Steve Jobs started NEXT — a computer hardware company to rival Apple. Even with Jobs’ charisma, talent, deep financial resources, access to the best minds in the business… he couldn’t make this work. Some say that NEXT is now part of Mac DNA, but it still stands that as a company is was a failure… Steve built it, and no one ever…

Read more →

Background Knowledge, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Do you remember Gardol?

by  • 

Colgate Gardol Ad

Do you know what Gardol is? Unless you are close to retiring, probably not… So here’s a bit of background: Gardol is sodium lauroyl sarcosinate — not a very harmonious sounding chemical. I’m guessing Gardol was a clever marketing trick of combining the words “Guard” and “All”, relying on the phonetic combination to drive home the idea of protective quality of this chemical compound. In our society, chemicals don’t sell — we have an aversion to chemicals, we only want natural products! The common Western p-prim (or folksy wisdom) is that chemical are bad for us, and products created from natural ingredients are good for us … never mind arsenic! Gardol might have disappeared from the drug store ads, but the chemical sodium lauroyl sarcosinate didn’t — today it goes by the name “Advance White” and is part of a very well respected for its natural and health-consious products, Arm & Hammer toothpaste! Oh, and we don’t like the word “dental cream” — it’s toothpaste now…

Read more →

Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Pipsqueak Articles, Users

25 Awesome Quotes, 11 Ways, 10 Hateful Things, 8 Steps, 7 Reflections, 5 Hard Facts, 3 Reasons Why, 2 Questions, and 1 Mistake

by  • 

5 second test

The latest in the professional social media writing is the creation of lists. Sing it with me: 25 Awesome Quotes 11 Secrets & 11 Ways 10 Hateful Things 8 Steps 7 Reflections 5 Seconds Test & 5 Hard Facts & 5 Ways 3 Audiences & 3 Big Trends & 3 Reasons 2 Questions 1 Career Mistake and a Partridge in a pear treeeeee…. What’s going on? Well, the new p-prim in town seems to be: “LinkedIn users like things in neatly organized lists.” And perhaps it is true — LinkedIn might see blogs written in this format as a good marketing trick, getting lots of hits. The more LinkedIn selects such format to feature, the more articles are written in this format — it is a self-replicating problem. In my classes, we talk of surface reading — how in today’s fast-moving culture, people peck and sample content in small bits and pieces: “Just give me the talking points, please.” And we see the results in the news, in PowerPoint presentations, and on LinkedIn’s Influencer Posts. Let’s just hope that some people still take the time to wade through details and read for deeper meaning.

Read more →

Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles

Same Desire, Cultural Shift in Solution

by  • 

Give cigarettes for christmas

Over time, some desires have stayed constant: an aversion to pain, a wish for health, a longing to be loved, and a craving for wealth, power, and youth. But desires are susceptible to cultural shifts, and so they shift with the whim of fashion: the need to be thin, the hope to fit the norms of current beauty, the yearning for popularity, an aspiration for fame. Each generation comes up with solutions for their desired that are based in the cultural soup that nourished them. What is a cultural soup? Well, it’s a heady mixture of the following: anxiety — each generation has their own issues that they loose sleep over. In addition to the ones that their parents experienced, each generation can choose and pick and invent their own worries. affordances — affordances are available actions that are mired in context and situation. As context changes, affordances evolve. Each generation sees a unique subset of problem solutions. emotional design — each generation is stirred by issues and fashion that are uniquely their own. Emotional design is by definition tied to a particular group of people, be they joined in time, cause, or geography. Social value, user satisfaction, and emotional…

Read more →

Conceptual Design, Interface Design

In Search of Design Excellence

by  • 

Rutter, G. B. (2010). “In Search of Design Excellence.” http://www.appliancedesign.com. Visited on October 15th, 2012: http://www.appliancedesign.com/Articles/Feature_Article/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000931808 Design excellence can be defined as a combination of design excellence, or the fidelity of decisions decisions and the innovations. Often, people conflate innovation and  the execution of design. Even if a design is new and a breakthrough, the execution of the design can make or break the how excellent a design truly is. One area to consider for design execution is human centered design. Examples given include the design of a music application. While it might be possible to dpwnload music in a new manner, it does not mean ease of use has been considered. Similary, when considering design decisions for making a new chair, often times, ergonomics and engineering check boxes may be used to create new experiences. However, if human centered design tenants are not considered, the design may still ultimately fail. Ie, s the music app easy to use? Fun to use? Is the chair comfortable? Does it fit in the users environment? For new innovations if human centered designed is a component of the design a better product may emerge, and this is one sign of excellent design. p-prim…

Read more →

Conceptual Design, Interaction Design

Article: Sometimes more choices leave people worse off

by  • 

Research published in Biology Letters shows that people confronted with too many choices have difficulty making a good decision. The study analyses over 3,700 human dating descisons across 84 speed-dating events. The study found that when the numnber of variable attributes increases (ie heigh, occupation, education background), people made fewer dating proposals. The effect was even stronger as the number of potential partners increased. Another study shows that when participants in a dating study are given more potential partners, their emotional satisfaction is not higher than when presented with fewer options. Other studies have shows that more options cripple a people to not make any decision at all. Consumer studies show that when given limited options, consumers make a purchasing decison, and are happier with the limited set of options. When given large numbers of options, humans and other animals tend to rely on heuristics that help guide decision making. These rules of thumb help to reduce and simplify the decision making proceess by ignoring some information. We tend to default to quick, easy, and recognizable options. We can decide the appeal of a face in 13 milliseconds. So with fewer options, people make quicker decisions. With more options, people…

Read more →

Cognitive Blindness, Contributor, Errors

Define your terms: What is sex?

by  • 

The article, “Sex Makes You Smarter — Can ‘Virtual Sex’ Do The Same?” was a great example of either knowing your audience too well or over-using jargon. The most prevalent problem in it was the lack of defined terms. The author assumed that the reader knew terms like: neurogenesis, glucocorticoid levels, and dendritic architecture (a case of cognitive blindness). But the biggest failure was the author’s negligence to define the most basic term about which the article was written: sex. What is sex? Who is having it? How are they having it? These questions were unanswered. The research on which the article was based indicated that male rats were the subject of the study and were “exposed” to sexually-receptive female rats. That was it. That was the only definition of sex in the entire article, and it was a very vague definition, especially if one extrapolated it to the realm of human sex, which is known to be complicated and varied. Is the author talking about the sexual gratification of males only? If sex was a form of exercise, as the author explained it was, how much caloric effort should the male engage in to achieve it or what heart rate should…

Read more →