Tag Archive for user satisfaction

Conceptual Design, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Good Idea, Bad Idea

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In the spirit of Animaniacs’ “Bad Idea, Good Idea,” enjoy the following product ideas. And for those who’ve never heard of Animaniacs, please watch the short segment (you can see more on YouTube!). Need a bit of assist in your bedroom? Add springs for the extra bounce. Find yourself in need of a sure grip? Make room for fingers. Short on space? Don’t waste the cupboards under each stair. Need more animation in the morning? Use the light. Bored with tea? Get a personal assistant. Worried about your waistline? Get measured. Live to serve? Bump it up. Too sure-footed? Make every climb a challenge. Too close? Give your photos some distance. Product design is limited only by imagination. A Short Introduction to Animaniacs’ “Bad Idea, Good Idea”

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Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Diagnostic Errors, Errors, Featured, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

Empathy on the Brain

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Empathy is a necessary component of product design. To design and make something that is comfortable to use for someone else, requires the maker of the product to imagine how another human being would feel while using it. This is a hard thing to do. Medical students have to take “bed side manners” classes that explicitly teach empathy for the patient. Some design schools do the same (check out this video in Product Design Resources). Fortunately, humans come equipped with a special region in the brain whose job it is to help us see the world from another’s point of view. Here’s a short introduction by Rebecca Saxe, “How we read each other’s minds.” So when we go to the movies, we relate to the characters and feel what they feel, and cry when they are sad, and laugh when they are happy, and cringe when things get awkward, because we have the Right TPJ (or RTPJ) region in our brain just behind and above our right ear. We aren’t born ready to use this part of our brain, as the experiments described by Dr. Saxe in the video show. It takes a long time for this social problem solving…

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

Cultural World Domination

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When we first arrived in New York as Russian refugees many, many years ago, everything was so confusing. I remember lying on the bed in a hotel room somewhere in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with my whole family (mother, father, sister, and me) and watching commercials on TV. There was a stick figure running around the screen screaming “Cherio-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-s.” We debated for hours trying figure out what it was about. And then there was a time when my parents let me buy a bag of Cheetos. I almost vomited when I tried one—in Russia, things that looked like that were sweet. The complete mismatch between my expectations and the actual taste made me gag. To this day, I hate the stuff! So when companies are on the path of world domination with their products, understanding cultural differences in background knowledge, perceptual expectations, preferred ways of doing things is a must. To see how some giants customize their products to make them more culturally sensitive, I took a look at McDonalds‘ menus from around the world. Check it out: Note: I went looking for the old Cheerios commercial, but could only find this one—it’s close, but the one we saw didn’t have…

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

Demonstration of Wealth

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People have been flashing “bling” around since the cave days. But what we perceive as “bling” has changed dramatically over the years and over cultures. We are social animals, we put a lot of value in our place in the social hierarchy of the group. By demonstrating wealth, we are advertising our social status in the community. Body Image How can you tell how much influence a cave man had in his group? Well, one was probably the way he looked: body paint, tattoos, scarification, body modification, hairdos, teeth filings, nail beautification, and accessories. And while somethings were transitory—beads are easily lost in battle, nails broken during a hunt—some are permanent status symbols. When all you owe is carried on you, then permanent modifications is a good solution to broadcasting your importance and achievements to the group. Each scar carries meaning and is much easier to show off than notches on the bed post. But body modifications is a very painful bling. Products Once the society is a bit more stable, stuff becames a preferred way of social display. Jewelry can be worn, homes can be owned, cars can be seen—there are many ways to show off wealth in the…

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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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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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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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