sense (n) feel, perceive, understand, comprehend c.1400, "faculty of perception," also "meaning or interpretation" ... from sentire "perceive, feel, know," maya (n) : Sanskrit माया : ma (not) + ya (that) the illusion that the world can be seen only one way I do design research at SonicRim, where, amongst other things I have fun, make sense of (analyse) the world (maya), pretend to be wise, and drink enormous quantities of tea in the process. This blog collects some observations I couldn't keep contained in my head.
connect
networks linkedin, twitter
reading books, google reader, bibliography
experiences last.fm, flickr, world music
travel dopplr, tripadvisor
RSS
Really nice. People never stop to amaze me with their creativity
I think Norman, has done some interesting things, and I think the article has definitely provoked some nice, and healthy debate, but I have to agree that he's using the straw man tactic.
Everytime a read a Norman piece, and I always leave thinking, "Hmm ... that was interesting ... from a psychological perspective." Norman isn't a classically trained designer, and it shows in his writings.
However, I do think there's something to be said for what is constituted as "innovation", and i think you are spot, when you talk about "technologists" innovating and not looking farther into the future, and causing havoc because they didn't even try to look ahead at how their artifacts might be used. That's exactly what designers are great at seeing, and not necessarily technologists.
Designers are all about looking towards the future and trying to understand how the checks and balances will be affected by our designs.
Nice article.
Yes, definitely. Email in its most useful form empowers people to communicate with other people. The context of that communication is best determined by each person as they send email to others. Six Degrees made that possible.
Have you ever heard "Talk with Chippy " ?
Let me tellyou something about him.It's the newest application on the iPhone and Ipod market. His cute little figur ans his so lovely voice will make your day.
Have a look on it,try it and convince yourself about what this chipmunk is able to do.
I bet you will have lots of fun:)
[edit by arvind, fixing link]
"Talk with Chippy" is available on the following link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/talk-with-chippy/id362084375?mt=8
so, you're saying that the best email application in the world is not Remail ;) ?
I like the perspective offered by Dourish a great deal, probably because I used ethnomethods for my PhD dissertation. Regarding the point about email though, the best application I've seen was Six Degrees from Creo back at the turn of this century (I love being able to use that phrase ;-)
Here is something I wrote about Six Degrees a few years back in a discussion about the tendency of knowledge management applications to support organizational control and management hierarchy.
"Creo has a desktop application which I have been beta testing for the past couple of months. It is called six degrees, kind of a pun off the small world hypothesis. Anyway, six degrees loads on your desktop and scans your email application for the messages stored there, the people who sent them and received them, and any file attachments. It then builds a view of all your messages across folders (specified by the user) to let you look at your mail folders according to common people, common files, or common messages. It is an ideal application for enabling individuals to view their personal communication network across folders and, by implication, projects. Anyway, to make a long story short, there are no collective views of this information. So, it is
one of those unique IT resources that empowers the user but not management."
Unfortunately, Six Degrees was discontinued and Creo, I believe, was acquired.
i wonder what that sign-switching says about the bar - or what is it about the bar that prompted the switch. is it a permission to play? a poking fun at social norms on sexuality & propriety? a socially-acceptable excuse to have intimate encounters ("whoops, sorry, i didn't realise this was the women's restroom")? is it a place where people go to make new friends and have new encounters? how does the atmosphere support or suggest this miscegeny?
thanks for the tidbit on Amuma and Eichicha. makes the sign even odder :)
hi!
it's funny - there's this bar in sacramento - Fanny Ann's - which has the bathroom signs that point to the other door - so the "women's" room door actually has the "male" alligator. (I have no idea why alligators, but) it's all fun and games until some damn drunk guy walk into the women's room. happens all the time!
the pics you have above from Barcelona - they're Basque icons of Amuma and Eichicha (gramma and grampa). Every Basque home has them.
Interesting post.
the first image is from a pizza place in Austin, Texas. So, FYI, those are pizza pieces...
Gibbs: yes, I think there's something about the bite-sized nature of Twitter that makes it more free-flowing and encourages thinking about the various implications of small units of information.. akin to workshops we hold where we guide our clients (usually a mixed team of engineers, managers, designers, user researchers) through going from small chunks of data to consensus on design solutions and approaches.
While Twitter creates chaos, it also breaks down silos and helps different domains communicate and understand each other. For example, we all tend to use the term model rather loosely even though the word model means very different things to different people. Engineers think of models as implementation models, or, in other words, how the system should work under the hood. Product managers think of models as business models or how the product should turn a profit. User experience folks think of models as user or customer models, or in other words, what are the user goals and needs. The interesting thing is that when engineers, product managers, and user experience folks bump into each other on Twitter and start a dialog, the product managers and user experience folks figure out that there is significant overlap between the user and the business model and it is those points of overlap that can really produce a strong product. The engineers figure out that these points of overlap are where the strongest and most robust functionality should exist. It is these points of overlap that can really make Twitter a powerful tool, although it can often seem chaotic and inefficient.
hahah i liked the comparison better!
Thanks for that nugget. Yes, that seems to be similar. What's even more interesting I think is the parallelism between form and symbolism. Here, the word 'tape' has moved from a denotative to a connotative meaning, and back to denotative ('tape' first as the storage form, then 'tape' meaning to record onto a tape, and now 'tape' meaning just to record)
I would almost agree, except that the thing they seem to be selling is themselves: the shell is one of the hotel's insignia, and the magazine has completely GQish content in it. I couldn't figure out what it was I was supposed to buy or buy into, other than some strange new age-y feel-good about the hotel.
[After the third day, when I placed the tray aside and put a book on top of it, it was not moved back to the bed. I wonder if there's an instruction somewhere that says "don't touch their stuff"]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph is a parallel concept, I think.
It's no less tolerable but perhaps easier to understand if you consider that all the crap placed strategically throughout the room is there for persuasion, to "sell" something to you. I don't think it's about welcoming at all. Here's my example http://www.portigal.com/blog/forced-engagement/
oh, I'm a long way off yet. but getting there. at least, I am now starting to ask anthropological questions. still not capable of providing anthropological explanations...
Excellent! A McCracken-worthy post!
thanks, tracking it
Nice categorization. There's another flickr photo pool, Gender Signs.
i always hated that study, too... but i hate most studies. ;)
It's just (purposefully) misleading. Would have been more interesting with a a third choice:
(c) Linda is active in the feminist movement.
i hadn't thought of the presentation aspect of this. well then, gatorade can still do something about how good the boxes look, knowing that that's how they will be displayed. but then again, we're talking about gatorade, not exactly a product known for its visual appeal...
i'd go with store policy - nobody at hte level of stock boy has the power to make a decision about that. they just do what they're told.
and...
is it perhaps that the manufacturer does not want the retailer to store them that way because it's simply... ugly? and they want their product to look nice on the shelves?
or maybe its to prevent a lawsuit - we know you're going to stack these but if you do we want to cover our asses so we don't get sued when some idiot pulls one out from the bottom and then cries that it all fell on him???
:)