Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen, mentioned a few days ago, now has a full agenda available [PDF] (thanks Debra) – here are the abstracts:
Yearly archives of “2008”
Skinner and the Mousewrap
Dontclick.it, an interesting interface design experiment by Alex Frank, included this amusing idea, the Mousewrap, to ‘train’ users not to click any more “through physical pain”. It did make me think: is the use of anti-sit spikes on window sills, ledges, and so on, or […]
The detail of everyday interaction
Understanding what people really do when they carry out some ‘simple’ task, as opposed to what designers assume they do, is important. Even something as mundane as boiling a kettle to make a cup of tea or coffee is fraught with variability, slips, mistaken assumptions […]
‘Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen’ Seminar, 17th October
Debra Lilley, who runs the very useful Design-Behaviour website, sends details of an interesting forthcoming seminar at Loughborough University: Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen! The 13th Sustainable Design Network Seminar Design | Behaviour: Making it Happen! will be held on the 17th October 2008 […]
A year in
It’s nearly a year since I started my PhD, (and coming up to three years since this blog was launched). Last week I had my end-of-year review, and, while I don’t often post about the minutiae of being a research student on the blog, I […]
A ‘Behaviour Change Barometer’
This is a kind of exploration of some ideas I worked on a while ago as part of my research, and have only just come back to, in order to tidy them up a bit. I’m putting it online as a way – perhaps – […]
Architecting and designing
Seth Godin asks ‘Is architect a verb?’, and makes an interesting distinction between design and architecture (emphases mine): Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it looks good. There are great designs that don’t look good, […]
links for 2008-08-05 [delicious.com]
Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into research : Nature Reviews Neuroscience Randi and Teller among the authors. [No longer behind paywall: thanks, Cory] (tags: magic neuroscience psychology misdirection behaviour attention cognitivebias heuristics JamesRandi Teller) How magicians control your mind – The Boston […]
Salt licked?
UPDATE: See the detailed response below from Peter of Gateshead Council, which clarifies, corrects and expands upon some of the spin given by the Mail articles. The new shakers were supplied to the chip shop staff for use behind the counter: “Our main concern was […]
links for 2008-08-04 [delicious.com]
INDEX: 2007 – User-centered design & innovation Interesting writing, but the Issuu interface is completely unusable. (tags: design interactiondesign userexperience usability usercentreddesign) Vodafone | receiver » Jan Chipchase: Small objects travel further, faster "Much of our research started out as an attempt to understand the […]
links for 2008-08-03 [delicious.com]
Judgment and Decision Making, Journal "Relevant articles deal with normative, descriptive, and/or prescriptive analyses of human judgments and decisions. " (tags: decisionmaking heuristics biases cognitivebias behaviouraleconomics behaviour journal architecturesofcontrol,)
The asymmetry of the indescribable
Like the itchy label in my shirt, there’s something which has been niggling away at the back of my mind, ever since I started being exposed to ‘academic fields’, and boundaries between ‘subjects’ (probably as a young child). I’m sure others have expressed it much […]
What are Architectures of Control?
Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments. Continued… (+ readers’ comments) When this research started, […]
links for 2008-07-29
Infrastructure and Modernity: Paul N Edwards [PDF] “…infrastructures simultaneously shape and are shaped by – in other words, co-construct – the condition of modernity… To be modern is to live within and by means of infrastructures, and therefore to inhabit, uneasily, the intersection of these […]