Alexander Freitas of the Infinity Squared blog notes the difficulties with frustrating tear-strips on packaging, and, comparing an easier-to-open pack from one manufacturer with a difficult tearstrip from another, suggests (somewhat along the lines of ‘Forcing functions designed to increase product consumption‘), that the company’s […]
More thoughts on the Eaton MEM BC3, CFLs and Power Factor
UPDATE: See this more recent post for information and photos of how to get a 2-pin bulb to fit in a BC3 fitting. BC3 reactions The post looking at the Eaton MEM BC3 system, a couple of months ago, has become something of a reference […]
Process friction
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah kindly sent me a link to this article by Ben Hyde: I once had a web product that failed big-time. A major contributor to that failure was tedium of getting new users through the sign-up process. Each screen they had to step triggered […]
Runnymede Memorial: Part 1
This post is the start of a series that will only be of interest to a few readers, but it’s about a subject that means a lot to me, and about a place which, in one way or another, has had an impact on design, […]
A bright idea?
UPDATE: See this more recent post for information and photos of how to get a 2-pin bulb to fit in a BC3 fitting. This may well be the example which involves the most different ‘architecture of control’ issues so far – by a long way. […]
Anti-user seating in Oxford
Top two photos: A bench on Cornmarket Street, Oxford; Lower two photos: A bus stop seat perch on Castle Street. While from a very narrow specification point-of-view ‘they do their job’, what utter contempt for users these two seating examples demonstrate! The benches on Cornmarket […]
Friday quote: Super-Cannes by J G Ballard
J G Ballard, Super-Cannes, chapter 29: Thousands of people live and work here without making a single decision about right and wrong. The moral order is engineered into their lives along with the speed limits and the security systems. Re-reading Ballard’s excellent Super-Cannes, since the […]
More educational architectures of control: museums
A ‘traditional’ museum display cabinet in the Kremlin museum, Moscow. I liked the owl. Two very interesting posts from last week looked at the use of control in museum design – Frankie Roberto discusses trying to get children (in particular) to learn interactively, and Josh […]
Friday quote: Precedents
It is remarkable… how often thinking for oneself will lead us to conclusions written about before we were born. From a post by Vera Bass, ‘Teaching requires learning’, 6th November 2006. Many people have probably also said this, but that’s the point, pretty much.
Packet switching
Both Dr Tom Stafford (co-author of the fantastic Mind Hacks book & blog) and Gregor Hochmuth (creator of FlickrStorm, an improved Flickr search system) have been in touch suggesting packaging/portion sizes as a significant everyday architecture of control, (or at least an aspect of design […]
Friday quote: Fashion & convention
L.J.K. Setright, the late motoring writer and commentator, self-taught mechanical engineer and all-round Renaissance Man, once wrote: Fashion is a terrible fetter; convention, since it lasts longer, is even worse. This was in an issue of Car, when it was still any good. Setright wrote […]
Objects in mirror are wider than they appear
This is an interesting story. Robert Kilroy-Silk (above) currently an independent MEP, has raised the issue in the European Parliament of intentionally distorting mirrors in clothes stores, specifically Marks & Spencer: Marks and Spencer has said it is mystified by a claim by MEP Robert […]