BBC NEWS | Business | Pringles ‘are not potato crisps’ “The manufacturer had insisted that their best-selling product was not similar to potato crisps, because of their…’regular shape’ which ‘is not found in nature’.” Auric Goldfingeresque phrasing! (tags: Goldfinger JamesBond Pringles Procter&Gamble tax)
Motel 6cc
The plastic* of this built-in Dove shower cream bottle I encountered in a Finnish hotel recently was significantly stiffer than the consumer retail version. The idea is that you press the side of the bottle where indicated to dispense some cream, but it didn’t deform […]
links for 2008-07-08
SABRE – Forums – The naffest traffic calming scheme in the country? The upside-down signs are inexcusable but the painted ‘chicanes’ are an interesting feature – much like ‘fake’ (paint-only) speed humps. (tags: spatial trafficcalming roads design driving painted chicanes signage)
Finestrino Bloccato
Italian railway operator Trenitalia has a simple way of locking the windows shut in some of its older carriages with (retro-fitted?) air-conditioning. This was on a train from Florence to Pisa; the sticker probably cost more than the screw. I like that. It also allows […]
So long, and thanks for all the rubbish
It cost nothing to put this (trilingual) thank-you message on this litter bin at Helsinki Airport. But does this kind of message – a very simple injunctive norm – have more effect on user behaviour than the absence of a message? To what extent does […]
links for 2008-07-15
Salon.com Technology | Ask the pilot “Are guards not answerable to those they’re supposedly protecting, and who are paying their salaries? How about a sign that cuts to the chase: “Don’t question us, just do as you’re told.”” (tags: airline airports control bureaucracy security ridiculous […]
Hard to handle
British Rail’s drop-the-window- then-stick-your-hand-outside- to-use-the-handle doors puzzled over by Don Norman in The Design of Everyday Things are still very much around, though often refurbished and repainted as with this delightful/vile pink First Great Western-liveried example. I’m assuming that this design was intended to introduce […]
Thoughtful Acts
Above & below: ‘Push’ Table by Jennifer Hing. Jane Fulton Suri‘s wonderful Thoughtless Acts? chronicles, visually, “those intuitive ways we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking” – effectively, examples of valid affordances perceived by users, which […]
Richard Thaler at the RSA
Richard Thaler, co-author of Nudge (which is extremely relevant to the Design with Intent research), gave a talk at the RSA in London today, and, though only mentioned briefly, he clearly drew the links between design and behaviour change. Some notes/quotes I scribbled down:
Buckminster Fuller on Design with Intent
Buckminster Fuller, talking to the New Yorker in 1966, quoted in this article by Elizabeth Kolbert: “I made up my mind . . . that I would never try to reform man–that’s much too difficult. What I would do was to try to modify the […]
Donella Meadows’ Leverage Points
Scott Wilson first pointed me in the direction of Donella Meadows’ ‘Leverage Points – Places to Intervene in a System‘ [PDF, 93 kB], and it’s been very useful in thinking about the ‘Design with Intent’ idea at a system level rather than just the myopic […]
How to fit a normal bulb in a BC3 fitting and save £10 per bulb
Standard 2-pin bayonet cap (left) and 3-pin bayonet cap BC3 (right) fittings compared Summary for mystified international readers: In the UK new houses/flats must, by law, have a number of light fittings which will ‘not accept incandescent filament bulbs’ (a ‘green’ idea). This has led […]