Mac as a giant dongle At Coding Horror, Jeff Atwood makes an interesting point about Apple’s lock-in business model: It’s almost first party only– about as close as you can get to a console platform and still call yourself a computer… when you buy a […]
All posts filed under “Design with Intent”
1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies
Simon Sellars, proprietor of the endlessly fascinating Ballardian, has organised a ‘Festival of Home Movies’, inviting mobile phone videos on the ‘Ballardian’ theme, including but not limited to “dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments”: In 1984 […]
Home-made instant poka-yokes
Update: Also known as Useful Landmines in the 43 Folders world – thanks Pantufla! Mistake-proofing – poka-yoke – can be as simple as encouraging/forcing yourself to do things in a sequence, to avoid forgetting or avoiding intermediate steps. If you’re the sort of person who […]
Persuasive 2008
I’m pleased to say that I’ll be presenting a short paper, Design With Intent: Persuasive Technology in a Wider Context* at Persuasive 2008, the 3rd International Conference on Persuasive Technology, taking place from June 4th-6th in Oulu, Finland. The paper’s a (very) brief introductory review […]
Mosquito controversy goes high-profile
The Mosquito anti-teenager sound device, which we’ve covered on this site a few times, was yesterday heavily criticised by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, launching the BUZZ OFF campaign in conjunction with Liberty and the National Youth Agency: Makers and users of […]
Making users more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour
I’m pleased to say that a paper I wrote earlier this year has been accepted by the International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, a new journal based at Loughborough University. The publishers (Taylor & Francis) allow authors to post a preprint* version online, so here it […]
Apologies for the delay to this service
You’re owed an apology, dear reader, for the 2-month hiatus with the blog. It’s down to a variety of reasons compounding each other, and alternately forcing me to prioritise other pressing problems, then when I tried seizing the initiative again, frustrating me with technical issues […]
Design with Intent links 2008-04-23
Design for Service Jeff Howard’s Design for Service blog – some very clear perspectives on this increasingly important way of looking at much everyday interaction design (tags: architecturesofcontrol, design service servicedesign designwithintent interaction interactiondesign) Seth Godin: The world’s worst toaster Understanding how people actually use […]
links for 2008-04-25
Flickr: The Desire Paths Pool Google may be a database of intentions; ‘desire paths’ are the record of user intentions which in some way conflict with what the designers intended… (tags: desire paths desirepaths design architecture built environment inention intent) Brian Burns’ presentation on ‘Newness […]
links for 2008-04-26
The Psychology of Security – Bruce Schneier Succinct analysis. The section on heuristics and biases affecting user decisions is particularly relevant to the Design with Intent research. (tags: schneier cognitivebias security risk heuristics)
Design-Behaviour website launched
Loughborough’s Dr Debra Lilley, who has done extensive research into designing for behavioural change, has just launched an excellent new website, Design-Behaviour, which brings together her research findings and some great examples of behaviour-changing products from different fields to illustrate the approaches identified. The site […]
links for 2008-05-01
Welsh couple cop Mosquito flak – The Register Discriminatory atmospherics (tags: mosquito discriminatoryatmospherics atmospherics soundweapon humanrights) Volvo gearchange indicator light Some Volvos were offered with an optional gearchange indicator, illuminating at the most efficient moment for the driver to change up a gear, based on […]