Go straight to the patterns One view of influencing user behaviour – what I’ve called the ‘errorproofing lens’ – treats a user’s interaction with a system as a set of defined target behaviour routes which the designer wants the user to follow, with deviations from […]
All posts filed under “Engineering design”
Instructable: One-Touch Keypad Masher
It’s been a long time since I last wrote an Instructable, but as I’ve resolved that 2009’s going to be a year where I start making things again (2008 involved a lot of sitting, reading and annotating, and in 2007 most of what I made […]
Staggering insight
I’ve mentioned a few times, perhaps more often in presentations than on the blog, the fact that guidelines for the design of pedestrian crossings in the UK [PDF] recommend that where a crossing is staggered, pedestrians should be routed so that they have to face […]
What is demand, really?
In a lot of the debate and discussion about energy, future electricity generation and metering, improved efficiency and influencing consumer behaviour – at least from an engineering perspective – the term “demand” is used, in conjunction with “supply”, to represent the energy required to be […]
‘Smart meters’: some thoughts from a design point of view
Here’s my (rather verbose) response to the three most design-related questions in DECC’s smart meter consultation that I mentioned earlier today. Please do get involved in the discussion that Jamie Young’s started on the Design & Behaviour group and on his blog at the RSA. […]
Brake-Fast Doggie Bowl
Image from www.brake-fast.net Thanks to Steve Portigal and Page Sands for bringing this to my attention: the Brake-Fast Doggie Bowl is designed to stop dogs wolfing down their food quite as quickly as they would otherwise, which can cause painful (and dangerous) bloating. The raised […]
High frequency ringtone download
High frequencies being tested in the urban badlands: see, no teenagers here! A lot of people find this site through searching for something along the lines of ‘Mosquito high frequency anti-teenager ringtone’, and are presumably disappointed when they find that there is no such ringtone […]
High frequency wave files back up again
They’re back up (well, the wave files anyway), thanks to the Internet Archive.
An interlock example
It’s been a while since I posted about an architecture of control designed to assist/protect the user rather than to frustrate or intimidate, but just reading a great article about the MG SV-R supercar formerly produced by MG Sports & Racing*, a very simple interlock […]
‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’
Via Boing Boing, ‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’, news from Georgia Tech of a system that scans and finds the CCDs of digital imaging equipment and shines bright light (or a laser) into them in order to flood them […]
Anti-perch spikes
These spikes on a window ledge in Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, look quite old. The ledge is steeply angled, so would be difficult to sit on anyway; if anything they’d make it easier actually to climb up to the window if breaking in were a concern. All […]
No sliding
These spikes are embedded every couple of feet in the hand-rails of a staircase at Highbury & Islington station in London, presumably to prevent kids (or adults) sliding down them. They’re not especially sharp, but would bruise someone pretty badly. Note that there are also […]