From the Sunday Times, ‘Standby buttons face axe to curb energy waste’: “Ministers want to do away with the standby buttons that allow [users] to flick their TVs and other electronic gadgets on and off while moving barely a muscle…
All posts filed under “Engineering”
Freedom to Tinker – The Freedom to Tinker with Freedom?
At Freedom to Tinker, David Robinson asks whether, in a world where DRM is presented to so many customers as a benefit (e.g. Microsoft’s Zune service), the public as a whole will be quite happy to trade away its freedom to tinker, whether the law […]
Preventing baggage trolleys going down the escalator
These ‘pinch point’ barriers at London’s Heathrow Airport prevent the baggage trolleys from the Bus Station being taken down the escalators which lead to Terminals 1, 2 and 3. Mistake-proofing (for safety reasons: a trolley down the escalator would be dangerous) but also unnecessary if […]
‘Anti-Homeless’ benches in Tokyo
Images from Yumiko Hayakawa Yumiko Hayakawa has a very thoughtful and well-illustrated article at OhMyNews on the story behind the variety of ‘anti-homeless’ benches and architectural features (including public art) in Tokyo’s parks and public areas – by making it difficult or impossible to lie […]
Review: Made to Break by Giles Slade
Last month I mentioned some fascinating details on planned obsolescence gleaned from a review of Giles Slade‘s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Having now read the book for myself, here’s my review, including noteworthy ‘architectures of control’ examples and pertinent commentary. Slade […]
Using trees to encourage safer driving
Image from New Urban News, by Eric Dumbaugh Ryan G Coleman kindly sent me a link to this very interesting New Urban News story, ‘Research: trees make streets safer, not deadlier’. The gist is that roads planted with trees cause drivers to put themselves in […]
Ticket off
Henry e-mails: “Perhaps this is too obvious: parking meters; and I mean modern digital ones, enforce arbitrary limits on how much you can pay for at a time (4 hours). Is this to share the enjoyment of democratic parking (at a dollar an hour), or […]
The Tell-Tale Part
Open the case of your mobile (cell) phone. Do you see a round white sticker, similar to that in the first photo below? This is a water damage sticker, which changes colour if moisture gets into this bit of the phone, and will be used […]
Inconvenience: deliberate or accidental?
Seth Godin mentions providing a ‘convenience’ feature for customers and then intentionally making it inconvenient to use: “Here at the White Plains airport, I’m noticing all these people doing things to me. Enforcing irrational rules. Intentionally putting the seats far from the electrical outlets so […]
‘Design Must Relinquish Control’
Niblettes tackles the issue of designers and control, specifically, how much the user’s experience and methods of using a product or service should be defined by the designer. The conclusion – paralleling a theme in a marketing speech by Procter & Gamble’s Alan G Lafley […]
Disaffordances and engineering obedience
Image based on Don Norman‘s famous teapot, and the Obey Giant face Last month I asked, in response to some criticism, whether there was a better term than ‘architectures of control’ for the loose category of stuff discussed on this site. The response was great […]
Speed control designed to help the user
Something with an interesting ‘forcing function’ story has been right in front of me all this time: the QWERTY keyboard, developed by Christopher Sholes and then Remington, with the intention of controlling the user’s behaviour. Until typists became proficient with the QWERTY system, the non-alphabetical […]