Central heating systems have interfaces, and many of us interact with them every day, even if only by experiencing their effects. But there’s a lot of room for improvement. They’re systems where (unlike, say, a car) we don’t generally get instantaneous feedback on the changes […]
All posts filed under “Technology”
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 […]
The world’s energy meter
One of the presentations I’m really looking forward to at OpenTech 2008 in London is by AMEE, self-described as “The world’s energy meter”: If all the energy data in the world were accessible, what would you build? The Climate Change agenda has created an imperative […]
Interview with Sir Clive
Chris Vallance of Radio 4’s excellent iPM has done a thoughtful interview with Sir Clive Sinclair, ranging across many subjects, from personal flying machines to the Asus Eee, and touching on the subject of consumer understanding of technology, and the degree to which the public […]
Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 4)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (coming soon) Continued from part 3 This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path, performing actions in a specified […]
Sarah Burwood: Tumble Sums
We’ve covered teaching machines and programmed learning textbooks a few times on the blog, and I’ll admit to a general fascination with analogue computing and similar ideas, ever since reading John Crank‘s Mathematics and Industry as a teenager, after finding it in a skip (dumpster) […]
Exploiting the desire for order
I met a lot of remarkable people in Finland, and some of them – they know who they are – have given me a lot to think about, in a good way, about lots of aspects of life, psychology and its relation to design. Thanks […]
Lights reminding you to turn things off
Duncan Drennan, who writes the very thoughtful Art of Engineering blog, notes something extremely interesting: standby lights, if they’re annoying/visible enough, can actually motivate users to switch the device off properly: Our DVD player has (to me) the most irritating standby light that I have […]
Design with Intent presentation from Persuasive 2008
Dan Lockton: Design With Intent (Persuasive 2008) view presentation (tags: environment affordances sustainability lockton) EDIT: I’ve now added the audio! Thanks everyone for the suggestions on how best to do it; the audio is hosted on this site rather than the Internet Archive as the […]
Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 3)
Continued from part 2 This series is looking at what design techniques/mechanisms are applicable to guiding a user to follow a process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence. The techniques fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the […]
Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 2)
Continued from part 1 These are the suggested mechanisms applicable to User follows process or path, performing actions in a specified sequence – they fall roughly into three ‘approaches’. In this post, I’m going to examine the System element approach. System element approach This approach […]
Getting someone to do things in a particular order (Part 1)
Photo by trancedmoogle. Back in January, I introduced the Design with Intent method on the blog. I’ve been developing this since then, and, suitably tested and refined, it should form the first stage of the PhD. Essentially, the DwI Method is intended to be a […]
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 […]
Do you really need to print that?
This is not difficult to do, once you know how. Of course, it’s not terribly useful, since a) most people don’t read the display on a printer unless an error occurs, or b) you’re only likely to see it once you’ve already sent something to […]
Some thoughts on classifications
Over the last couple of years, this site has examined, mentioned, discussed or suggested around 250 examples of ‘control’ features or methods designed into products, systems and environments – many of which have come from readers’ suggestions and comments on earlier posts. I’d resisted classifying […]
Making energy use visible
Photos courtesy of Harry Ward We’ve looked recently at water taps with meters built in, the thinking being the ‘speedometer’ approach to shaping users’ behaviour – making users aware of the scale/rate/level of some activity should cause them to adjust that behaviour. A number of […]