Speedometer, rev counter and fuel and temperature gauges on the dashboard of my 1992 Reliant Scimitar SST. Photo taken on B1098 alongside Sixteen Foot Drain, Isle of Ely, England. In part 1 of ‘Shaping behaviour’, we took a look at ‘sticks and carrots’ as approaches […]
All posts filed under “Technology”
Shaping behaviour: Part 1
A couple of months ago I posted about the ‘shaping behaviour’ research of RED, part of the UK Design Council. At the time I noted in passing a classification of design approaches for shaping behaviour, mentioned by RED’s Chris Vanstone: “stick*, carrot or speedometer.” It’s […]
Incompati-babel
A clever comment on incompatible (and DRM’d) formats by eboy’s flunters. (Via rss.euge.de)
How this research will be moving forward
UPDATE: This 2-page PDF (produced summer 2008) introduces the research I’ve taken the plunge, and will be starting a PhD in September at Brunel University, Uxbridge, in the School of Engineering & Design. The chosen subject incorporates both a formal investigation and review of certain […]
Process friction
Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah kindly sent me a link to this article by Ben Hyde: I once had a web product that failed big-time. A major contributor to that failure was tedium of getting new users through the sign-up process. Each screen they had to step triggered […]
A bright idea?
UPDATE: See this more recent post for information and photos of how to get a 2-pin bulb to fit in a BC3 fitting. This may well be the example which involves the most different ‘architecture of control’ issues so far – by a long way. […]
Friday quote: Fashion & convention
L.J.K. Setright, the late motoring writer and commentator, self-taught mechanical engineer and all-round Renaissance Man, once wrote: Fashion is a terrible fetter; convention, since it lasts longer, is even worse. This was in an issue of Car, when it was still any good. Setright wrote […]
Who serves whom
Joel Johnson: Stop buying products that serve any other master than you. (via Boing Boing ) Bruce Schneier also wrote something along similar lines last year, though the context was different: When technology serves its owners, it is liberating. When it is designed to serve […]
Forcing functions designed to increase product consumption
A few days ago, Tim Quinn of Dangerous Curve posted an interesting observation on the Simple Control in Products page: “This may not be what you had in mind, but I immediately thought of such things as toothpaste pumps that ‘meter’ use to insure the […]
Use of RFID in DRM
Via Dave Farber’s Interesting People, a brief New Scientist article outlines Sony’s continuing obsession with restricting and controlling its customers (the last one didn’t go too well): “A patent filed by Sony last week suggests it may once again be considering preventing consumers making “too […]
The Privacy Ceiling
Scott Craver of the University of Binghamton has a very interesting post summarising the concept of a ‘privacy ceiling’: “This is an economic limit on privacy violation by companies, owing to the liability of having too much information about (or control over) users.” It’s the […]
Dilemma of horns
I was woken up (along with, I expect, lots of others) at about 5am today by a driver sounding his/her horn in the road outside – an arrogant two-second burst – then another replying (perhaps) with a slightly feeble one-second tone. I don’t know why; […]