Adam Savage is an American industrial design and special effects engineer, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters.
In this video he tells 'juicy stories' about his failures.
Very watchable/listenable.
Design
June 25, 2009
June 22, 2009
June 18, 2009
June 16, 2009
Presenting with style
Garr Reynolds, author of Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
May 10, 2009
Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser is best known for the enduring I ♥ NY campaign. Jason Kotke recently posted about Glaser's 'Ten Things I have Learned".
My favourite Glaser points are:
- You can only work for people you like
- Some people are toxic, avoid them
- How you live changes your brain
- Doubt is better than certainty
- Tell the truth
May 09, 2009
May 08, 2009
David Lynch on ideas
David Lynch, Director of The Elephant Man [DVD] [1980]
(via Cultural Fuel)
May 05, 2009
Escaping the confines of culture
The trickster is anybody who's a bit of an outsider. They're the ones who make change. They're not thinking about making change; they're almost doing it in a selfish way. But because they're working outside the rules, they change the rules. Everything around them is always new, everything is an opportunity.
Reading Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture
, it is clear that one of the characteristics of the trickster is that he crosses boundaries.
, it is clear that one of the characteristics of the trickster is that he crosses boundaries.It was a skill that came to mind, when I heard Dan Willis talk on how to exceed historically respected boundaries. He refers to George McKenzie, the author of Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
, who worked at Hallmark Cards for 30 years. McKenzie spent many of those years inspiring his colleagues to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set.
, who worked at Hallmark Cards for 30 years. McKenzie spent many of those years inspiring his colleagues to a mode of dreaming, daring and doing above and beyond the rubber-stamp confines of the administrative mind-set.It's not for everyone, as Dan explains, because it is risky and it requires a high level of resilience.
May 04, 2009
Leading with Insight
Matthew Milan, Principal and Design Director with Normative, explains how to generate, identify, frame and use insight effectively. He argues that insights are recognisable truths that help you to understand the real nature of problems.
Matthew suggests that effective insights comes from using the 'Columbo approach', which involves:
- asking thoughtful questions
- looking beyond the obvious
- reframing the problem
- trusting your gut
Picture: Lieutenant Columbo by ostromentsky
April 16, 2009
Breaking the rules
Tim Brown's (IDEO) observations about Formula 1 explain the current furore over Brawn GP's diffuser.
"Formula 1 motor racing... is a sport where the rules are often changed with little notice and the race teams invest millions of dollars in their response, attempting to gain tenths of a second in performance over their fellow competitors. Formula 1 is a kind of experimental hotbed where new rules are constantly tested. The intent of the rule makers is often to create a predictable reduction in performance so as to create safer or more competitive racing. What often happens however is that the ingenuity of engineers and designers combined with poorly written rules result in faster rather than slower cars. Design is testing the rules and innovation is the result."
April 15, 2009
Changing Behaviour
Dr BJ Fogg of Stanford University has recently released a behavioural change model that makes a lot of sense. He highlights the importance of motivators, ability and triggers:
There are three types of motivator, each with two sides (pleasure-pain, hope-fear, and social rejection-social acceptance). Ability, means making the particular behaviour easier or simpler to do. There are also three types of triggers named (facilitator, spark, and signal, but as the model is in its early stages the difference between these three isn’t very clear yet).
The Fogg model says that if you get the motivators right, and if the behaviour is made easier for people to do, and if you trigger it - then the behaviour is more likely to occur.
April 14, 2009
Influencing Behaviour
Dan Lockton, has collated a number of methods that influence behaviour change:
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Give the user feedback on the impact of their behaviour energy meters
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Suggest a behaviour to a user at the ‘opportune’ moment, i.e. when it would be most efficient or the most desirable next step to take e.g. automatic warning signs can alert drivers to upcoming dangers at the right point for them to respond and slow down accordingly
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Simplify tasks - make it easier for users to follow the intended behaviour.
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Personalise the way a system responds to individual users’ needs / abilities / situations, to engage users to interact in the intended way
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Guided persuasion: a user ‘agrees’ to be routed through a sequence of pre-specified actions or events. Their commitment to following the process motivates the user to accept the outcome
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Provide a simulation showing users what consequences particular behaviours will have, compared with others: make cause and effect clearer to users
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Operant conditioning means reinforcing or ‘training’ particular user behaviour by rewarding it (or, indeed, punishing it). This could be a system where a user chooses to work towards a target behaviour, being rewarded for every bit of progress towards it, or something which periodically (perhaps unpredictably) rewards continued engagement, thus keeping users interacting (e.g. a fruit machine)
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Classical conditioning, can be applied to influence behaviour through helping users subconsciously associate particular actions with particular stimuli or settings, and responding accordingly: basically, developing habits which become reflexes. If you automatically feel for the light switch when you enter or leave a room, this has effectively become a reflex action.
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The media equation describes the idea that many people treat media (computers, TV, other systems) as if they were real people in terms of social interaction. If users believe that a computer/system) s ‘on their side’, and helping them achieve their goals, it’s probably more likely they’ll follow advice given by the system: you can design systems to use ‘persuasive agents’, whether explicitly using simulated characters (e.g. in games) or by somehow giving the interface a personality.
While Dan's focus is on helping product or service designers his methods are just as relevant to learning design.
April 02, 2009
Freestyle Dining
Trina T. Epilepsia writes about an interesting eating experience she had, in which she was able to choose the raw materials for her food and play mix and match with it.
The man behind this concept is chef-owner Marco Legasto, who describes the experience as akin to having your own personal chef and wine cellar. You grab a bottle from the store (you pay retail here, which is a huge, huge, bonus for aficionados), settle into one of the seats, pick your food of choice, and tell the kitchen how you want it prepared. Chef Marco readily admits that while the concept is intriguing, some people may be overwhelmed with the idea of telling the chef what to do in the kitchen, thus the aforementioned "set menu."
(via PFSK)
High Performance Design Teams
Joseph Selbie, founder and CEO of Tristream, which specializes in web application design, has written an excellent article on the qualities of high performing design teams.
All of the members of the best teams could tell us, with relative ease, the top five business goals of their application, the top five user types the application was to serve, and the top five platform capabilities and limitations they had to work within. And, when questioned more deeply, each team member revealed an appreciation and understanding of the challenges and goals of their teammates almost as well as their own.
His points are just as relevant to learning design. When you understand the business goals that the learning is supporting, the needs of different participant groups and the pros and cons of the communication media you will be using you can create a better fitting learning programme.
April 01, 2009
Get under your customers skin
Nissan's interaction designers spend countless hours looking for signs of awkwardness as people interact with their vehicles.
One technique the team uses to understand the challenges aging drivers face when using their cars is by wearing a proprietary "aging suit" that gives them the mobility and faculties of a driver in their 70s and 80s. "Sure, it's uncomfortable," Naoki Yamamoto says, "but to really understand a problem you have to feel it in your bones."
Testing how learners will access or use the materials is often neglected in learning design but can go a long way to reducing participant frustration.
March 28, 2009
Building Personas
A persona is the answer to the question "who are we doing all this work for?". What you know about him or her will inform your choices about what the learning programme will look like and what its content should be. Taking the time to create a persona is time well spent.
A persona has three key characteristics:
Read the article here.
Picture: zowie and me smiling by paul+photos=moody
March 27, 2009
Visual design
Recently, PSFK sat down with Francesco Cavalli of Leftloft, a noted Italian design firm known for having a foot solidly planted in both digital and print camps.
He explained why information design is important.
Information design is a very challenging way to conceive of design. Information is a story that needs to be discovered, understood and told. Making it visual is not a way to be more stylish but often is the only way to make the story clear for everybody, regardless of culture, education or social context.
March 26, 2009
March 24, 2009
Focus on the short form
Social media expert Chris Brogan shares an interesting observation - he noticed that USA Today looks like an offline version of a micro-blog. He marveled at the paper’s ability to scale down to essential, quick data points, and says he’s been motivated to possibly re-design his site based on USA Today’s example.
Brogan explains, "The paper has little bite-sized media bits, easily consumable, with nuggets of data that are useful and fast to absorb. CNN Headline News does the same thing. They work the short form news format, with fast info, quick data dumps, and as they are trying out lots of personable interactions, it’s even turning a bit two-way."
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/usatoday-and-microblogging-offline/
