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The Intercom Blog -- Criticism and Two Way Streets

'Design debates are best settled by inviting everyone to present their solution, but also explain under what circumstances their solution is terrible. Finally they’re asked to explain under what circumstances their colleague’s solution would be better. The person who demonstrates most knowledge about the shortcomings of their own solution and the benefits of all the alternatives is the best best equipped to make the call. When everyone must be able to praise their colleague’s work and criticise their own work, inevitably a solution is agreed upon before a showdown is necessary. Also, by making a rule of praising alternate solutions and criticising your own, the discussions move clear of the realm of personal preference and bias. It’s simply a discussion of what is right, and when.'

design criticaldistance argumentation
11 weeks ago by adamcrowe

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Social Media Collective -- In Defense of Friction

'In his paper about online trust, Coye Cheshire points how automated trust systems undermine trust itself by incentivizing cooperation because of the fear of punishment rather than actual trust among people. Cheshire argues that: "strong forms of online security and assurance can supplant, rather than enhance, trust." Leading to what he calls the trust paradox: "assurance structures designed to make interpersonal trust possible in uncertain environments undermine the need for trust in the first place." In many scenarios, automation is quite useful, but with social interactions, removing friction can have a harmful effect on the social bonds established through friction itself. In other cases, as Shauna points out, ”social networking sites are good for relationships so tenuous they couldn’t really bear any friction at all.”'

socialmedia socialdesign design trust assurance circumscription malgorithms signalvsnoise
december 2011 by adamcrowe

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Panarchy

'Panarchy is a conceptual framework to account for the dual, and seemingly contradictory, characteristics of all complex systems – stability and change.'

panarchy systems design
march 2011 by adamcrowe

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Dubberly Design Office -- Ability-centered Design: From Static to Adaptive Worlds

'A new order of systems is emerging, that adapt to the worlds in which they play a part. Although the form they take varies widely from example to example, these systems all have in common some means for: #1. “perceiving” two or more states of the environment in which they are embedded; #2. creating, based on these perceptions, a “model” of the environment around them; and #3. adapting, based on this model, in a fashion to best meet the performance objectives of the system in the face of a changing environment. This need not be a one-shot event—it can occur continuously over time. Dynamically co-constructed adaptive worlds give both creators and consumers the ability to design or improvise new activities that honor specific abilities as they emerge. In an adaptive world, objects and processes modify themselves based on information gleaned from people, either through sensing or explicit input.' -- Quadrant: Carbon—Silicon [Operator—Machine]; Doing—Understanding [Diegetic—Non-diegetic?]

design narrativeobjects narrativeenvironments narrativeacts holodeck everyware emergence feedback feedforward extradiegesis metadiegesis probabilityspace possibilityspace reflexivity from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe

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Direct Reference -- The Display Aspect of Social Functionality

'...social functionality operate within a space defined by the following three dimensions. #Knowledge: We use this stuff to learn. Specifically, we use it to learn from each other. For example, user reviews or Wikipedia. #Connection: We use this stuff to communicate, bond, meet, define affiliations and dislikes or just hang out where the people are. For example, friending... #Display: We use this stuff to communicate and manage presentations of ourselves, truthfully or not, to others. For example, user profiles or Flickr. No piece of social functionality is all one and none of the others, but they tend to be weighted differently in each case. Display often motivates contributions (and impacts the type of contributions) made via Knowledge and Connection functionality. ...it's crucially important for motivating contribution and can actually stabilize and help self-regulate systems of social functionality. ...the three Display dimensions: Status, Reputation and Esteem – form a continuum.'

design socialdesign ux motivation performance status reputation conformity retribalization panarchy from delicious
march 2011 by adamcrowe

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Near Future Laboratory -- Lab Coats In Hollywood

Kirby: 'I introduce the term ‘diegetic prototypes’ to account for the ways in which cinematic depictions of future technologies demonstrate to large public audiences a technology’s need, viability and benevolence. Entertainment producers create diegetic prototypes by influencing dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure. These technologies only exist in the fictional world but they exist as fully functioning objects in that world. The essay builds upon previous work on the notion of prototypes as ‘performative artefacts’. The performative aspects of prototypes are especially evident in diegetic prototypes because a film’s narrative structure contextualizes technologies within the social sphere. Technological objects in cinema are at once both completely artificial—all aspects of their depiction are controlled in production—and normalized within the text as practical objects that function properly and which people actually use as everyday objects.'

productnarratives narrativeobjects liminalobjects objects narrativeenvironments transmedia storytelling sciencefiction prototyping design diegesis from delicious
february 2011 by adamcrowe

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Design Fiction Goes From Props to Prototypes

Julian Bleeker at Kicker Studio's 2010 Device Design Day: 'Prototypes are ways to test ideas—but where do those ideas come from? It may be that the path to better device design is best followed by creating props that help tell stories before prototypes designed to test technical feasibility. What I want to suggest in this talk is the way that design can use fiction—and fiction can use design—to help imagine how things can be designed just a little bit better.'

storytelling diegesis productnarratives narrativeobjects objects transmedia prototyping sciencefiction technology temes futurism design from delicious
january 2011 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- Behavioral Game Design

'...there is the question of what happens when you stop providing a reward, which is referred to as "extinction." As a general rule, extinction involves a lot of frustration and anger on the part of the subject. We expect the universe to make sense, to be consistent, and when the contingencies change we get testy. Interestingly, this is not unique to humans. In one experiment, two pigeons were placed in a cage. One of them was tethered to the back of the cage while the other was free to run about as it wished. Every 30 seconds, a hopper would provide a small amount of food. The free pigeon could reach the food but the tethered one could not, and the free pigeon happily ate all the food every time. After an hour or so of this, the hopper stops providing food. The free pigeon continues to check the hopper every 30 seconds for a while, but when it's clear that the food isn't coming, it will go to the back of the cage and beat up the other pigeon.'

* psychology behaviorism behaviours design gamedesign gamemechanics rewards intermittentvariablerewards addiction entitlement welfare statism slavespeak irrationality from delicious
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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Aza on Design -- How To Prototype And Influence People

'...the value of an idea is zero unless it can be communicated. #1. Your first try will be wrong. Budget and design for it. #2. Aim to finish a usable artifact in a day. This helps you focus and scope. #3. You are making a touchable sketch. Do not fill in all the lines. #4. You are iterating your solution as well as your understanding of the problem. #5. Treat your code as throw-away, but be ready to refactor. #6. Borrow liberally #7. Tell a story with your prototype. It isn’t just a set of features.'

design prototyping ux
november 2010 by adamcrowe

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Aza on Design -- So You Want To Be A Designer: Top 5 List

'There are fundamental truths about of what we are capable that runs deeper than culture and language. How much can you store in short-term memory? What are the properties of your locus of attention? A priori, how long does it take to choose an item in an ordered list? How does habituation affect design? If you can’t answer these questions, you need to get yourself a copy of The Humane Interface, How We Decide, and The Resonant Interface. When I’m hiring, I don’t look for credentials, I look for knowledge. If you don’t at least know what GOMs analysis is and the cognitive science behind why undo is better than a warning, I know that even if your designs are good, you don’t understand why. That’s dangerous. Your gut can often lead you in the right direction, but it can also make stupid and avoidable mistakes. Potentially worse, you won’t be able to communicate and convince others of your ideas because you can only argue with feelings.'

design ux psychology
october 2010 by adamcrowe

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Beyond The Beyond -- Design Fiction: Provoking the future by making it

'Could we have had the iPhone without Star Trek? Can we create the next innovation without thinking about other possible worlds? What are we making out of our imaginations that will shape what’s next? As an emerging area of thought and practice, Design Fiction provides us with a way of “thinking about doing what we see and imagine.” By making models or prototypes of the future, we expose, test and probe further into it, exploring scenarios as use cases, as they are assumptions about the future made reality. Scott Smith of Changeist will take us on a journey to see where Design Fiction has come from, its impact on a generation unwittingly raised on it, and how designers, creatives, strategists, and other future-minded professions among us are applying it to actively provoke possible futures that we prefer.'

pretend roleplay scenarioplanning productnarratives design
september 2010 by adamcrowe

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TechCrunch -- SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck

Oh, the meta. (inb4 Game Mechanic Unlocked) '#1 Achievement #2 Appointment Dynamic #3 Avoidance #4 Behavioral Contrast #5 Behavioral Momentum #6 Blissful Productivity #7 Cascading Information Theory #8 Chain Schedules #9 Communal Discovery #10 Companion Gaming #11 Contingency #12 Countdown #13 Cross Situational Leader-boards #14 Disincentives #15 Endless Games #16 Envy #17 Epic Meaning #18 Extinction 20 Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule #21 Free Lunch #22 Fun Once, Fun Always #23 Interval Reward Schedules #24 Lottery #25 Loyalty #26 Meta Game #27 Micro Leader-boards #28 Modifiers 29 Moral Hazard of Game Play #30 Ownership #31 Pride #32 Privacy #33 Progression Dynamic #34 Ratio Reward Schedules #35 Real-time v Delayed Mechanics #36 Reinforcer #37 Response #38 Reward Schedules #39 Rolling Physical Goods #40 Shell Game #41 Social Fabric of Games #42 Status #43 Urgent Optimism #44 Variable Interval Reward Schedules #45 Variable Ratio Reward Schedule #46 Viral Game Mechanics #47 Virtual Items'

design engagement gaming gamemechanics metagaming thegamingofeverydaylife infintegame meta infinitegame from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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TEDxPennQuarter -- Kes Sampanthar: REINVENTING User Experience

WANT/LIKE QUAD. Good stuff.

ux design socialdesign gamedesign motivation rewards thegamingofeverydaylife
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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Dark Patterns -- Black Hat, Anti-Usability Design Patterns

'Normally when you think of “bad design”, you think of laziness or mistakes. These are known as design anti-patterns. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind. -- Eg. Privacy Zuckering: “The act of creating deliberately confusing jargon and user-interfaces which trick your users into sharing more info about themselves than they really want to.”'

ux design exploits from delicious
august 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Warren Pollock: Malthus or the Fuller Model

'The Fuller model offers solutions to the current condition along the critical path. Presently we work within the framework of Thomas Malthus whereby we live in the context of resource shortage. The philosophy of Malthus adversely influences both our economic models, our accounting, and allocation systems. Comprehensive anticipatory design science works around the perception of chronic shortage. We have to look at the entire human system and preempt our future needs rather than be constrained. We can design our society to scientific principles thus find the same efficiencies we now enjoy through the geometric efficiency of technological progression. Our survival depends on a rethink of how we use resources, what we consider to be wealth, and how we bring that wealth in the form of life support to more and more people worldwide.'

economics ecology design resilience WarrenPollock from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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SlideShare -- Tim Stock: The Psychology of Space (Design Research Methods)

'When McDonald's first opened in Hong Kong in 1975, customers crowded around the cash registers, shouting orders and waving money over the heads of people in front of them. McDonald's responded by introducing queue monitors—young women who channeled customers into orderly lines. Queuing subsequently became a hallmark of Hong Kong's cosmopolitan, middle-class culture.'

acoustic space literaryculturevsoralculture linearity queuing socialdesign design from delicious
july 2010 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- Consumed: Merit Badges for Adults

'...the merit-badge idea has surely influenced, directly or not, the many identity symbols that now proliferate in the digital self-representations of social-networking profiles and the like. ...much about the function of the merit badge actually fits pretty neatly with the spirit of the time. The nagging sense of needing to acquire new skills, all the time, is palpable. That anxiety dovetails with a self-improvement ethos that fills whole sections of bookstores, cross-matched with the various ways technology prods us to tabulate parodic amounts of personal-behavior data. If we rack up badges for our online “achievements,” we may as well do the same for our offline victories, too. And if we use a form associated with preadulthood, it makes sense, since all of the above comes with a chaser of nostalgia and widespread reluctance to completely put away childish things. I can’t think of a more sweetly upbeat response to a turbulent culture than an actual grown-up sporting a merit badge.'

quantifiedself achievements socialdesign design vernacular from delicious
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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Dubberly Design Office -- Interaction, Software, and Service Design
agency design
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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3-SIDED FOOTBALL RULES

'The key to the game is that it does not foster aggression or competitiveness. ...it is no psycho-sexual drama of the fuckers and fucked - the possibilities are greatly expanded! ...penetration of the defence by two opposing teams imposes upon the defence the task of counterbalancing their disadvantage through sowing the seeds of discord in an alliance which can only be temporary. This will be achieved through exhortation, body language, and an ability to manoeuvre the ball and players into such a position that one opposing team will realise that its interests are better served by breaking off the attack and allying themselves with the defending team. Bearing in mind that such a decision will not necessarily be immediate, a team may well find itself split between two alliances. Such a situation opens them up to the possibility of their enemies uniting, making maximum use of this confusion. 3-sided football is a game of skill, persuasion and psychogeography.'

* gaming gameplay games design seriousgames situationist panarchy anarchism voluntaryism
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- TEDtalks: Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff

'It may seem that big problems require big solutions, but ad man Rory Sutherland says many flashy, expensive fixes are just obscuring better, simpler answers. To illustrate, he uses behavioral economics and hilarious examples.' -- Name suggestion: Charm

experience design charm RorySutherland
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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SlideShare -- Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games

'...if we as designers wish to craft a fun, engaging difficulty curve in productivity contexts, we have to step away from designing the application in isolation and tackle the whole work context – which isn't interaction design anymore – it's business process engineering.'

gamedesign socialdesign ux experience design totaldesign
june 2010 by adamcrowe

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SlideShare -- Amy Jo Kim: Metagame Design

'#1. Create a coherent experience that unfolds over time #2. Define a points system (experience points, social points, redeemable points) that supports your purpose and audience #3. Introduce feedback and rewards that motivate newbies, regulars, enthusiasts, and leaders #4. Design rewards that players will be eager to share #5. Use "game pacing" to grant rewards over time' -- Productive example: Stack Overflow, a reputation-building technical Q&A community

design socialdesign gamemechanics engagement experiencepoints rewards loyalty reputation socialproduction peerproduction retribalization
may 2010 by adamcrowe

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Bubblegeneration -- Social Strategies: Choreography

'In the choreography strategy, a new architecture for interaction between buyers and sellers is crafted from the ground up. Literally, the steps of the dance of economic exchange are newly choreographed. Examples of choreography are tough to find. Most industries and markets have had largely the same choreography for decades, some for centuries. LinkedIn didn't change the choregraphy of recruitment, for example - it just made the steps in an existing dance slightly easier to perform.'

interaction transaction design socialdesign choreography productnarratives
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Shareable -- A Very Short Primer on Resilience

Graphic: Resilience and Adaptive Cycles in Human Natural Systems - The Simplified Panarchy Model: Phases: #Building/Accumulation (Exploitation) #Locked-in (Conservation) #Creative Destruction (Release) #Renewal (Reorganisation)

civilization economics ecology systems panarchy change resilience strategy innovation design
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Made by Many -- A Manifesto for Agile Strategy

'#Collaboration amd conversation over strategy decks and documentation #Simplicity of purpose over ’sacred’ consumer insights #Testing hypotheses over long-winded research and deduction #Responding to change over following a plan' -- Make the work work.

agile strategy planning design do
april 2010 by adamcrowe

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Cultivated Play: Farmville

'Farmville is popular because it entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness. We play Farmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people. -- Caillois stated that games must be free from obligation, separate from ‘real life,’ uncertain in outcome, an unproductive activity, governed by rules, and make-believe. -- [W]e must learn to differentiate sociable applications from sociopathic applications: applications that use people’s sociability to control those people, and to satisfy their owners’ needs.'

farmville gaming gamemechanics grinding gifting manners reciprocity socialgraph sociacapital sharecropping exploitation socialdesign design ethics
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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afeeld -- Cultivated Play: Farmville

farmville gaming gamemechanics grinding gifting manners reciprocity socialgraph sociacapital sharecropping exploitation socialdesign design ethics
march 2010 by adamcrowe

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weidesignoffice -- Design patterns VS design models

'And as I grow up, I find something never change, the game, the people, and the world, they are still there, however evolves into another immature form, now my world is sorounded by adult toys like big houses, BMW car, fancy jobs, and now my childhood player partners all grow up to be adult game players, we play games like "start up companies". Each one of us, somewhere in his heart, is dominated with the dream to make a living world, a universe. For that dream we train ourselves with discipline, seek for good quality, and the underlying rules.'

thegamingofeverydaylife design worlds roleplay work
february 2010 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Elinor Ostrom: Research: Common pool resources

'Ostrom identifies eight "design principles" of stable local common pool resource management: #1. Clearly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties); #2. Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions; #3. Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process; #4. Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators; #5. There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules; #6. Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access; #7. The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities; #8. In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.' (Book: 'Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action')

economics commons voluntaryism anarchism design sustainability
january 2010 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Google Goggles

'Google Goggles is a visual search app for Android phones. Instead of using words, take a picture of an object with your camera phone: we attempt to recognize the object, and return relevant search results.Goggles also provides information about businesses near you by displaying their names directly in the camera preview.' -- Facial recognition?

google mobile search augmentedreality foraging shopping location interaction design surveillance panopticon
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Lost Garden -- Three False Constraints

Mystery (play) <---> Puzzle (game) 'Conclusion: #Human emotions are simple to evoke with games. Make multiplayer games. #Authorial intent is expressed through systems of rules. Create rules that empower players to co-create meaningful content. #Reaching larger numbers of players is easy. Integrate games into the player's everyday life.' -- 'Comment: yanamal: ...if you remove all these "arbitrary" constraints at once, you don't really get game design anymore - you get throwing a bunch of people together and telling them to play with the contents of their pockets...' -- Comment: Danc: 'If you really want a player to gain a deeply meaningful understand of the human condition, you need to put them in a system where they can fail and experiment. ...the act of playing a game [is] a process of learning [how to] effectively manipulate a system. [The question to ask is:] Are the skills I’m learning meaningful to me outside the magic circle?'

gaming ludology readerlywriterly gamedesign experience design possibilityspace narrativeenvironments improvisation simulation emergence play casualgaming ambientgaming thegamingofeverydaylife improv
december 2009 by adamcrowe

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Vimeo -- Visualizing empires decline
design visualization processing.org
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- TED: Unveiling game-changing wearable tech

SHOP MAOR.

kipple foraging shopping interface design wetware proprioception
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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Is Target ‘ripping off’ American Apparel?

'Just don’t know what belongs to who, and what type of ‘intellectual design property’ can really be owned. I feel like the Font Industry and the Music Industry are really similar. I think I expect to utilize fonts for free, much like I expect to listen to music for free. The person who creates a font is looking to ‘go mainstream’ by ‘getting included’ on tons of personal computing machines. This is the same thing that buzzbands need to try to accomplish. Fonts + Music can’t really ‘change the world’ but they can definitely be an under-appreciated element of ur every day life.'

HipsterRunoff identity authenticity vernacular design designwank typography helvetica utilitarianism semiotics branding
november 2009 by adamcrowe

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NYTimes.com -- Consumed: Remixed Messages

'“Part of it is that it does have this sort of intrinsic British feel about it,” Mary Manley says, adding that the poster evokes a “nostalgia for a certain British character, an outlook.” Bex Lewis points out, even those attracted to the poster’s past may be more revisionist than they realize. “People talk about it — Americans in particular I’m afraid — being the poster that kept the British going through the war,” she says.

vernacular design propaganda uk british paternalism keepcalmandcarryon posters
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- Keep Calm and Carry On: Jon Henley on the poster we can't stop buying

'Alain Samson, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics, says that in times of difficulty, "people are brought together by looking for common values or purposes, symbolised by the crown and the message of resilience. The words are also particularly positive, reassuring, in a period of uncertainty, anxiety, even perhaps of cynicism." -- Dr Lesley Prince, who lectures in social psychology at Birmingham University, is blunter still. "It is a quiet, calm, authoritative, no-bullshit voice of reason," he says. "It's not about British stiff upper lip, really. The point is that people have been sold a lie since the 1970s. They were promised the earth and now they're worried about everything - their jobs, their homes, their bank, their money, their pension. This is saying, look, somebody out there knows what's going on, and it'll be all right".' -- Pffft!

vernacular design propaganda uk british paternalism keepcalmandcarryon posters
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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NEW Studio -- Illustration + Design + Art Direction
illustration design
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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PSFK -- “Our Most Beautiful Buildings Must be in our Poorest Areas”

“People who say that a beautiful building doesn’t improve education don’t understand something critical. The first step toward quality education is the quality of the space. When the poorest kid in Medellín arrives in the best classroom in the city, there is a powerful message of social inclusion.”

design space architecture beauty happiness learning poverty
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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PICOL Blog -- Icons

Communication icons

design icons
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Girls with iPhones

iPhone or GTFO -- NSFW: Curved lines and sleek surfaces.

iphone selfobjects objects women girls body design technology
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Boston Globe -- Thinking literally: The surprising ways that metaphors shape your world

'...metaphors reveal the extent to which we think with our bodies. -- “What we’ve discovered in the last 30 years is--surprise, surprise--people think with their brains,” says Lakoff. “And their brains are part of their bodies.” -- To the extent that metaphors reveal how we think, they also suggest ways that physical manipulation might be used to shape our thought. In essence, that is what much metaphor research entails. And while psychologists have thus far been primarily interested in using such manipulations simply to tease out an observable effect, there’s no reason that they couldn’t be put to other uses as well, by marketers, architects, teachers, parents, and litigators, among others. A few psychologists have begun to ponder applications. Ackerman, for example, is looking at the impact of perceptions of hardness on our sense of difficulty. The study is ongoing, but he says he is finding that something as simple as sitting on a hard chair makes people think of a task as harder.'

* psychology embodiedcognition body cognition embodiment perception abstraction language metaphor evocativeobjects carrierobjects objects kinesthetic design
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Nearfield -- Making radio tangible

Roundup of projects exploring radio field interaction. Quoting Dunne & Raby: “It might seem strange to write about radio, a long-established medium, when discussion today centres on cyberspace, virtual reality, networks, smart materials and other electronic tehcnologies. But radio, meaning part of the electromagnetic spectrum is fundamental to electronics. Objects not only “dematerialise” into software in response to minituarisation and replacement by services but literally dematerialise into radiation. All electronic products are hybrids of radiation and matter. [...] Whereas cyberspace is a metaphor that spatialises what happens in computers distributed around the world, radio space is actual and physical, even though our senses detect only a tiny part of it.”

interaction design designnoir networks electromagnetism radio bluetooth RFID wifi Dunne&Raby
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Carsonified -- 9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users

'Ego #1. Ask yourself: Does this feature increase the users self-worth or stoke the ego? #2. If a user is contributing to my system, what emotional rewards do they walk away with? What (visible) rewards will they receive?'

socialdesign design motivation incentives rewards
october 2009 by adamcrowe

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Seldo.Com Blog -- Web companies are user interface companies

'It's their user interface, and only their interface. They streamlined the data entry experience and concentrated on what the user really wanted out of the service: to see where all their money was going, and save themselves cash. This is a lesson I don't think enough companies realize, big or small. User interface is not your lowest-priority problem. It's your only problem. It doesn't matter how useful your service is. If it looks like crap and is hard to use, people will ignore your service because they don't understand it -- even if you have no competitors. User interface is what takes data and turns it into information, and that's all you do if you're a web company. You transform data. It doesn't matter how hard the math was you had to do to transform the data into its final form, if you can't get your user to understand the meaning of that transformation you have fallen at the final hurdle.'

ux data design
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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interactions magazine -- Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

'... de Souza and Leitão show how the communication approach of “semiotic engineering” can help ensure consistency and coherence. They critique the HCI community (and my past work) for optimizing the individual components at the expense of the whole. They are correct. A systems analysis goes beyond the design of individual screens or actions. It considers the entire experience from start to finish: thought through action through reflection. To make this a whole, seamless, coherent experience requires considering each action, each system response, each message - whether verbal or visual, silent or audible, visceral or behavioral, haptic or happenstance - all as part of the whole. Make sure that each message is consistent with the others in tone, voice, locus, and message. All steps must be readily accommodated, with the system always anticipating and ready for whichever choice the person makes. This is what it means to be a system: to think of everything.'

experience service design product productnarratives serviceecologies
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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Guardian -- In-game ads, violence and the future of brand interaction...

'"Those who played a violent version of the game [...] demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version." -- The key message is that ads have to be malleable, useful or at least active within the game world to get noticed and remembered. As web advertisers are discovering, simply displaying a message on the digital screen is not enough... it's all about emotional connection rather than shoving a logo in your face. And game worlds are going to be a great platform for this, because they are environments in which the target audience is already emotionally invested. Violence points the way, but positive interaction with advertising messages is probably the future.'

advertising interaction design gaming virtualgoods narrativeobjects evocativeobjects objects embodiment violence
september 2009 by adamcrowe

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A VC -- What We Can Learn From Mess

Only real markets create mess -- 'The company has no marketers. To quote Gary again, "By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist's programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve." -- "People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day," Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging. -- A system like Craigslist does result in a lot spam, fraud, and abuse. But it is also certainly the most efficient and cost effective way to make a market.' -- Pure data

design socialdesign markets content publics craigslist
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Technovelgy -- Emotion Tracking Big Comedy Brother

'An emotion tracking system has been patented by Sony; it detects laughter and other emotions in media consumers. The application picks up on metadata, which includes laughter recorded by the microphone and a user’s expression from the camera. Both devices are linked to a “game console”, shown as a PlayStation 3 in the diagram, which identifies the user, notes emotions, and transfers the data over a network.'

sony entertainment telescreen facialrecognition surveillance interaction design emotion performance masks circumscription 1984
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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click opera -- Mister narrative of the decade

'#Design: Just as hemlines follow the economy, so design follows geopolitics. If the confident 90s could give us a computer that "comes in colours" (the iMac, which echoed the optimism of the 60s and was sold with a 60s soundtrack), the 00s returned us to self-effacing "I'm not really here" products embarrassed by their environmental footprint, getting the job done and playing it safe. Cars took on the colours of the road beneath, clothes were basic and functional, sold by puritan chains like Uniqlo and Gap...'

design utilitarianism
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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From The Head Of Zeus Jones -- Conversational UX Design

'Tumblr puts the actual interaction with their service front and center. They turn the registration process into a learning process where users learn by doing what they came there to do. So the question becomes, do you give people fish, or teach them to fish? Human psychology has shown us definitively that learning by doing produces the deepest imprint on our memory and behavior. It is far and away the most engaging way to teach, and this kind of interactive learning produces knowledge rather than just information. And knowledge, not information, creates a feeling of ownership. By asking users to engage on a personal level, we are creating a relationship based on shared ownership of knowledge and value. And best of all, it doesn’t feel like work. Actions really do speak louder than words.'

do learning tumblr ux interaction design
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Pulse Laser -- “Preparing Us For AR”: the value of illustrating of future technologies

'Dead Space has no game HUD; rather, the HUD is projected into the environment of the game as a manifestation of the UI of the hero’s protective suit. It means the environment can be designed as a realistic, functional spaceship, and then all the elements necessary for a game - readouts, inventories, not to mention guidelines as to what doors are locked or unlocked - can be manifested as overlay. It’s a striking way to place all the game’s UI into the world, but it’s also a great interpretation of what futuristic, AR user interfaces might be a bit like.'

augmentedreality interface design everyware HUD
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Marginal Utility -- Reified design

'Designy-ness, like so many consumerist products, lets us consume ourselves. ...designy-ness is an ideological sheen on consumerism, redeeming commodification while furthering it, permitting mass-distributed designy-ness to supplant genuine heterogeneity: the chance that we might really redeem the promise of individualism—that we will be able to garner social recognition for being ourselves, and recognition could be separated from being judged or taxonomized. But designy-ness and its off-the-shelf aesthetic (often prepared by lauded gurus) militates against that. However much we enjoy our own tastes in such stuff privately (solipsisticly) we become typecast when we exhibit those tastes publicly. ...we are isolated by our tastes and the goods whispering our ersatz uniqueness to us, and we gloat in our transcendence until the loneliness overwhelms us, and we are driven to participate in society, which we can do only on those same terms, at the level of our tastes in everyday goods...'

criticism design designwank reification precuperation usevaluevssignvalue consumerism consumering signalling status selfobjects objects self individualism delusion solipsism taste curation theadvertisedlife
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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GameCyte -- Unlocking the Psychology of Achievements

'When it became clear to competitive players that simply beating a game was no longer enough to differentiate themselves, the gamers themselves began to define new, harder objectives and qualifying criteria, leading to the advent of hyper-competitive pursuits. Soon, gamers were taking photos of their TV screens to verify high scores or crucial in-game moments. Game creators and media began to come on board with this new trend of in-game excellence, offering prizes for especially notable achievements. [Activision's] sew-on patches appear to be the first appearance of game achievements as we know them today: abstract, collectible representations of in-game merit, whose presence is separate from the gameplay yet intertwined with the experience as an extra motivator and/or novelty. -- As Napoleon famously said with regards to the ceremonial medals his soldiers fought alarmingly hard to earn: "With a handful of ribbons I can conquer all of Europe."'

psychology gamedesign gaming behaviours achievements rewards status reputation bragging collecting tidying completionism competition mastery fame experience design socialdesign incentives
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra -- The History and Theory of Sandbox Gameplay

'"Sandbox" sometimes challenges traditional narrative, but it always puts something new in its place. ...[it] transforms predetermined narrative into dynamic, responsive narrative. ...the sandbox game distinguished itself by making the responses more significant and meaningful. -- ...a common challenge in sandbox design: player commitment to open story. ...that game design is so fun in itself that, if properly packaged, it can well be reinterpreted as gameplay itself. -- Sandbox play is essentially amoral/non-moral, in the sense that real action is often governed by the hypothetical: "What happens if I run this guy over?" ...until GTAIV, the PC personality was something of a narrative problem; the hero was a bi-polar thug for whom nothing was truly out of character. Such a character is not terribly interesting... With GTAIV, however the scarred warrior turned ironical and embittered anarchist justifies much better the peculiar range of action of a GTA hero.'

* meta gaming play gameplay gamedesign design sandbox possibilityspace space narrativeenvironments virtualworlds simulation simcity spore GTAIV puppetry augmentationistsvsimmersionists storytelling framing probabilityspace narrativearchitecture causality contiguity continuity morality realism psychology motivation narrativeacts emergence existentialism
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Dropular - Media Bookmarking
design graphics bookmarking collecting hoarding sharing web dashboard grids
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Designing Social Interfaces: Patterns (Wiki)

'...we often start by noticing social behavior patterns. These are patterns in what people do, with or without interfaces designed for those purposes. These patterns are interesting and fun to talk about and they help us understand what's likely to happen, but they are not the primary focus of this project.

socialmedia socialdesign design patterns behaviours ux
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design: Five Principles, Five Anti-Patterns and 96 Patterns (in Three Buckets)

'Concepts of the self. #Engagement (patterns for invitation and signup) #Identity (profiles, avatars, user cards) #Presence (availability, status, activity streams) #Reputation (levels, labels, awards, points) -- Activities around objects: #Collecting (bookmarking, tagging) #Sharing (sending, sharing, gifts) #Publishing (broadcasting, blogging, right) #Feedback (rating, comments, reviews) #Communication (forums, public conversation, private conversation) #Collaboration (governance, getting work done) #Social Media (tuning, filtering, real-time search) -- Relationships and community dynamics. Patterns in this cluster involve connections between people and among larger groups of people and coordination of events in space and time: #Connecting (reciprocity/symmetry, followers, adding friends, publicizing relationships)

socialmedia socialdesign design patterns behaviours ux
august 2009 by adamcrowe

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Haaretz -- Computer games to play with a can of Coke, or a plate

'... a technology that turns everyday objects like a plate or a lemon slice into gaming controllers, is launching a technology solution that could be of particular interest to advertisers. The software solution is able to identify brands, such as a can of Coca-Cola or of Pepsi, and use them to operate computer games. CamTrax Technologies boasts that its unique, patent-pending technology enables the tracking of hand-held objects in real time, with high reliability, and low CPU consumption through any standard webcam. Since it is a software-only solution, it is easily portable to virtually any platform.' -- Interesting...!

advertising narrativeobjects liminality liminalobjects objects augmentedreality interface design kipple
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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The toobs -- Homemade Virtual Reality Game Gun

"This is a PC game gun." -- Woah!

augmentedreality virtualreality gaming HUD interface design
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Real-time interaction with augmented reality mascots

'...in-house mascot, and other virtual characters interact in real-time with a little girl and other physical obstacles in a new seamless augmented playground environment.' -- Is this a prototype for an AR version of 'The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'? Awesome!

augmentedreality immersion avatars interaction design narrativeenvironments
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Core77 -- Ford design researchers experimenting with virtual people

'This woman is fake! Ford is experimenting with a rather novel technique: Designing a car around a fictional but psychologically-fleshed-out avatar named Antonella. ...Ford's goal in using made-up characters is that they will help produce cars that transcend national traits and are instead built around international, psychological archetypes.' -- By designing a brain-dead supermodel??

ford design personas avatars virtuality
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wolfire Blog -- Creating the illusion of accomplishment

'Psychological studies have shown that random reward schedules are usually the most effective, so it’s no coincidence that you see them in the most addictive games. For example, every enemy or container in Diablo is like a piñata — there is a random chance that it will drop something good if you click on it. This combines with the sunk cost fallacy very effectively. Once you’ve killed three enemies looking for a rare item, you can’t stop now… you have to keep going until you get it! Many games use well-designed rewards to convince players that they’ve accomplished something important, even when they’ve only completed a trivial task.' -- 'There’s a vital question that is rarely asked: does our game make players happy when they play, or just make them sad when they stop? This is a subtle distinction, and irrelevant to sales, but I think it’s very important. Medicine and heroin both sell for a high price, but I would sleep better at night selling one than the other.'

* psychology incentives rewards intermittentvariablerewards sunkcosts opportunitycosts addiction gambling gluttony grinding experience design gamemechanics narrativearchitecture parody
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Magical Nihilism -- Hertzian Tales 10 years on, or “All electronic products are hybrids of radiation and matter”

'p101 “It might seem strange to write about radio, a long-established medium, when discussion today centres on cyberspace, virtual reality, networks, smart materials and other electronic tehcnologies. But radio, meaning part of the electromagnetic spectrum is fundamental to electronics. Objects not only “dematerialise” into software in response to minituarisation and replacement by services but literally dematerialise into radiation. All electronic products are hybrids of radiation and matter. This chapter does not discuss making the invisible visible or visualising radio, but explores the links between the material and the immaterial that lead to new aesthetic possibilities for life in an electromagnetic environment. Whereas cyberspace is a metaphor that spatialises what happens in computers distributed around the world, radio space is actual and physical, even though our senses detect only a tiny part of it.” -- Inspired my bluetooth tinkerings back in the day.

design interaction designnoir electromagnetism radio liminality liminalobjects objects extensionsofman skin touch Dunne&Raby
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Service Design Tools -- Actors map

"The ecology map is a graph representing the system of actors with their mutual relations. It provides a systemic view of the service and of its context." -- Live|Work example: 'This map is also called ecology map because the idea of ecology implies the presence of a complex system but also has a connotation of sustainability, that means that all the actors exchange value in way that are mutually beneficial over time.'

service design serviceecologies mutualism diagrams
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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Service Design Tools -- Communication methods supporting design processes

"An open collection of communication tools used in design processes that deal with complex systems. The tools are displayed according to the design activity (WHEN) they are used for, the kind of representation (HOW) they produce, the recipients (WHO) they are addressed to and the contents (WHAT) of the project they can convey."

* service design UX patterns tools
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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PSFK -- Kevin Slavin’s “This Platform Called Everyday Life”

'Kevin opened his talk with a story about a fascinatingly bizarre woman who had such intense feelings for the Berlin Wall that she married it. Through his talk, Kevin demonstrated how the woman’s relationship with the Wall, while extreme, parallels the relationships we’re developing with the material objects we love, use, play with, and wear. Technologies that give an object an ‘identity’ and make it ’smarter’ (RFID, accelerometers, QR codes, GPS) are breathing artificial life into our favorite unliving things. These technological innovations are, in essence, moving us towards a complete convergence with the objects in our lives… Maybe we are becoming more dependent and defined by our possessions because they are becoming more dependent and defined by us.'

* temes everyware objects evocativeobjects relationalobjects liminality liminalobjects selfobjects spimes productnarratives interaction design mixedreality puppetry areacode thegamingofeverydaylife retribalization
july 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- Two Augmented Reality Technologies That Are About To Change The World

Foraging interfaces.

augmentedreality interface design behaviours foraging shopping ambientgaming retribalization
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wired -- The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal Metrics

'Call it Living by Numbers—the ability to gather and analyze data about yourself, setting up a feedback loop that we can use to upgrade our lives, from better health to better habits to better performance. -- ...people change their behavior—often for the better—when they are being observed... -- We tend to think of our physical selves as a system that's simply too complex to comprehend. But what we've learned from companies like Google is that if you can collect enough data, there's no need for a grand theory to explain a phenomenon. You can observe it all through the numbers. Everything is data. You are your data, and once you understand that data, you can act on it. -- For many Nike+ users, doing their exercise becomes inextricable from measuring it. "Forgetting my Nike+ sensor, or my iPod battery being dead, just takes the life out of my run."'

nike+ nikeplus experience design productnarratives sousveillance quantifiedself numbers analytics realitymining performance data feedback reflexivity thegamingofeverydaylife
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Wikipedia -- Permaculture

'Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies. The intent was that, by rapidly training individuals in a core set of design principles, those individuals could design their own environments and build increasingly self-sufficient human settlements — ones that reduce society's reliance on industrial systems of production and distribution The term permaculture initially meant "permanent agriculture" but was quickly expanded to also stand for "permanent culture" as it was seen that social aspects were an integral part of a truly sustainable system. -- Modern permaculture is a system design tool. It is a way of: #1. looking at a whole system or problem; #2. observing how the parts relate; #3. planning to mend sick systems by applying ideas learnt from long-term sustainable working systems; #4. seeing connections between key parts.'

design patterns permaculture ecology deindustrialization sustainability nature serviceecologies
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Bokardo -- Behavior First, Design Second

"Some behaviors that drive us nuts are core to the human experience: #1. We want attention. #2. We collect things. #3. We want status. #4. We are vain. #5. We make judgments accordingly."

design socialdesign collecting attention behaviours
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Kejia Zhu -- Meeting with Lisa Wong of Playstation R&D

'You’ve got to like the people you design for. #You are Not Everybody: These two demographics have vastly different motivations. The introspective, technical and creative individuals are more driven to compete with themselves. They were the ones that grow up wanting to “fly aeroplanes”, non-competitive achievements that were an expression of personal competence. Those on the otherside of the coin are attracted to competition, beating others often manifested in team sports. Designers must be conscious that their definition of fun is often vastly different from the majority. They must design for them. -- #Limited Game Modes: All games, even going back to ancient board games, revolve around the same elements of game play e.g. collecting, destroying controlling, building. Games can be a combination of these game modes, but when broken down will always be fun because they appeal to these elements'

gaming gamedesign design empathy
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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Technovelgy -- Orwell's Telescreen Now Available

'...a device that can display a moving image while imaging movement that is directly in front of the display. By tracking the eye movements of the user as he observes the display, it should be possible to use this additional data as a means of control. "We can present an image and, at the same time, track the movement of the user's eye," says Michael Scholles, business unit manager at Fraunhofer's IPMS. "This is of great interest for all kinds of applications where your hands are needed for something else, like a pilot flying an aircraft or a surgeon wanting to access vital parameters while performing a surgery."'

glanceable interface interaction design surveillance telescreen 1984
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- 7 Virtual Reality Technologies That Actually Work

'Here are seven VR technologies that work, and that may yet point the way to truly successful virtual reality. #Multiplayer Online Gaming. One result of virtual-reality research is the existence of entirely separate virtual worlds, inhabited entirely by the avatars of real world users. These worlds are sometimes referred to as massively multiplayer online games, and the World of Warcraft is the largest virtual gaming world in use now, with 11.5 million subscribers. Another example is Second Life. The world of Second Life can't really be classified as a game, since the goal seems really just to be to wander around and interact with people, much like the real world. There is even a Second Life Shakespeare Company that performs Shakespeare's works within Second Life. #Project Natal. ...a system that requires no keyboard and no controller, where a user's voice and motions serve as their method for interacting with the system.'

virtualreality mmorpg roleplay worldofwarcraft augmentationistsvsimmersionists simulation interface design wii controllers gestures projectnatal xbox virtualworlds
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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io9 -- 7 Failed Virtual Reality Technologies

'Here are 7 virtual reality technologies that didn't work, and never will. -- #The Virtusphere: Enter the Virtusphere. Users strap on their VR gear and enter a large translucent sphere. The experience is something like a large stationary hamster ball: as an individual wanders about, the ball freely rotates to allow the user to wander around in the virtual world. While the device clearly does what it claims to do, the average home user seems hesitant to play their games trapped inside something that looks like it just popped out of the water and is trying to bring you back to a prison village.'

virtualreality virtualworlds interface design immersion space technology
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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adaptive path -- Designing Fun: Games Design Lessons for User Experience

"#1. Decide what piece of your system will work well as a game-like interaction #2. Brainstorm game mechanics #3. Prototype and iterate until it’s fun"

gaming interaction gamedesign design
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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YouTube -- Project Natal

"Introducing Project Natal, a revolutionary new way to play: no controller required. See a ball? Kick it, hit it, trap it or catch it." -- Would prefer some haptic feedback.

gaming xbox interaction design gesture controllers video
june 2009 by adamcrowe

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RWW -- Minority Report Interfaces: Coming to a Screen Near You

"Herigstad drew a big line between #distance gesture (TV and public media) and #touch gesture (personal media): #Products as experiences. They're less about a product (computer, phone, etc) and more about what the user is doing, #"Your interface is your brand". #Hand gesture as input. ...one of the inspirations was sign language. #Brainwaves as inputs they want to get data coming out of your head! #Dynamic Assemblage. Instead of watching online media piecemeal, metadata and user preferences will assemble media for you."

media interaction design gesture ui augmentedreality
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Beyond The Beyond -- The New Television mutates analog television

Area Code... On people being the killer app [via Russell Davies' quotation]: "Computers are better at connecting you to another person than they are at simulating one." -- On ambient gaming: "These are games with computers in them rather than the other way around." -- Notes: Everything is an object, every object is an environment, the act reverses them... -- McLuhan: "The content of a medium is always another medium." -- *through the looking glass*... narrative objects (foreground) narrative environments (background), narrative acts (user/viewer). Shark Runner (Battleships/"it" mechanic) Shark (object) movement (act) generates map (environment) -- Numb3rs: Fake billboards (environment) for fake products (object) = Proof (act). Video game is actually an interface to !RL crypto !app via !distributedcomputing (acts-objects-environment:instance=object(!app) -- Parking Wars on FB: IDEAL-ACTION. Do(act) media(object:environment). The user is the content. Design for the event (instantiation).

* cognitivesurplus do media transmedia entertainment behaviours tv events design gaming ambientgaming mixedreality alternativerealitygaming areacode narrativeobjects objects narrativeenvironments narrativeacts via:russelldavies television
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Gamasutra --- Finding A New Way: Jenova Chen And Thatgamecompany

'... to me, story is a tool, but not the goal of video games. In the past, when you say "entertainment" – I mean, we care about entertainment more than story – so "entertainment" in a sentence, basically, it's food for feeling. -- And then, even for visual media, like animation or movies, it's just right now the most popular genre uses narrative structure, but you've seen experimental movies and animations which have nothing to do with story, but are really intriguing to watch, and make you feel a certain way. -- And also me, myself, I am not a native speaker. If I really want to write good dialogue, I would be shooting myself in the foot. So I talk a lot about why I am making games like this. ...so I'm going to pick the most global feeling. The things that cross culture, and gender, and age, that everybody can relate to, and work them into games.'

* gaming emotion reflexivity design JenovaChen
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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Vimeo -- My GamesBeat09 Talk by Jenova Chen

Increasing emotional bandwidth.

gaming gameplay experience interaction design gesture bodylanguage emotionalintelligence emotion roleplay socialobjects objects JenovaChen
may 2009 by adamcrowe

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