Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind,” discusses how our society is changing to one where “right-brain” activity (art, creativity, design, humor, context, empathy) is becoming increasingly more important to our advancement and development. Whereas “left-brain” activity (dubbed L-thinking, including logic, language, sequence, details, etc) has been distinguished as the primary contributor to society’s advancement in the industrial and information ages, these specialized brain activities are decreasing in demand due to abundance of materials, outsourcing of labor to Asia, and the automation of computers that can replicate L-Directed thinking.
Pink declares that R-directed thinking will become the leading force in our next stage of civilization. Gone are soon the days of humans (or at least Americans) being needed for computer programming, medical diagnosis, or balancing accounting spreadsheets. As our natural social progression pushes labor to the east for lower wages, and replaces workers with computer software, our population must begin to hone its creative aptitude. Pink points to evidence that this process is already well underway. Design degrees are becoming as valuable as business degrees, and perhaps more. Many schools are looking for alternatives to standardized, high stakes testing in favor of developing creative assessment. Large corporations are turning their backs from their L-Directed thinking and are en route of “outside the box” thinkers to lead their futures.
Pink proposes that this transformation in society is already well underway, and those who are unwilling to adapt will endure a hard-hitting fate. He offers a number of suggestions for how we can compliment our L-Directed thinking with some essential R-Directed skills. These suggested proficiencies, which Pink terms “The Six Senses,” include:
• Design
• Story
• Symphony
• Empathy
• Play
• Meaning
Understanding these six senses and knowing how they will increasingly guide our lives and futures, is our only hope, as Pink would imply. In reading about the importance of design, I certainly felt a bit of redemption for choosing such a field to pursue as a degree of study and career. However, Pink discusses design as if it was a new concept, or somehow didn’t matter much in the past. While I saw a lot of value in everything he said about the importance of good design, I couldn’t get around the fact that I feel design has always been about both utility and significance.
Ultimately, I enjoyed reading the beginning of this book, although I think I have a problem with the disjointedness Pink suggests between Left and Right-Directed thinking. I don’t see a single action that any of us perform which doesn’t utilize both sides of our brain, and defining entire professions or people as one or the other doesn’t sit well with me. In a sense, I felt like I was reading some sort of Right-Brain propaganda, aimed at the liberation of the creative mind. But I believe that creative minds have always been the ones to move our civilization forward.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Leslie's discussion and design flaw presentations
Week 4 brought us an interesting mix of discussion topics, from the delicate state of wireless politics, to the growing future of mobile technology, as presented from the point of view of Leslie Rule. Leslie lobbied the class to get active in the pursuit of free wireless internet throughout the city of San Francisco, and informed us that many of the voting officials are still not on board with the issue, and could use our persuading. I know if I lived in the city, I would have made a few phone calls to the appropriate people on my way home from class. Quite honestly, however, I find I unlikely that many people are motivated enough to find the right numbers themselves, and probably won’t be making any calls unless they have the right peoples numbers in front of them already.
The discussion regarding free wireless service throughout the city segued into a discussion about mobile learning and locative media. Since class that day, I’ve run into a number of situations where I think such technology would be very useful and enriching, and I believe in it’s merits. In terms of its practical application to a wide audience, I still think it’s far outside the radar of what people are thinking about in terms of the development of instructional media.
Class then transitioned into individual presentations on found design flaws in everyday objects. I found there to be a pretty good diversity of objects selected, and all who presented made a number of valid points in terms of poor design. The primary flaw in design among the group seemed to be in terms of visibility, and how the object lacked the visual clues to determine certain functions or traits of the objects.
The discussion regarding free wireless service throughout the city segued into a discussion about mobile learning and locative media. Since class that day, I’ve run into a number of situations where I think such technology would be very useful and enriching, and I believe in it’s merits. In terms of its practical application to a wide audience, I still think it’s far outside the radar of what people are thinking about in terms of the development of instructional media.
Class then transitioned into individual presentations on found design flaws in everyday objects. I found there to be a pretty good diversity of objects selected, and all who presented made a number of valid points in terms of poor design. The primary flaw in design among the group seemed to be in terms of visibility, and how the object lacked the visual clues to determine certain functions or traits of the objects.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Make your brain spin (design flaws in a fan)
Our assignment for this week was to find a design flaw in an everyday object. My first attempt to pinpoint a design flaw around my home was futile, as I was simply looking for something that didn't "work." In my mind, I perceived that everything I saw functioned the way it was supposed to. If it didn't work, I would have thrown it out some time ago.
Then I sat down to read chapters 1 and 2 of Donald Norman's book, The Design of Everyday Things. I quickly acquired a deeper understanding of what contributes to a flawed design. It is not just limited to things that don't work, but rather anything which doesn't work intuitively to the user, or that doesn't work as well or as easily as it could.
When my girlfriend and I moved into our new home last August, we were happy to learn that the previous tennants were going to leave their ceiling fan in the dining room. The landlord commented to us that the fan worked at different speeds, and had different settings for the warm and cold seasons. We were just happy to have something that worked to circulate air through the room, as it was a pretty warm week when we moved in.
In the past few months, we haven't used the fan once. As I was looking around my place trying to identify a flawed design, I looked at the fan, and thought to myself, "why haven't I used the fan lately? Doesn't it have a setting for winter months?" I realized at that point that I had no clue as to how I would find the right setting, as there are no markings on the fan itself as to what settings should be used during which months.
Hanging from the fan are 3 chains. None of these actually give the fan it's power, that's done by the light-switch on the wall. While none of the chains are marked in any way, I was able to figure out what each switch does. The far right chain turns the light on and off (as long as the light switch on the wall is powered on.) The middle chain changes the fan's speed, from low, to medium, to high, and back to off. The left switch changes the direction of the fan's rotation, which presumably is to create a different air flow in the summer or winter months.
Thinking about it more and more, there are a number of design flaws. One flaw is the lack of visual cues to the three hanging chains. Without testing each one, a person would have no intuitive idea as to what function each chain performed. Norman discusses visibility as a significant factor to good design, and frankly, my ceiling fan would be just as easy to operate with a blindfold on.
Another challenge to operating the ceiling fan is changing speeds, or turning the fan off. If someone were to approach the fan while it's moving, they would not likely be able to tell if it's spinning on low or medium, medium or high. Some might have no idea how many speeds it has. So in order to turn it off, you have to pull the chain an unknown number of times. The problem here is that even when it is off, it continues to spin from the momemtum of the previous setting. So then you wait, and wait. Often times I'll be waiting for it to finally slow to a stop, only to realize after waiting for a while that I've pulled the chain one too many times
and set it back to low speed.
Finally, the whole summer vs winter modes. I'm afraid I'll never figure this one out without doing some focused research. Even once I determine which chain reverses the direction of the fan, I hae no idea which direction is meant for summer and which is for winter. Since we "inherited" this fan from the previous tenants, we don't have any sort of owner's manual, and we're left without a clue as to which direction is preferred for which months.
It's enough to leave your head spinning....
Then I sat down to read chapters 1 and 2 of Donald Norman's book, The Design of Everyday Things. I quickly acquired a deeper understanding of what contributes to a flawed design. It is not just limited to things that don't work, but rather anything which doesn't work intuitively to the user, or that doesn't work as well or as easily as it could.
When my girlfriend and I moved into our new home last August, we were happy to learn that the previous tennants were going to leave their ceiling fan in the dining room. The landlord commented to us that the fan worked at different speeds, and had different settings for the warm and cold seasons. We were just happy to have something that worked to circulate air through the room, as it was a pretty warm week when we moved in.
In the past few months, we haven't used the fan once. As I was looking around my place trying to identify a flawed design, I looked at the fan, and thought to myself, "why haven't I used the fan lately? Doesn't it have a setting for winter months?" I realized at that point that I had no clue as to how I would find the right setting, as there are no markings on the fan itself as to what settings should be used during which months.
Hanging from the fan are 3 chains. None of these actually give the fan it's power, that's done by the light-switch on the wall. While none of the chains are marked in any way, I was able to figure out what each switch does. The far right chain turns the light on and off (as long as the light switch on the wall is powered on.) The middle chain changes the fan's speed, from low, to medium, to high, and back to off. The left switch changes the direction of the fan's rotation, which presumably is to create a different air flow in the summer or winter months.Thinking about it more and more, there are a number of design flaws. One flaw is the lack of visual cues to the three hanging chains. Without testing each one, a person would have no intuitive idea as to what function each chain performed. Norman discusses visibility as a significant factor to good design, and frankly, my ceiling fan would be just as easy to operate with a blindfold on.
Another challenge to operating the ceiling fan is changing speeds, or turning the fan off. If someone were to approach the fan while it's moving, they would not likely be able to tell if it's spinning on low or medium, medium or high. Some might have no idea how many speeds it has. So in order to turn it off, you have to pull the chain an unknown number of times. The problem here is that even when it is off, it continues to spin from the momemtum of the previous setting. So then you wait, and wait. Often times I'll be waiting for it to finally slow to a stop, only to realize after waiting for a while that I've pulled the chain one too many times
and set it back to low speed.
Finally, the whole summer vs winter modes. I'm afraid I'll never figure this one out without doing some focused research. Even once I determine which chain reverses the direction of the fan, I hae no idea which direction is meant for summer and which is for winter. Since we "inherited" this fan from the previous tenants, we don't have any sort of owner's manual, and we're left without a clue as to which direction is preferred for which months.
It's enough to leave your head spinning....
Monday, February 5, 2007
A review of the Web 2.0 presentations
I really enjoyed the presentations from last semester's students on Podcasting, Flickr, and Video Podcasting / Video Blogging.
All of these were concepts I was previously familiar with, but all the presentations brought to mind some new uses and additional information that I wasn't previously connected with.
I have recently gotten into subscribing to various audio and video podcasts through iTunes. In terms of audio podcasting, I enjoy a few certain radio segments, and a pretty entertaining weekly "debriefing" of one of my favorite network television shows, 24. As a subscriber, each new episode is automatically downloaded every time I log into iTunes, and I usually sync my iPod to take these new podcasts "on the go."
I also really enjoy a couple video podcasts. I subscribe to a video podcast called LearnFlash.com, which provides free lesson examples of flash animation. Because I'm learning Flash, I'm always inerested to see what new use the guys demonstrate. Sometimes it's well beyond my level, sometimes it's right on.
I haven't used flickr much, because I have gotten so used to other photo-sharing sites like Ofoto (Kodak) and Snapfish. (Sometimes shutterfly or photobucket.) I didn't really see much of a great advantage to flickr over these sites, and I just don't have the patience to re-load all my photos and albums to a new site. Maybe I'll become inspired with further knowledge.
Anyways, the presentations were nice to hear, and it's motivating to hear that these people really didn't have a great deal of knowledge about their subjects previous to their class reseach. I'm confident that I'll be able to take away a lot of new insight to many of the emerging Web 2.0 applications.
That's it for now...until next week!
All of these were concepts I was previously familiar with, but all the presentations brought to mind some new uses and additional information that I wasn't previously connected with.
I have recently gotten into subscribing to various audio and video podcasts through iTunes. In terms of audio podcasting, I enjoy a few certain radio segments, and a pretty entertaining weekly "debriefing" of one of my favorite network television shows, 24. As a subscriber, each new episode is automatically downloaded every time I log into iTunes, and I usually sync my iPod to take these new podcasts "on the go."
I also really enjoy a couple video podcasts. I subscribe to a video podcast called LearnFlash.com, which provides free lesson examples of flash animation. Because I'm learning Flash, I'm always inerested to see what new use the guys demonstrate. Sometimes it's well beyond my level, sometimes it's right on.
I haven't used flickr much, because I have gotten so used to other photo-sharing sites like Ofoto (Kodak) and Snapfish. (Sometimes shutterfly or photobucket.) I didn't really see much of a great advantage to flickr over these sites, and I just don't have the patience to re-load all my photos and albums to a new site. Maybe I'll become inspired with further knowledge.
Anyways, the presentations were nice to hear, and it's motivating to hear that these people really didn't have a great deal of knowledge about their subjects previous to their class reseach. I'm confident that I'll be able to take away a lot of new insight to many of the emerging Web 2.0 applications.
That's it for now...until next week!
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