Interactions

Why I lie to my kids

Posted: Wed, May 22, 2013 - 2:52:21

When she was about five, I told my daughter Emmie about a girl named Priscilla who swallowed toothpaste instead of spitting it out after brushing. She did this every day, week after week and month after month, because she liked the taste of toothpaste. After some time, however, Priscilla found that her joints were getting stiff. A little while later,…

CHI 2013 roundup

Posted: Thu, May 16, 2013 - 3:28:34

The 2013 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (commonly known as just CHI) took place in Paris from April 27 to May 2, 2013. Many of you are familiar with the CHI conference either through direct experience or through reading papers that are showcased there. This was a bumper year for CHI: around 3500 attendees running between16…

What would it take to be inclusive?

Posted: Tue, May 07, 2013 - 1:03:13

It's been a while since I was asked to join the group of interactions bloggers. I guess I've been waiting for the right inspiration to strike. I've just attended CHI, and that inspiration has finally arrived, but not quite in the way I expected. When I was at CHI, I saw mothers sitting on the floor to nurse their children…

A perfect storm

Posted: Wed, May 01, 2013 - 10:03:24

Full disclosure: I generally don’t mention my company’s products in print, but can’t avoid it here. It’s not something I worked on.The summer after high school I was hired to teach tennis at a local park. It was before Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors turned the sport upside down. There was a “right way” to hit every shot—forehand, backhand, volley—…

What designers need to know/do to help transform healthcare

Posted: Mon, April 29, 2013 - 5:39:32

I've been immersing myself in all things focused in some way on dramatically changing the U.S. healthcare system and the patient experience. This has included attending lots of events. Last week, I attended the Health Technology Forum Innovation Conference. Two weeks ago, I attended the Second Annual Great Silicon Valley Oxford Union Debate focused on whether Silicon Valley innovation will…

The new Gmail interface: better or worse?

Posted: Fri, April 26, 2013 - 7:12:13

People have been declaring the death of email for decades. It is claimed that email is only used by fuddy-duddies, a dying breed of technologically challenged, uncool dinosaurs. That would be me then. And most of my friends and colleagues. I am told that if I were hip, young, trendy, efficient … I would obviously choose to have all my…

Roger Ebert and the social value of criticism

Posted: Mon, April 15, 2013 - 3:02:47

On Friday, April 5, 2013, I saw something I would never expect to see: the passing of a critic reported as front page news in the New York Times. The critic in question was, of course, Roger Ebert, the celebrity film critic who passed away presumably (the obituaries aren’t clear on this) due to complications relating to his thyroid cancer.…

Humanoid (robot) hacking

Posted: Thu, March 14, 2013 - 9:00:42

Psy’s Gangnam Style took the world by storm in 2012. YouTube was flooded with copycat dancers performing unlikely gyrations. Fabulously, it wasn’t just human beings getting in on the fun. Researchers Christophe Bartneck and Eduardo Sandoval at the University of Canterbury's Human Interface Technology Lab in New Zealand made a video of their Nao robots showing off their moves. Demoed…

Couch Potato U.

Posted: Wed, March 06, 2013 - 10:19:48

An essay by Clay Shirky asserts that MOOC impact on higher education will parallel the impact of MP3s. The music industry could suppress Napster but not a deeper change: We can listen to the song we want when we want rather than buy it packaged in a CD with unwanted content. Whether or not a particular MOOC platform succeeds, the…

Out with the old, in with the new

Posted: Mon, February 18, 2013 - 11:43:50

I've interviewed a lot of people on stage, sometimes individually, sometimes in pairs. Transcripts of three of my interviews of pairs were published as interactions cover stories. Two were published together—of Cliff Nass and Bill Buxton, and of Clement Mok and Jakob Nielsen; one was published by itself—of Don Norman and Janice Rohn. I like the dynamics of an interview…