Blogs



Post-visionary

Posted: Mon, November 25, 2013 - 11:00:12

The Interactions Timelines forum, 38 contributions by 28 authors over eight years, spanned the history of human-computer interaction and related topics. The November-December column on women who pioneered human-centered design is the last. History piles up faster than it is written down. My detour from the present through the past started with half a dozen questions about how we arrived…

Utilizing patients in the experience design process

Posted: Mon, November 18, 2013 - 10:00:45

Dave deBronkart (a.k.a. e-Patient Dave) is quite well-known for his assertion during a TED talk and at other times that patients are the most underutilized resource in healthcare. Without question, that underutilization extends to the healthcare and patient experience (re)design process. At Medicine X 2013, Sonny Vu ruffled some feathers when he said that, in his company's design process for…

Finding protected places

Posted: Wed, October 30, 2013 - 10:28:39

In a memorable scene, a boy is taught to swim by being thrown into a lake. In the movie, it worked. In real life, training is desirable, whether for heart surgeons, air traffic controllers, or swimmers. Training is a protected place, where we can try things, take risks, and make mistakes without adverse consequences. What happens in training, stays in…

Artifact invention and research

Posted: Mon, September 30, 2013 - 11:33:38

I asked several talented inventors whether there is more to research than invention. It was not a new question for them, but not an easy one either. “Get back to me after the CHI deadline,” said one, immersed in writing papers on his latest inventions. “The Edison-Einstein question,” said another. Where I work, artifact invention and research is the air…

Learning from ePatient (scholar)s

Posted: Mon, September 23, 2013 - 10:30:36

Increasingly, patients are making invaluable contributions to the redesign of our broken healthcare system and the patient experience. Designers working in healthcare should be aware of and leverage these contributions. Among the facilitators of this is Medicine X, a fabulous conference held annually in September at Stanford University. As stated by the conference organizers: Medicine X aims to bring together…

Canyonlands

Posted: Fri, August 23, 2013 - 11:37:08

The Colorado Plateau. 130,000 square miles (337,000 square kilometers) of high desert and scattered forests in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Home to 10 National Parks, including the Grand Canyon, and 17 National Monuments. Its features include the Colorado and other rivers, towering cliffs and deep canyons, arches, domes, fins, goblins, hoodoos, natural bridges, reefs, river rapids, and slot…

Bias

Posted: Tue, August 06, 2013 - 11:35:14

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by…

When A/B testing gets an F

Posted: Tue, July 02, 2013 - 11:33:18

A relationship is like a shark, it has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark. —Woody Allen, Annie HallLike sharks in search of their next meal, living websites constantly move forward. How do they decide where to go? Many popular sites rely on A/B testing. Different versions…

A slow triangulation

Posted: Tue, June 04, 2013 - 1:47:16

In the mid-18th century: "Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream? - in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip…

Are you trying to solve the right problem?

Posted: Tue, May 28, 2013 - 12:44:25

I just looked through the variety of graphical depictions of the human-centered design process that I show to and discuss with my master’s degree students during the first class of the semester. Sure enough, none of them includes a step often called reframing or a step that obviously includes reframing. Hmm... Does the design process followed by many fail to…