Interactions

The human in HCI: What you can learn from the Bard (and others)

Posted: Tue, July 16, 2013 - 4:32:37

How does one account for the human within human-computer interaction? One approach historically embodied by the HCI field is firmly reductionist, a distillation of functional entities in which a human comprises "information processing systems" and "decision-making agents." It has a quantitative outlook with scientific rigor and statistical significance of data to ensure accurate validations of hypotheses. This grounds everyone in…

Hair of the Monkey King

Posted: Wed, June 19, 2013 - 10:31:48

Technologists are like magicians. They make dreams reality. In mythical stories, magic is the art that makes the impossible possible. Seven-League Boots is the art that contracts space. People using the spell can travel a thousand miles in one step. Clairvoyance is the power that can enable a person to see a scene from a distance. The powers of listening…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

Making wearables, umm, bearable

Posted: Fri, April 26, 2013 - 12:19:33

Wearable devices seem to be all the rage lately, from personal monitoring devices (like Nike FuelBand or FitBit) to smartpens (LiveScribe) to Google Glass, and beyond (medical accessories for the iPhone). I would also include the ubiquitous smartphone as a wearable, since we usually carry it on our body, in a jacket or pants pocket. And there's tremendous buzz on…

Taking UX to Eleven

Posted: Wed, April 24, 2013 - 12:44:01

About a hundred years ago, I worked as a road manager. Often, when I tell folks this, they get all misty-eyed, somewhat dewy, and ask, "What was it like?" I think images of Scooter Herring run across their eyes, or strains of Jackson Browne's "Rosie" waft melodically in an Ohrwurm kind of way. The first time I worked as a…

Recursion: A thinking utensil in the creativity kitchen

Posted: Wed, April 17, 2013 - 9:48:28

If I had to recommend a book about creative thinking, it would be Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein’s Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People [1]. I read the book on my flight to London, and I was particularly interested in the section on abstraction, which discusses how great artists like Pablo Picasso and Henry…

Don’t throw the mental model baby out with the skeuomorphic bathwater

Posted: Tue, March 19, 2013 - 10:17:08

Recently, Apple has been taken to task for its apparent hyperdevotion to skeuomorphism. Faux leather visual design, faux bookshelves, faux notepads—these artifacts of design become objet de derision in today's history- and human factors-weak design community. Combine this weakness with a rush to production under big-A Agile, and we run amok with undesigned designs. Yes, some elements of Apple's design…