I hope this online collection of notes would prove valuable not only to me but to all students and colleagues looking to develop innovating and interesting products. This site focuses on product design, conceptual design, interaction design, interface design, and failure analysis.
Interfaces.com
In the Galaxy Far Far Away… What if sentient being evolved on a planet with permanent cloud cover? What if these being never saw stars? Would they still be able to discover the laws of nature? These kinds of hypothetical thinking questions — the Gedankan Experiments, as Einstein put it — are very useful...
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We’ve traveled to Rome for our family vacation this year, and aside from a few summer reading books that I couldn’t find in an eBook format, we relied on our two Kindles and 3 iPads for our family reading needs. This is the second summer we brought primarily electronic versions of books—”The Count of...
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Harvard Vision Lab created a few experiments that feature Attention Controls Errors and Perceptual Blindness. Below is one of their optical illusions. Directions: concentrate on the central white dot. Did the colors of the outside dots continue to shift throughout the video? If they stopped when the dots were rotating, then you’ve just experienced...
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Parker-Pope, T., (2010). “A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup.” New York Times Online. Visited on October 3, 2010: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/a-new-name-for-high-fructose-corn-syrup/ As this article describes, corn syrup producers in the United States have begun to push for a re-naming of their products. While it may sound innocuous, this is in fact a major change in the way that High-Fructose...
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Svitil, K., (2008). “Wine Study Shows Price Influences Perception.” California Institute of Technology. Visited on October 4, 2010: http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13091 This article is a research study about how the region of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex showed higher activity when participants drank wines at a higher price. A wine tasting study was conducted...
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BBC Staff, (2005). “Why good dancers are attractive.” BBC News. Retrieved on 11 October, 2010: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4550000.stm Summary: A song accompanied by an incredible dance can be an exhilarating experience. We have always loved our dancers who rhythmically move their bodies to music. According to this article we not only love them, but find them...
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Our minds play tricks on us all the time. Once the information has entered our cognition via our senses, it still has to get processed to be understood. Like any other data, it’s all about context. For interesting examples of optical illusions, please visit http://www.lottolab.org/articles/illusionsoflight.asp. R. Beau Lotto has put together a few interesting...
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We view the world through our own personal and cultural filter. We can’t help but do that. But put us in another cultural frame...
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In his book “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature”, Steven Pinker gave the following defense of language ambiguity: Imagine...
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Today the Interaction Design Foundation, the IDF, has announced its new executive board. The executive board includes Don Norman; Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at...
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Imagine your were given an assignment to develop a product that could help people eat healthy. How would you go about creating such a...
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An iPotty App for kids learning to use a toilet: And here’s a bit for an older audience: Would it have worked if the...
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The Math Obstacle In the past few years, reports came out showing strong correlation between failing Algebra and graduation rates — if a kid...
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The latest in the professional social media writing is the creation of lists. Sing it with me: 25 Awesome Quotes 11 Secrets & 11...
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Who would have thought that our KFC fried chicken would be an object of desire in Japan? But perhaps all it takes is some...
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UCLA School of Law and International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor partnered together to create UCLA Law Forum—a place to discuss international law issues. My company, Pipsqueak Productions, designed and developed the site. Please join the debate! UCLALawForum.com.
DRIPS project — stands for Deep Root Irrigation and Precipitation System — is a simple device that collects atmospheric water and delivers it to the roots of plants below the evaporation layer. My sons, Tim and Nick Werby, designed and developed the idea and the site. DRIPSproject.
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