Schools of Gold Fish:

Little Dudes AND Gold Fish!

Must be something in the water…

Here are a few creative ways of solving the speeding problem on our streets.

Using Visual Processing Errors to Slow Traffic

Canadian drives misdiagnose the problem and try to drive straddling the “hole” in the road. Everyone is successfully slowed down.

The Fake Traffic Cop Threat as a Speeding Deterrent

In general, people tend to do the right thing IF someone is watching. A few blogs ago, I wrote about a hospital administrator who came up with a brilliant idea of putting signs in the hospital bathrooms that said: “Check to see if the people in the bathroom are washing hands prior to leaving.” If the sign simply advised the employees to wash hands, it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well (the rate of hand washing for doctors and nurses almost doubled!).

In the example above, to make sure that drivers really slow down (as if snowy conditions are not enough), this Czech village combined a watchful police with an added draw of exposed legs. Sex and the law — a winning combination to slow drivers.

Here in U.S., we don’t need the legs — just a radar gun would do:

Or a cut out of a cop car:

I’ve read about old broken cars left on the side of the road as cautionary reminders to drive safely. Fake blood and mannequins can add to the effect…

The main idea is to use visual “threats” to nudge drivers into lawful behaviors.

On the left, you can see an early version of wearable computing: Steve Mann’s backpack based system from the late 1970′s and early 1980′s.

But as always, I have a slightly different take on this topic…

The Little Mac That Saved My Son’s Life

Almost 18 years ago, I went into a preterm labor. At 24 and a half weeks into gestation, this was very scary. At the time, San Francisco Children’s Hospital was pioneering a program for high risk pregnancies (which mine just turned out to be). Two doctors, Dr. Kuts and Dr. Maine, figured out how to use an old Mac SE, a modem, a telephone, a subcutaneous pump, and a belt which measures contractions to allow women like me to stay at home as much as we could (as opposed to spending months in the hospital). Here’s how this worked:

1. I spent most of my time horizontally. I was wearing a wide rubber belt with a monitor that tracked my contractions through changes in pressure. I was also required to take regular pulse readings (goal was to keep me under 120 BPM — not very attainable).
2. Next to me, was an old Mac SE, and my belt attached directly into the computer to deliver data into a little program that the doctor wrote. On the monitor, I could watch my contractions in real time. I could use this visual information as a feed-back system to try to relax as much as possible and see if I could keep these contractions within a satisfactory range.
3. The data gathered by the program, together with my notes on my heart rate, were sent to the nurse at a monitoring station several times per day via modem.
4. The nurse looked at the intensity of contractions versus my heart rate and advised on the doze strength of the Tocolytics medication administered through a subcutaneous pump in my leg. If at any time I went over the limit on contraction or heart rates, I was sent directly to the emergency room, where things got escalated to the next level.

For the most part, this system kept me home. And while I wasn’t moving much, this was a practical example of an early wearable computer system that saved two lives. There was a very good reason for this system to exist — it solved a real world problem.

SciFi — Giving Credit to Creative Futurists

I found it difficult to read a history of wearable computing and augmented reality without thinking back on all of the ideas over the last 100 years presented in science fiction novels. I’m a big fan of SciFi. And I believe in giving credit where credit is due. So here’s a little bit of credit (I only picked a few examples and there are thousands of others as wonderful and imaginative as these.).

I just finished reading Earth by David Brin, published in 1991. Lots of interesting ideas here. One (of many) that is relevant to this discussion is the notion of how society might change when everyone always wears augmented reality glasses that continuously record information (and even include enhanced, undetectable spy wear like wide spectrum recording and high-powered listening devices). David Brin, the author, describes older population using such devices to spy on youth and report crimes and personal space violations. The age divide described in the novel reverses the roles of teenagers and retirees. Teenagers choose to go “off the grid”, while retirees take on the role of social police and become abusive with wearable computing technologies. Everyone at all times is recorded. Recordings are used to prosecute violators (in this case fights, littering, and other antisocial behaviors) to the full extent of the law. Every citizen becomes a witness and evidence gathering station.

In a short story “Snow,” John Crowley explores death and the consequences of storing memories collected by Lifelogging — Prof. Mann’s term for continuous visual diary of one’s life gathered by a wearable computing device. The story was written in 1985. It’s a haunting and beautiful tale, and I won’t spoil it for you here, other than to say that this is a story of lifelogging taken to an ultimate conclusion, so to speak. This story is part of an anthology by Orson Scott Card, Future on Ice.

I’ve been reading science fiction since I was a kid, and my early readings were in Russian. I can’t remember the name of the book or the author (or much about the story, even), but one detail stayed with me all my life: every human is connected to a central computer somewhere, and every thought is monitored. The main point was to have a system that never looses a great idea, even if the person doesn’t want to share it with the world or ever speaks it out-loud. Ideas are humanity’s real treasures — everyone is precocious, everyone can be part of a solution that someday might save humanity. It was a very interesting thought. The writing was from some time in the 1970′s.

The original Star Trek TV Series premiered in 1966. Already, the central computer/ship was one of the main ideas in the story. “You’d make a splendid computer, Mr Spock.” — Captain Kirk. The hand-held devices, tricorders, that the crew carried with them to all planetary destinations gave inspiration to mobile phones, mobile health devices, and the iPad.

And just to be a bit more complete, remember Get Smart? Maxwell Smart was clearly an early adapter of wearable computing:
And again, this was mid-60′s.

And so I find it difficult to read a history of wearable computers and augmented reality without acknowledging the literary inspiration for such devices. We stand on the shoulders of giants of imagination.

Compensation and Enhancement

Whenever we talk about product design, we have to talk about users of those products: Who are these people? Why would they want to use the product? What are their goals for the product? How will the users’ lives improve from interaction with the product? Where‘s the need?

I’ve written a short post a weeks ago on Compensations and Accommodations — the product design waltz. The basic idea is that with our designs we try to accommodate the widest possible audience, while we hope that the rest of the users would compensate for our product’s deficiencies and use it anyway.

Wearable computing devices are just products. Like all products, they have to answer the same basic questions: who, why, what, how, and where. In my first example — the little Mac that saved my son’s life — the wearable computing device was compensating for my limited knowledge of the state of my body and my uterus and providing feedback for better medication management.

Star Trek tricorder enhanced perceptual data gathering for Mr. Spock as he explored exotic planetary surfaces — it provided additional information and supported decision making on the ground. This is what situational awareness is all about!

David Brin’s True-Vu wearing Grempers from 2030′s Earth, used the wearable computing devices as enhancements to their senses. And in turn they served as social compensation to help control violent street crime. (Note: the book is full other wonderful examples of how computers and humans “merged”.)

Compensation and enhancement — another product design dance — enhance skills, perception, abilities; compensate for physical weakness, failing cognitive abilities, loss of perception.

Resistance is Futile

We — those of us living in the Western World — are gently sliding into a world where we are connected all the time (and not only as a social hive of Facebook): from table-top computing, to portable computers, to laptops, to mobile phones, to tablets… We crave that connectivity. And from the other side, we want devices that help sustain us: keep our hearts beating, deliver elixirs to keep us pain-free and compensate for failing body functions/chemistry, augment our memories, and free us from endless minutia of everyday living responsibilities (tell me my grocery list, pay my bills, service my car, keep my house warm, etc.).

This two-edged slide of we want and we need (enhancement and compensation) pushes us ever more into this brave new world. Someday, we won’t even realize how much of us is a computer… Resistance is futile!

So read more: Wearable Computing by Steve Mann in Interaction-Design.org

As you have been undoubtably aware for some time, this blog aims for audience with well above average vocabulary and IQ. You and your fellow readers are a very select group with strong interest in science and product design. You are scientists, engineers, and intellectuals. You have an amazing sense of style and fashion. You are able to see patterns and spot details that escape most of those around you. How do I know? I can see the strong engagement with the material on this blog — it’s all there in black and white numbers provided helpfully by Google day in and out.

Some of you might think this letter cynical. But all of you know that this content appeals directly your amygdala — you are as happy to be recognized for your brilliance as I’m for your continued readership of my writing. You all know you are special, and you want to be acknowledged as such by those around you.

And not only are you all above average, you are also extraordinarily lucky. Some might call this the “optimism bias”, but you and I know that your chances of success are much higher than the average Joe standing next to you. Odds are for losers, winners bask in their successes.

Some politicians try to peculate your look and attitude, but you’re too good for that. You can see through that kind of dishonesty even as you recognize that others, those with lower IQ, would fall victim to mirroring errors. But you also recognize the social value of such flattery — after all, not everyone can have it all.

In particular, you, my gentle readers, are quick to notice how ICT (information communication technologies) can be finely tuned to reflect the values of different cultures, using language and imagery to smooth out the virtual transactions, to create a feeling of camaraderie, to feed the need of everyone to feel special.

In a world where everyone is a writer, how easy is it to use flattery as a social lubricant? A smile from a pretty virtual girl, a hug from an artificial construct, a compliment from an online buddy… it doesn’t take too much effort to ensure that interface design has the right emotional tone for its product. Yet so many products fall short.

So thank you, my dear readers, for being the smartest and most perceptive bunch this side of the Internet!

Best,

Olga

Practical Advice

• Always Answer: never leave a thread hanging — we all like to be acknowledged (at least to our existence). If someone sends an email addressed to you (or any other medium of personal delivery), or responds to a thread you’ve posted (on LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, or news paper), answer! It doesn’t have to be long, just a personal thank you and acknowledgement, even if you don’t think the person writing is of any use to you (especially then!). There’s never a need to cause anxiety by long-awaited or missing response.
• Always Thank: I know that thank you notes are a thing of the past (it seems), but a short note of thanks is not only expected but mandatory, not matter how small the favor. A dinner, a recommendation, a lead, a word of advice, all deserve to be acknowledged with a personal thanks.
• Always be Polite: as Mama always said: please and thank you and your freinds. But so is the tone of your correspondence. In particular, email is notoriously poor communication medium for tone and emotion. And people are great at reading into messages emotions and ideas that are simply not there, no matter how “flat” the actual content is. There’s a wonderful experiment where subjects are shown emotionless faces juxtaposed with food or puppies — the experiment subjects assign emotions of hunger and loving to these photos.
• Always Strive for Culturally Appropriate: how many times have cultural bias or misunderstanding caused failure of communication? Too many! It doesn’t take long to do a bit of research to figure out not only a timely answer, but one couched in a right tone.
• Always Strive for Empathy: especially in product design work, strive to understand what the users of the product really want from your design. And be kind to the errors that they will make.

Beauty & Aesthetics Evolve in Time

It’s good to remember that what we find beautiful and appealing changes and evolves in time as well as across cultures. Here’s a wonderful demonstration: 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.

What Makes Design Beautiful?

In the Interaction-Design.org chapter, Tractinsky starts with Vitruvius’ design principles. Vitruvius lived in the 1st century BC and develop a set of standard criteria by which to evaluate architecture: Firmitas — durability or life-span of the building in relation to its purpose; Utilitas — usability of the building by its intended audience; and Venustas — the beauty of the building (this would be culturally-specific). 2,000 years on and we still talk about durability, usability, and aesthetics of products.

Since this chapter discusses architecture, I would like to talk about weapons. Weapons pre-date architecture, but they still follow the same rules for design: durability and reusability, usability, and beauty. If you’ve ever been to an armory museum, you have seen the amount of design energy that has been spent of weapons over the human history. We polish, we decorate, we fine-tune these objects. We admire the detail, the craftsmanship, the emotion that was invested into an object destined to kill. We can tell the rank of the soldier by comparing how beautiful his uniform and weapons are to those of his comrades.

But beauty alone is not enough to be aesthetically pleasing. In 200 B.C., Emperor Qin Shihuangdi insisted that his warriors used standardized weapons. All arrows were made the same length and with interchangeable tips. If a soldier died, his arrows could be used by his fellow soldiers. Prior to that (and among other Chinese tribes), each soldier made his own weapons. No two were the same. Reusability of weapons extended their Firmitas and Utilitas.

And yet, the quality of a sword is judged not only on its strength, performance, and durability. A weapon is an extension of a warrior’s skill. It’s a very personal item. Each soldier forms an emotional bond with his weapon. Each sword in The Lord of the Rings books and movies is named and easily recognized by sight. As the audience, we can tell if the user is evil or good based on the weapon. The look communicates the emotional state of the user.

Even in this day and age, American soldiers decorate their standardized uniforms and weapons to reflect the personal nature of their spirit and experience.

And yet, as different as these may be in their aesthetics, all these pistols use standard bullets — usability is not sacrificed for personal expression.

Another example is a screw. The idea of a screw goes back to 200 B.C., which seems to be a very productive decade. But it took almost 2,000 years to create a standard screw. Before then, all craftsmen made their own and no two were alike. In fact, making all screws different guaranteed that the customers had to go back to the original design to get ones that fit — a locked-in audience. But each screw was beautifully made, lovely to hold and feel. Each screw demonstrated the skill of the maker, but didn’t say much about the final user — the screw was concealed in the artifact it held together.

Today, our technology is increasingly personal. While our desktop computers can easily be shared, our portable devices are, by their very nature, attached to the person who is porting them around. And just like weapons, these devices sport personals modifications. From different backgrounds, to stickers, to cases, we want our cell phones, our iPads, and our laptops to reflect who we think we are.

No wonder ringtones are such big business — we crave individuality and self-expression above uniformity.

Aesthetics in HCI

In our design shop, we constantly talk about how “prettier buttons won’t solve interaction design failures.” A pistol that won’t shoot — that won’t perform its essential function well — won’t be much improved by making it purple or adding intricate designs or jewels. So we have to keep in mind that beauty is not a substitute for functionality, but it is an essential part of it.

We can talk about some general ideas of what makes a design pleasing. We are programmed through evolution to like symmetry. We look for symmetry in bodies and facial features — symmetry implies health. So we look for symmetry in HCI design as well and find well-balanced design more pleasing. We equate symmetry with beauty and attribute symmetrical designs with added “goodness” and “health”.

We find familiar to be more acceptable and comfortable. We look to recognize certain aspects of a design that help us orient the product to its purpose, function, audience. Recognition triggers the amygdala — our first level of response to any product. What we recognize depends on our culture — in time and in space — thus designs have to be culture-specific to be found aesthetically pleasing. Think how shocking Picasso’s portraits felt to his first audience. Recognition is a factor of categorization: What is this? How do I fit this amongst things I know?

We are also particularly attuned to motion — we can’t avoid looking at something that moves. I’m sure that in the dawn of our history, this attribute of our perception saved quite a few humans from predators big and small. I might have bad vision and require glasses, but I can instantly spot a spider crawling up the wall. Thus motion in HCI is powerful — it can either help or completely obscure the necessary action the user needs to take to succeed with an interface.

With the arrival of haptic interfaces, aesthetics now includes not only visual or audio components but movement and touch. We like symmetry in texture as well. Silky, smooth, soft, sliding, gliding, polished — all are appealing. Spiky, rough, angular, sharp, uneven — all signal unfinished or even dangerous products, they catch our “eye”. We can use this to draw attention to an HCI feature — people spot even minute changes in texture.

In this chapter, Tractinsky discusses Outcome Variables — Trustworthiness, Usability, Brand Personality or Character, Performance — and Moderating Variables — Type of System, Context of Use, Cultural Differences (big and small). These are very interesting ways at looking and parsing the design of HCI.

Conclusion

The chapter does a great job of exploring the lay of the land of aesthetics in HCI design. For those wanting more, there’s a very extensive bibliography. There are also extensive commentaries by Gitte Lindgaard, Marc Hassenzahl, Antonella De Angeli, Dianne Cyr, Alistair G. Sutcliffe, Jinwoo Kim, and Masaaki Kurosu.

Bibliogrphy

Rawsthorn, A. (2008). “What is good design?” The New York Times. Visited on March 22, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/arts/09iht-design9.1.13525567.html

And here’s one that explains perception and social cues.

Unfortunately, Scientific American still uses Flash, so this might not work on all devices.

Adopting an activity-theoretical perspective has an immediate implication for design: it suggests that the primary concern of designers of interactive systems should be supporting meaningful human activities in everyday contexts, rather than striving for logical consistency and technological sophistication.

While this chapter focuses mainly on human computer interaction (HCI), I would argue that we need to be broader: we need to focus on product design. And as always, I mean product to be interpreted in a very broad sense.

We are moving rapidly into a world where everything we touch is a computing device. Today, I Twitted that my washing machine is an ICT device — the new ARM chip is small, requires very little power, and will be incorporated into everything. So as designers, we have to think not in terms of devices, but in terms of goals and motivations: Why is this person using this device? What do they hope to accomplish? How can we support their problem solving? This is nothing new to my students…

But as an illustration let me talk about a chisel and a log. If you have these and given enough time, you might make a dugout canoe. But if you had access to a boat factory, skilled workers, and cutting edge materials, your maritime options might be much broader. But this breadth of possibilities comes with a price: we need to know more to be able to use these tools in a productive and creative ways. So the new world of product designers is much more complicated and much more interesting. How do we go about supporting people working together to accomplish goals that we haven’t even thought of for our products? How do we motivate people to work together? To be more productive? To be more creative? To think outside of the box? To spend the time to learn how to use our products? It’s an interesting challenge. And the Activity Theory provides some of the foundational support into thinking about product design.

Goals, Expertise, and Situations

In our product design classes, we talk about everything being situational: Need to change a lightbulb? That chair looks like a stepping stool. We go about our lives solving problems, from little ones to major ones, from lightbulb malfunction to new cancer therapy. As designers we want to support those efforts and we do that with scaffoldings: cognitive (just-in-time help), psychological (permission giving), physical (strong chair legs), etc. What users need depends on what, where, and when of their problem solving instance.

A few months ago, I wrote about crisis mapping and the movement of information between the people in crisis, individuals providing direct help on the ground, information gatherers, and the media. There were feedback data loops and it was particularly important to understand the goals, expertise, and the situation of each group as they acted out their respective roles in the crisis. Below is diagram of this information flow and here’s a link to the blog post. It’s easy to see Activity Theory in action!

The folks from Interaction-Design.org have just completed their newest chapter: “Disruptive Innovation” by Clayton M. Christensen. This chapter is an excerpt from Dr. Christensen’s 1997 book “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail,” published by Harvard Business Press. His newer book, “The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators,” published in 2011 on Kindle, is a follow up to the ideas in the first book and those expressed in the Interaction-Design.org chapter.

Disruptive Innovation

The main idea of this chapter can be summed up by Donald A. Norman’s graph (see below). This is a graph of product performance over time — think of “product” is its most expansive form. When the product is first introduced into the market, it might not be “ready for prime time”, as we say — meaning that the product is:

• difficult to use,
• or too expensive,
• or replacing a well-established way of doing things,
• or has a high learning curve: even difficult to use products can have a shallow learning curve that allows small accomplishments right away by novice users,
• or requires a large ecosystem of other products and services that are not widely available: think electric cars and recharging stations — until there are more places to recharge the car, it’s not really an option for long-distance commutes.

Early adopters might be interested in acquiring such products anyway, but most users wait until the products reached a certain level development — “Transition point where technology delivers basic needs.” And that happens when performance of the product has overcome resistance due to market acceptance, became easy-enough to operate for an average potential user, the price has dropped into an market-acceptable range, and the word has spread, so to speak.

Figure 17.1: The needs-satisfaction curve of a technology. New technologies start out at the bottom left of the curve: delivering less than the customers require. As a result, customers demand better technology and more features, regardless of the cost or inconvenience. A transition occurs when the technology can now satisfy the basic needs. Figure 2.2 of Norman (1998), modified from Christensen (1997). Copyright: Donald A. Norman. All Rights Reserved. See "Exceptions" on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available

Clayton M. Christensen provides many examples of technologies that have surfed this technology needs-satisfaction curve, some successfully and some not. And these examples are some of the most interesting ideas presented in this chapter. It’s worth the read and I won’t repeat them here. But will present a few other examples and ideas that I thought we missing from this chapter on Disruptive Innovation. So here it goes!

Branding

Most of the time when a new product hits the market, it battles the existing brand:

• Apple II went against IBM PC, Commodore 64, and other personal computers [read more on Wikipedia]
• iPhone matched up to Motorola, Noika, Samsung, etc. [more on Wikipedia]
• Honda raced with Ford, Volkswagen, GM, and the likes [check out the cool graph of the industry on Wikipedia]
• King Kullen Supermarket went head to head with Safeway and Kroger [who's King Kullen? read the history of supermarkets on Wikipedia]
• Nickon versus Kodak? [read more]

There are countless examples and the Chapter by Dr. Christensen provides plenty. But when do big, established brands tend to win? Aside from the graph above, there are several circumstances when the odds are in favor of known brands:

• When the desired product is very expensive, regardless of the brand, the users gravitate towards the brands they’ve heard of before. In the markets listed above, the automobile is an example — people simply don’t buy a car whose brand they’ve never heard of. Part of the decision rests on the reasoning: “I heard of the brand; the company must have been around for a while; my friends have bought the same brand; I can find the manufacturer if something goes wrong (I won’t be stuck with a lemon from an unknown producer.).” These are important considerations that outweigh slight price discounts and better performance. So to break into an expensive market, the company and the product have to be around and make themselves known to their users. Good marketing can help here.
• When the quality of the product is very difficult judge, the users again tend to pick the brand that they are familiar with. The classic example is diamond sales. Can an average consumer tell a fake from the real thing? Probably not. So when the user goes with a brand name, what they are doing is buying insurance (similar but slightly different from the case above) — De Beers is probably selling the real deal.
• When the quality of the product is culturally determined, the buyers get the leading brand. Think fashion here — for the same quality and even cut, people are willing to pay much much more for the “right” label. To break into the world of fashion, the unknown designer has to invest into marketing in addition to developing a great product. The story is similar in the art world — we pay more for the right signature.
• When the user has too much too loose, the choice is the leading brand. Diagnosed with an unusual deadly disease? You will spend the time, money, and social capital to see the best doctor in that field. Got arrested on suspicion of murder? Wouldn’t it be great to get the best attorney — worked for O.J. Fear drives the product choice when the stakes are high.
• When the choice is just not worth the cognitive energy, users choose the leading brand. Light bulbs? G.E. Salt? Little girl under the umbrella. Why spend the energy to look for something better when the good old known and familiar brand worked all those years? And was cheap too. To break into this market space, the products have to be more compelling — the light bulbs that last forever (or almost), the salt that a great chef used (you want to impress that girl). It’s hard to go against the leading brand when it is familiar and cheap.

If you compare the list above to Dr. Norman’s chart, you can see that except for the last example, consumers are willing to pay more in some circumstances. So the chart doesn’t work for products that are culturally/artistically driven, that require too much education to make the right choice, when the wrong choice produces unacceptable risks, when there’s a lack of a long term relationship combined with high price. These are the circumstances that require a different approach to disruptive technology rollout.

To learn more about branding, I would recommend a book by Marty Neumeier: Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands

Product Ecosystem

Sometimes the disruption requires the right set of circumstances — the right ecosystem. Nothing exists in isolation. In the example of electric car, recharging stations have to be built in order for this disruptive technology to take off. In the case of combustion engine cars, roads had to be built — and they were as part of the giant infrastructure expansion after WWII.

Intel’s MMX

So here’s a personal story of disruptive technology and ecosystem. In the early ’90s, my partner and I developed a cool product for kids: Shroom World (not the best name, but we never had an opportunity to correct that). The idea was to run full-on animation on low-end machines that were available in the elementary school classrooms at the time by deploying a hybrid system: part Internet-driven and part off the CD-Rom. And the advantage was security for the kids — no way to “get out” of the kid-friendly universe we had created. We had a very spiffy presentation and Intel was interested. We were invited to present our idea to Ms. Mona Mameesh, a Strategic Marketing Manager at the time. I should mention that Intel was peddling MMX technology — a cool new graphic chip. So here we were, telling the story of how the old puny computers in the classroom could run our software, while Ms. Mameesh was interested in selling the expensive new chip. Needless to say, our idea was a no go — it couldn’t sell their new technology and Intel wasn’t particularly interested in providing cheap educational solutions for elementary schools.

Intel was trying to develop an ecosystem for its product — the more cool 3D rotating hi-wiz games they could invest in, the more reasons consumers would have to upgrade their computers. Intel was giving money to developers, but only to the right kind of developers — the ones that helped it advance its marketing goals. The ecosystem thing.

Paxil in Japan

And here’s another story: Japan and serotonin reuptake inhibitor technology. Selling antidepressants is a billion-dollar industry in U.S. GalxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, saw an opportunity to open up a new market — Japan, with its 30,000 a year suicide rate! Why wouldn’t those people want the happy drug?

The problem with Japan was that it had no psychiatric ecosystem needed to sell the drug. Historically and culturally, Japan addressed the issue of metal health differently from the West. Depression was not considered a disease that was easily cured with a drug. Rather people diagnosed with depression spend over a year typically in a hospital. The Japanese media had a different take on suicide and depression — there was both an honor and dishonor associated with the disease. And there were simply no doctors to prescribe Paxil — Japan had practically no psychiatrists and virtually no research was done in this area.

To open up this market, GalxoSmithKline had to change that — it had to build a robust ecosystem to support the sales of antidepressants. It donated money for scholarships to doctors who would specialize in psychiatry; it gave money to psychological research; it supported media (writers, actors, journalists, etc.) who talked about the issues related to depression; it gave away a ton of samples; and it paid for lavish multi-national conventions (first class all the way!).

Paxil was rolled out to full cultural acceptance in 1999. In 2007, 33,093 individuals committed suicide in Japan — the second highest annual tally on record. GalxoSmithKline made a ton of money.

To learn more about Paxil in Japan and other disruptive health stories, please read Ethan Watters’ 2010 book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche Free Press. ISBN-13: 978-141658708

Eating Out in Time

Dr. Christensen gives an example of McDonald’s:

The fast food industry has been a hybrid disruptor, making it so inexpensive and convenient to eat out that they created a massive wave of growth in the “eating out” industry. Their earliest victims were “mom-and-pop” diners. In the last decade the advent of food courts has taken fast food up-market. Expensive, romantic high-end restaurants still thrive at the high end, of course.

But unfortunately, that’s not the whole story. Fastfood restaurants rose about the same time as the highway system (please follow the Wikipedia link above). People started to go on driving vacations and needed comfortable places to eat — clean bathrooms, set quality, familiar food. No matter where in U.S. — and now the world — you are, you know that a big mac will be the same big mac you’ve tasted at home, it will be served the same way, it will cost the same. McDonald’s allowed the users to keep their expectations of food and restaurant experience. The familiar comforts away from home drove the disruptive technology of fastfood restaurants as much as the reasons Dr. Christensen gives above.

Setting expectations is one of the many tools we, the product designers, have in our cognitive scaffolding toolset. McDonald’s succeeded through the standardization of food experience in the age of easy travel.

But here’s another example: eating at home used to be a luxury reserved for the very rich in Ancient Rome. Why? Because kitchens were luxury items most couldn’t afford. The tiny rooms, with low ceilings were a fire hazard in an open flame cooking environment. And so people ate out. As technology improved, the social status of eating in and eating out flipped.

Oil and Gold

Fracking and smashing — what do these have in common? The price of the final product extracted, oil and gold respectively, is now high enough that these disruptive technologies make sense.

One of the first automobiles models was electric! Why did this disruptive technology didn’t take off? It was cheaper to use petroleum-based fuel. It is only now, when the prices of oil have risen high and our awareness of environmental impact of fumes have also risen high, that we are looking at electric cars again. 100 years to make the disruption!

So enjoy this very interesting chapter on Disruptive Innovation!

Noel Dickover — Senior New Media Advisor, Office of eDeplomacy, U.S. Department of State — introduced Speed Geeking and ran the event with an iron fist!

FrontlineSMS

Demoed by Sean Martin McDonald, Director of Operations
http://www.frontlinesms.com

Main Point: SMS is cheap data that is easy to structure and moves over cell networks (without Internet)

Yahoo

Demoed by Gil Yehuda, Director of Open Source Product Management at Yahoo!
Gil talk about the use of Flickr for journalism, human rights, and keeping people safe. He raised the issue of copyright.

KIVA

Demoed by Beth Kuenstler, VP of Marketing & Communications
If you haven’t heard of KIVA yet, it’s time. They are in the forefront of micro lending industry — linking regular people around the world: lenders to entrepreneurs. Check them out:
http://www.kiva.org

MapBox

Demoed by Eric Gundersen
This is a for-profit company in Washington DC. It’s the first custom maps generator — on the fly composites of real-time citizen generated updates.

http://www.mapbox.com

Nexleaf Analytics

Demoed by Nithya Ramanathan
This is low cost sensing technologies: $30 per wood/coal/liquid fuel burning stove. The idea is to monitor in-door pollution. But it seems like the price is a bit high for the population they are going after…
http://nexleaf.org/

MedicMobile

Demoed by Josh Nesbit
This is a non-profit venture, located right here in San Francisco. The day after the presentation, SFGate.com came out with an article about them:

Tech firms offer solutions in developing countries

Main idea is to use mobile phones in rural villages to deliver healthcare — give access to medical care. They are using SMS — programing the sim cards for medical use. The most interesting thing about them is that they are using parallel sim cards: two cards in one slot! Not parallel, dual sim card cell phones, but sim cards one on top of the other. This is pretty cool!
http://medicmobile.org/

esri

Demoed by Carmelle J. Terborgh, Team Lead for the Federal/Global Affairs
and by Bronwyn Agrios
esri is about geo information systems — simple map-making and data sharing technologies. They are for-profit. The application works on the iPad. There was an educational presentation on the coral reefs. Carmelle showed how by layering information on the map, they were able to expose logging data with overlapping protected gorilla habitats. This allows the local government to act. Simple data manipulation visually exposes relationships hidden in tables and reports.
http://www.esri.com

iisd: International Institute for Sustainable Development

Demoed by Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI, Director of Information Services
This is a sustainable development group out of Canada: “provides a variety of multimedia informational resources for environment and sustainable development policymakers, including daily coverage of international negotiations, analyses and photos.”
http://www.iisd.ca

SoukTel

Demoed by Jacob Korenblum, President
This is a for-profit group. Their mission is to link unemployed youth with jobs. They use mobile phones SMS. They developed a service for job seekers to post qualifications. The employees search the database to find perspective hires. When I asked about privacy and security, Jacob said that they keep the names of anonymous and hide contact information.
http://www.souktel.com

NetHope

Demoed by Tina Lee, Associate Director of Strategic Relationships
NetHope is a hub for NGOs. It’s used to identify problems using technology. They provide the means to share capacities, share services, communicate needs. They are enablers — they can deploy, but usually pass on the information and infrastructure to the group on the ground.
http://nethope.org/

SamaSource

Demoed by Martin Anderson, VP of Engineering
They create batches of “jobs” that they pass on to workers in Kenya, who are having trouble finding a job. They are digital yentas — uniting work with workers. The people get money and reputation. They also provide training and education. They are non-profit.
http://SamaSource.org/

Ushahidi

Demoed by Heather Leson.
Ushahidi is a non-profit from Kenya. They provide technology — an open source platform — for fast, geo-temporal tagging. If you don’t know about them yet, go check them out.
http://www.ushahidi.com

Solar Sister

Demoed by Kathrine Lucey, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Solar Sister is a business opportunity for rural villages without regular electrical power. They sell solar-powered lamps to local women, who then turn around and sell them inside their communities. One of the interesting comments made at USRio+2.0 was the power of light to reduce population: light at night allows women (and men) to do other things like cooking, sewing, reading. Sex is not the only game in town. Even in US, when there’s a massive power outage, all the hospitals prepare for the baby boom 9 month later. Imagine if it was a continuous power outage? Definitely a worthy cause! And it supports economic development in the community, by not only providing merchandize to sell but by allowing women to work after sun set (6 p.m. in equatorial regions year-round).
http://solarsister.org/

Development Gateway

Riccardo de Marchi Trevisan, Product Manager
“Development Gateway is a non-profit organization that delivers information solutions to the people on the front lines of international development work.”

http://www.developmentgateway.org

Open Mind — QuestionBox

Rose Sarita Shuman, Founder
Low-tech solution to providing information in areas of high illiteracy.

http://www.QuestionBox.org

gef: Global Environmental Facility

Gustavo A.B. da Fonseca, Head of Natural Resources
“The Global Environment Facility (GEF) unites 182 member governments — in partnership with international institutions, civil society organizations (CSOs), and the private sector — to address global environmental issues.
An independent financial organization, the GEF provides grants to developing countries and countries with economies in transition for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants. These projects benefit the global environment, linking local, national, and global environmental challenges and promoting sustainable livelihoods.”
http://www.TheGEF.org

Mountain Hazelhut Venture Limited

Presented by Daniel K. Spitzer, Chairman & CEO
and
Teresa G. Law, Chief Financial Officer (and founder)
The idea here is to grow hazelnut trees in Bhutan for economic development. They are using cell phones to track each tree’s progress with photos and data. This translates into a lot of data collection on the ground. There’s an opportunity for partnership with an organization that is interested in data from Bhutan: medical? civil? other?
http://www.mountainhazelnutventure.com/HOME.html

World Resources Institute

Nigel Sizer, Director of Global Forest Initiative and Deputy Director of People and Ecosystems
“The World Resources Institute is a global environmental think tank that goes beyond research to put ideas into action. WRI spurs progress by providing practical strategies for change and effective tools to implement them.”
http://www.wri.org

There were other groups presenting, but these were the only ones I got to meet personally during the Speed Geeking session at US Rio+2.0. To read my other notes on this event please click here.

On the closing note, Michael Jones, Chief Technology Advocate for Google, delivered a great Closing Keynote address. You can watch all of the presentations at the US Rio +2.0 site. I leave you with the last slide:

US Rio+2.0
Breakout Session
Education: Environment and Conservation

Attendees:

Prof. Anthony D. Barnosky: Professor and Curator, Department of Integrative Biology at University of California Berkeley

Wali Modaqiq: Deputy Director General (DDG), National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Dr. Khalid Naseemi: Chief of Staff & Spokes Person for National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Julie Noblitt: The Green Ninja — Climate-action Superhero

Prof. Robert Siegel, M.D., Ph.D.: Associate Professor, Microbiology & Immunology Human Biology/African Studies at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences

Dr. Beth Stevens: Senior Vice President, Corporate Citizenship Environment and Conservation at Disney Worldwide Services, Inc.

Madam Anyaa Vohiri, M.A., J.D.: Executive Director, Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia

Olga Werby, Ed.D.: President, Pipsqueak Productions, LLC.

Mostapha Zaher: Director General (DG), National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Our breakout group was partly the result of the conversation started the day before in the Environment session. Some of the members of our breakout group were present in that session as well. The main discussion the day before focused on the need for eduction: we have to give the people the reason to support the drive for conservation of environment. There are a lot misconceptions and mythology surrounding environmental science. Big media (movies, TV, etc.) has not done enough to change pre-conceived notions, and we can work with them to advance the cause of environmental education.

Saturday breakout session picked up the conversation from the day before.

Here are some of the themes that came up again and again:

1. Community Focused Education

Environmental education can’t be always directed top down–teacher to student; government agency to community. 

In the schools, we have to start early: elementary age students. 

Since parents often volunteer at the schools and classrooms of their young children, early grades provide a unique opportunity not only to teach the students, but also the parents. As parents help their children at school, they are getting “second-hand” education. In some communities (San Francisco as well as rural Afghanistan), parents never received formal science education. By teaching environmental science and conservation to young children, we also have an incredible opportunity to teach and engage adults.

So we want to develop curriculum that is teacher-focused, student-focused, AND parent-focused. We want to move information from kids to the broader communities in which they live. 

2. Culturally Appropriate Curriculum

There are subject areas which are deemed politically and religiously controversial. Sex education, family planning, even history education pose problems in some communities. In particular, rural villages in Afghanistan would have problems teaching some of these topics. So all educational materials have to take into account cultural differences and preferences in order to be adapted into the educational systems and to be supported by the local communities.

Madam Vohiri talked about the need to connect with the community, with people in the villages. She wanted education that would change the local perceptions.

Mostapha Zaher talked about Afghanistan being an agrarian society, with deep connection to the land and the environment. He pointed out that Afghanistan has 700 years of history. And materials created need to be respectful of that history and that culture. 

Fortunately, environmental education is one of the subject areas that fits in well with both religious and historical needs — protecting the environment is not a controversial subject.

Professor Siegel pointed out that we have to be careful when we talk about embedding cultural practices into environmental education. What worked to protect the environment 100 years ago is not working today. The population is much greater. The rate of pollution and the pollutants themselves have changed. Professor Siegel told an apocryphal story:

“He and a group of scientists trekked into the deep tropical forests of Papua New Guinea. After sharing a feast with local population, the scientist tried to collect their garbage (plastic wrappers and such) to take it out of the jungle and dispose of them appropriately. The local people insisted on dealing with garbage themselves. They took the wrappers, wadded them up, and through them as far as possible into the forest.”

The moral of the story: what worked for small groups and bio rubbish, doesn’t work for large populations and modern garbage. It is dangerous to fall back on methods that local communities were resorting to protect their environment in the past. We have to teach new ways of thinking about conservation and the environment.

Mostapha Zaher described a few problems that he is facing in Afghanistan. Most of the agricultural land has been contaminated with land mines and is currently unavailable for planting. The small percentage of agricultural land that can be cultivated has to produce a high-cash crop in order to feed the local community. Thus puppy crop is popular. While Mr. Zaher doesn’t believe that the local Afghani population has a drug problem, he sees the problem that opium export causes other communities.

The other problem Mr. Zaher mentioned was poaching. In particular, he talked about the skins of snow leopards fetching as high as $2,000,000 each on the black market.

The moneys from poaching and drug trade is being used to support terrorism.

As a group, we discussed affordances — you can’t push to stop poaching and opium production without providing other means for the local population to feed their families.

In Afghanistan, the government is very serious about environmental education. The government produces TV spots on conservation; writes in dailies, weeklies, and monthly publications; and the president personally gives a televised address twice a month to the whole country about the need for environmental conservation.

Mr. Zaher pointed out that his agency, National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), has been able to accomplish in 5 years what took other countries 10 or even 15 years.

Afghanistan hopes to reduce the post war violence through education.

Most important point: public environmental education has to reconnect to local traditions and culture.

3. Use of Technology for Education

Both Mr. Zaher and Professor Barnosky brought up mobile phones as a tool to deliver education.

There are 26.7 million people in Afghanistan, there are 17 million cell phones. Most of the population 12 years and older has a cell phone. Afghanistan has almost no infrastructure for land line phones–it has leapfrogged directly into mobile technology.

An example of Bhutan — the cell phone reception in most of that country is better than around Stanford! But…a person might need to walk 2 days to get his phone charged.

Overall, everyone agreed that cell phones as a technology to deliver curriculum is an important tool for advancement of environmental education.

4. Curriculum Content Ideas and Examples

Julie Noblitt is developing a set of materials based on The Green Ninja — a superhero who saves the environment through conservation. Some of the materials can be seen at www.greenninja.com

Ms. Noblitt talked about the importance of good stories — stories are memorable and trigger emotional memories as well providing moral underpinnings to the environmental science. She pointed out the need to move from curriculum to behavioral change. Compelling storytelling is one way of doing that and The Green Ninja is an example.

Dr. Stevens raised the issue of effectiveness: how do we measure the effectiveness of a particular environmental education curriculum?

We discussed gaming as an educational tool. Mr. Mostapha Zaher told us that gaming is not what the youth of Afghanistan spend their cell phone time on. The “game” in his country is dating — the use of cell phones to find a suitable marriage partner. Again, we got back to the idea that all curriculum materials have to be culturally viable.

Prof. Siegel mentioned iNaturalist. This is a project that allows anyone to take a cell phone photo of a natural object and send it up to a “cloud”. The phone tags the geo-location of the object. The iNaturalist participants from all over the world help identify and name the object in the photo. 

iNaturalist allows kids to do real science — the focus is on “authentic” activities. We want to equip kids with the tools to do science — to discover ideas through exploration: don’t teach evolution — make the discovery of evolution inevitable by giving the community tools to assess data.

I brought up the Cost of Chicken project. The project is ran by high school students in San Francisco. They are using Ushahidi platform to collect geo-temporal data on the true costs of food: the price, quality, place of sale, place of origin, etc. Some food is expensive, some is sourced from far away countries. Kids discover the ecological consequences of their family food choices by collecting the data themselves. India, Greece, Russia are some of the countries where kids are participating by collecting data points.

Here are the URLS:

http://costofchicken.com
https://costofchicken.crowdmap.com/

(Note: the kids that started this project are my sons, Tim and Nick Werby)

I also mentioned Supermarket Science — a project we, Pipsqueak Productions, ran in a local elementary schools in San Francisco. The idea was to use parents as volunteers and local resources to teach hands-on science. As an additional benefit, immigrant parents were learning about the scientific method along side their children.

Roots of Peace was an organization I’ve brought up to the delegation from Afghanistan. Heidi Kuhn is a local social entrepreneur from Marin County. She works with kids to raise money and to help remove land mines in Afghanistan. She helps local communities plant grape wines. Heidi gives economic and educational opportunities to local communities and links them to communities back here at home. Her organization can be found at http://www.rootsofpeace.org.

5. Conclusion

While we covered a lot of ground in 45 minutes, there’s still a lot of work to do. Environmental education has to be culturally specific and focus on the needs of the population which it targets. There are small and large projects. Some can be launched right away, some take time. Some are already in progress: The Green Ninja and the Cost of Chicken. With a little support and ingenuity, we can get a lot accomplished before Rio +20.

Notice how she is able to quickly identify a Nike logo. And Disney’s D. And what’s really amazing is that she knows what a logo is in the first place! This little kid has developed a brand p-prim! And she has a well-developed comprehension of visual symbols.

I wonder how the same interview would play out in a different culture…

It’s impossible to accommodate everyone. A chair that is the most comfortable sitting for one person might not work for another at all (some people are short, some are tall, some are wide, some are narrow, some have back problems…). And even a beloved chair only works for in some situations for some particular time in our lives — the rocking chair that we used to read to our kids when they were little…

I talk about a chair because we can all relate: my “homework” chair, my “lucky” stool, my “lazy afternoon” stoop, my “theater” lounge, my “reading” nook, my “power” throne… It’s easy to see how my reading nook would be different from your reading divan or surfing seat. I can come up with compensations: I can add pillows or use the little knobs to adjust the hight. But the more things I have to do to make the sitting arrangement more comfortable, the less likely I’m to do so. There’s an interesting study that shows the results of office chair inspections — most individuals use the factory settings! And the more knobs and adjustment buttons there are on the chairs, the less likely they are to be used. We seem to just know when we like something or when we are comfortable. I know people who devoted a life-time to finding just that special reading chair — the quest is part of the experience.

So when I hear from clients the talk of “we want to be everything for every user”, I get a bit discouraged. I try to let them imagine a chair from hell — buttons, levers, pulls, knobs, straps, velcro, additional covers and cushions, wheels and locks, levels and indicators, monitors and readouts, remote controls and environmental adjustments, computer assists and internet support, limited life time warranties and customer relations databases… The wider the imagined audience, the more accommodations have to built-in and the more complex set of compensations the users have to learn how to navigate. And each user has a particular goal for the chair, particular use that they are thinking about…

I want to design great products, for the narrow band of users, who really want to use the features I’m developing. I want my design to fit the goals of the users for this product. Sure, some of my products might get wildly popular. But the more people will use them, the less perfect my product will be. So ultimately, product design is a careful balance between a super wide user group and one that is carefully targeted. Somewhere in the middle there, there’s just the right set of individuals — enough users to make the product profitable, but not so wide that the feeling of custom tailoring is completely gone. Accommodation versus compensation… a product design waltz.

In the past, when we googled something, we got results based on the relevance to our query. This relevance had little to do with us personally and focused on the topic of interest. Google results to a politically polarized question looked the same whether one was a democrat or a republican:

It didn’t matter that democrats tended to socialize with like-minded individuals — meaning other democrats. And republicans preferred other republicans, creating segregated social circles. In each such circle, people met, talked, and reinforced each other’s beliefs. BUT the Google results were the SAME for each group, regardless of what politics or religion they practiced.

All this is changed with the introduction of Google + data into the search results.

Now the search results will be different depending on who your friends are! The results are no longer unbiased, but heavily favored towards what you already believe in and who your friends are and what they believe in.

While some might find this reassuring — it’s great when the world agrees with you — I’m extremely concerned. I want the truth, irrespective of what I personally believe in or want to believe in. Truth independent of the observer.

Sometimes, emotions are just the right thing to focus on — to pay attention to. How does this painting makes me feel? Do I like this person? This music feels good… But if you are taking a math test, focusing on how much you really hate test-taking takes away from your ability to take the test. It is very common for individuals to “get” the subject matter, but fail the test. Some people are good at dealing with anxieties and some have trouble controlling their attention controls away from fretting. That’s one of the reason some educators are talking about doing away with summative assessments (final exams) in favor of continuous assessment (assessment as part of learning) — the on-going observation of students’ work tell us more about what they really know and what they are capable of than performance on one massive test.

But what if you had to function during stress? (Think nuclear power plant accident.) What if anxiety was part of the job? (Think repainting the Golden Gate Bridge or directing air traffic.) Or what if you simply had more trouble controlling paying attention to emotions (perhaps because your personally was more emotion-oriented)? How can we as designers accommodate a more restricted working memory as a result of emotional processing?

Emotional Scaffolding

Just like cognitive scaffolding is used to assist product use by providing contextual actions, for example, emotional scaffolding can support individuals and improve performance by providing emotional support. Many product designers use humor as a way to relieve tension and free up working memory from the grasp of anxiety. Humor is a legitimate emotional scaffold. There are others.

Color and Lighting. Interior designers, architects, and fashion designers know how to use color and lighting to effectively create the desired mood. Dramatic lighting can focus attention on a particular object (like a painting). Lights can signal emergency (red flashes). Bright colors can lift emotions and make people feel better despite somber circumstances.

Consider this little example of color use in hospitals and doctors’ offices. There was a time when doctors and nurses wore white — color meant to signify cleanliness and sterile conditions. But patients quickly learned to associate white with anxiety. Babies cried when people dressed in white walked into the room! White equaled pain! So now nurses rotate the colors and patterns they wear — Disney characters on bright backgrounds replaced starched white uniforms. Kids no longer could learn the Pavlovian Response of white = pain. The anxiety level was reduced for patients. Lower patient anxiety and stress meant medical personnel didn’t have to deal with emotional outbursts as much during treatment. More working memory all around of important tasks like saving lives and following prescriptions.

Music and Sound. Just as color and light set the mood, so do music and sound create an emotional atmosphere. In the movies, music signals the emotions we should be feeling in advance of the unfolding story. In effect, music sets expectations for the audience of the experience they are about to have. Play any scene without music, and the loss of information is very profound.

And it’s not just music. Think of the sound the dentist drill makes. Feeling anxious? Just this buzzing sound can reduce our cognitive capacity. No wonder that sound can be used as a torture weapon. But sound can also act as an emotional scaffold. White noise is commonly used to reduce environmental distractions. The sound of a heart beat helps calm babies and lulls them to sleep.

Surprise. A strong emotional reaction can aide memory. Storytellers (movie-makers, song writers, authors) use surprise to make a plot point more memorable. You walk into a museum, turn a corner, and a giant T-rex fills your view. You jump. You laugh. You will remember the visit and the experience of wandering through this exhibit almost in direct proportion to how high your heart rate went up at the sight of the ancient bones. Surprise is emotional. It trigers the amygdala, which in turn makes a strong emotional memory of the event. Want to make something stick with your user group? Surprise them.

Pre-visualization. What makes most people anxious is the unknown. By setting user expectations, designers can ease this anxiety and again free up space in working memory for the task at hand.

So here’s to using emotional scaffolds to help our users!

Affective Computing, I feel, is only recently became part of the “vocabulary” of computer-based developers. When I first started working in this field, graphics were non-existent, thus Pong.
In the early nineties, my business partner and I met with the president of Organic, a web design firm in San Francisco, who promptly informed us that his business had no need for Interaction or Interface Designers, that’s what graphic artists were for. Now, psychologists, sociologists, and sociologists are routinely hired by creative firms to help solve design problems. Times change!

There are a lot of posts on emotional design on this blog:

• Creativity, Perception, and Public Art
• Using Positive Emotion to Change Behavior
• Design for Emotion, for Empowerment
• Intel i5 Core Commercial: When a company just doesn’t get it
• Rewired Brain
• Cultural Differences from the 4th Dimension: Time
• Fun, Functionality, Flow: the 3 F’s of Product Design
• Media and Fun
• Creative Use of Media to Advance a Message
• Lost in Translation: Cultural Differences in Advertising
• The Haptic Feel of Books versus eBooks
• Good Idea, Bad Idea
• Empathy on the Brain
• Demonstration of Wealth
• Evolutionary Theory of Beauty
• Entropy & Design
• Knowledge, Context, and Expectation Part II
• Knowledge, Context, and Expectation Part I
• Cultural Difference: Kids Stories
• Trolls, Dolls, and Poupees
• Thinking About Value
• Toilet Games
• Emotional Design — Because Products Should Be Fun!
• ICT & Human Rights: A Round Table Discussion at IADIS 2011 Conference
• TSA: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
• e-Waste & Product Design
• Branding & Emotional Design: The Culture of Sneakers
• Emotional Design

This is a very diverse list with an emphasis on product design — more general than Affective Computing. My main focus when I discuss emotion in design is that it is always there, whether by design or by accident. We, creatures of evolution, have always used emotion to guide judgement. Amygdala’s response time is far faster than any reasoning process. Thus we tend to make an emotional judgement first and than try to reason out why we made a particular decision with logic. Emotion comes first, be it on a computing device or on a playground or choosing the next car we’ll drive: emotion over reason every time.

And as product designers, we have to pay close attention to the working memory limitations — there’s only so much to go around. Emotional thinking takes up working memory just as much as logical thinking. When we talk about why students do worse during test environments (as opposed to less stressful occasions), we are really talking about the diminishment of working memory for problem solving by using it for stress: “I’m so worried about his exam…my stomach hurts and my hands are wet…what was that problem again?”

When we do user testing for critical applications, we have to test in stressful, emergency environments as well as calm easy going scenarios. Nuclear emergency is very different from buying coffee — a worker trying to find an exit sign when the world is flashing red might not get out in time, might not figure the door affordances, might get stymied by the door handle.

Recently, Siri — the AI voice on iPhone 4 — has been demonstrating the importance of getting the emotional tone right for the computing device. For us, Siri is low-voiced female. For the French, it is a male guide. Cultural differences matter to emotional tone.

The focus on affective computing is not new. But the explosion of research and desire to find the right solution for the right product has grown in the last few years.

Interaction-Design.org put together a nice introduction to Affective Computing. Below is an introductory video from that chapter. Enjoy!

How did we get here? This is a very complicated question, but it might help to examine how things use to be. Below are medications as they were packaged and sold all over America in the previous century.

Bottle of Heroin (1890-1910) by Bayer, sold as a non-addictive substitute for morphine

Cocaine Drops for children with toothaches

Cocaine Tablets (1900) was given to actors, singers, teachers, and preachers for "smooth" voice and maximum performance

Coco wine was recommended for mood elevation

Maltine Coca Wine manufactures, produced in New York, recommended a full glass with every meal (half a glass for kids)

Mariani Cocaine Wine (1875) endorsed by Pope Leo XIII who awarded it a Vatican Gold Medal

Opium solution for newborns suspended in 46% alcohol

Opium treatment for Asthma

Paperweight "Swag" for a German factory producing Quinine and Cocaine