Sorry to post two NYTimes.com articles back to back, but they happen to both be relevant to design.
This article describes how GE’s lack of product usability coupled with poor product instructional design, and flavored with a dash of incompetence on the part of the hospital technicians, has led to numerous cases of over-irradiation. It’s sad. And in my opinion, the primary fault lies with GE.
Normally, the more radiation a CT scan uses, the better the image. But amid concerns that patients are getting more radiation than necessary, the medical community has embraced the idea of using only enough to obtain an image sufficient for diagnosis.
To do that, GE offers a feature on its CT scanner that can automatically adjust the dose according to a patient’s size and body part. It is, a GE manual says, “a technical innovation that significantly reduces radiation dose.”
At Cedars-Sinai and Glendale Adventist, technicians used the automatic feature — rather than a fixed, predetermined radiation level — for their brain perfusion scans.
But a surprise awaited them: when used with certain machine settings that govern image clarity, the automatic feature did not reduce the dose — it raised it.
When a company designs and builds a medical instrument/equipment whose function poses an inherent medical risk, that company is responsible for ensuring that the use of the instrument/equipment has been usability tested. In other words, the company should run end-users of the instrument/equipent thought usability studies, in the context of work, in order to ensure that the instrument/equipment is indeed usable, and to evidence areas where the instrument/equipment might cause it’s end-users to error.
I wouldn’t be surprised if GE had neglected to test their gear before unleashing into the hands of ill-trained technicians, who then nuked the brains of unsuspecting and frantic stroke victims.
This kind of thing roils me. It’s like the combination of a Don Norman debate, and a Norman Bate’s moment.
This NYTimes.com article on the foundation of Italy’s economic woes. Many of them stem from the effects of globalization on the practice of bespoke manufacturing. The article shine a light on the fact that in this day and age, even the highest level of luxury and quality are trumped by efficiency.
This quote shines:
In the eternal contest between the meticulously honed and the nationally franchised, Italy knows where it stands. As a matter of profit and loss, it doesn’t make sense to store wool in a spa and let it convalesce for six months, but the methods of Luciano Barbera were never destined for a get-rich-quick guide to manufacturing. His business will make sense only to customers, and for them, quality has a logic of its own.
Inspired by this post from BLDGBLOG, I dug up some information on Friedrich Froebel, the founder of kindergarten. The first, and perhaps most relevant to design, is this snippet about Froebel from the Institute of Figuring:
Most of us today experienced kindergarten as a loose assortment of playful activities – a kind of preparatory ground for school proper. But in its original incarnation kindergarten was a formalized system that drew its inspiration from the science of crystallography. During its early years in the nineteenth century, kindergarten was based around a system of abstract exercises that aimed to instill in young children an understanding of the mathematically generated logic underlying the ebb and flow of creation. This revolutionary system was developed by the German scientist Friedrich Froebel whose vision of childhood education changed the course of our culture laying the grounds for modernist art, architecture and design. Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller are all documented attendees of kindergarten. Other “form-givers” of the modern era – including Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Braque – were educated in an environment permeated with Frobelian influence.
I’m ready to sign my daughter up at a kindergarten that practices it the old-school way.
To be completely serious, I love the idea of education via the observation, analysis, and creative interpretation of the mathematical aspects of our physical world. What better way than to teach both life’s most important subjects; mathematics and aesthetics. Your put the two together, and you get this quote.
I’ve been digging Jan Kallwejt’s work for a while now. Especially his maps. A selection of them below…
The last map in the list appeared in the July edition of the iPad Wired app. My buddy Remon redesigned the map to incorporate some incredible motion. I’d love to see motion design applied to pretty much all of Jan’s graphic design - their chunkiness, discreetness, and bold color just seem fit for it.
This inspiring post, from Antonio from Aisle One, got me thinking about the emerging relationship between people, their cameras, and the stories they tell. It boils down to this: as camera are integrated into nearly every mobile device worth using, and as those cameras increase in quality, two mega-trends will emerge:
› Everyone will become a photographer.
› The introduction of new camera/device technologies will allow people to express themselves via photography, in increasingly unique and innovative ways.
The first trend will occur when more people own smartphones with high-qulity cameras, who then take photos as part of a social activity. In other words, people won’t become photographers because they have a deep desire to improve upon the art and craft of photography. Instead, more people will take more photos because they have access to both a quality camera and photo-capable applications on their smartphone, and because they are excited to share.
After all, “sharing” is what the majority of people ultimately want to do with their photos. And smart cameraphones are uniquely positioned to make photo capture and sharing easier than dialing a telephone number. For example, in the time it takes me to write this sentence I could alternatively take a photo and share it with friends and family via my iPhone’s iChat or Facebook apps. My mother, who doesn’t own a regular camera, can just as easily do the same with her iPhone. I fully expect my infant daughter to be able to do the same (if I let her), within just a few years. Taking and sharing photos is made simple and easy on today’s best smart cameraphones.
Compare this with the burden and complication caused by cables, cords, software, and multiple items of hardware including the computer workstation or laptop, the point-and-shoot or weighty DSLR. The amount of dedication and commitment needed to share photos via the traditional, “non-cameraphone” mechanisms is, in comparison, a usability nightmare. In other words, the future of mass market photography is the smart cameraphone.
Now, the second trend is one that is a bit more elusive, and I’m only starting to see it emerge more recently. New apps like See This! from Boinx software and AutoStitch from CloudBurst Research are two examples of great photos apps that use the iPhone’s camera in conjunction with application logic to allow people to create expressive photo stories. Both apps require people to do a bit of set up in order to create something interesting, but the time invested in relatively small compared to the benefit of the end result.
For example, here’s a video clip that showcases the ease of use, and fun output of See This!
I for one look forward to more and better photo apps for smart cameraphones. There are so many interesting possibilities in this space. From harnessing geo-data, to leveraging the camera’s gyroscope, to embracing the benefits of multi-touch; there are many exciting directions. And the best part is that more and more people will be using these apps to create cool stuff as the march of the smart cameraphone continues.
Facebook attained 500 million active users recently. At the same time, according to this report (PDF), Facebook’s customer satisfaction ratings are incredibly low. The report claims claims that users are most vexed by Facebook’s confusing privacy settings, among other factors. Among those other factors, the one that stood out to me is the complaint that Facebook changes their interface design too frequently.
Reading this, a counter-intuitive thought dawned on me: could it be that while users don’t react immediately well to Facebook’s interface changes, the change in interface ultimately helps to ensure users return to the site?
For example, think back upon this last year - one of the major Facebook interface changes tweaked the newsfeed to make it more competitive in usability to Twitter. While users ranted, the move represented a direct competitive maneuver against the little bird.
More generally speaking, people naturally respond positively when the places they frequent strive to maintain their relevance and freshness. We see this in such cases as popular and trendy bars and restaurants. When they first open, mobs of people gather to be seen and mingle. But over the course of months or years (depending on the city), most locales loose their relevance. Thus, smart restaurant owners are in a constant state of flow establishing new locations while simultaneously closing down older, less relevant ones.
Drastic interface changes to web properties might help accomplish the same effect. By refreshing its interface, Facebook might demonstrate to it’s users that it maintains itself as a relevant and thriving source for social interaction.
Late last night my friend Marcos posted to Facebook that his latest project was ready for consumption. It’s called Flipboard, and it’s amazing. Congrats to Marcos, a former designer within Adobe XD, who decided to break out into the start-up world only a short while ago.
I’ve used Flipboard for a few hours now. To boil it down to its essence, Flipboard is and iPad app that transforms the flow of information from various sources more enjoyable via consistency, better typography, and motion based navigation.
For example, Flipboard makes Facebook simply better. It puts quotes around status updates, gives them a readable yet dynamic type treatment, and drops “quotes” around them. The effect makes the relatively mundane Facebook flow of information suddenly interesting, and meaningful. Facebook image galleries are far more viewable and engaging. Links take on a new life of their own.
I plan to pry Marcos with a bribe of a few beers in order to get an interview from him about the app. I can’t wait to understand his design process, and to better understand the ethos of the team. The bottom line is that Flipboard is one of the best executed iPad apps I’ve used to date.
On a recent vacation I downloaded a toy piano app to the iPad and gave it to my 10 month old daughter to play with. Her response was fascinating. For nearly only a minute to two, she hammered away at the screen, enjoying the stream of sounds and blinking keys (and animal heads jumping around in response). But after her first few moments, the wonder and discovery dissolved, and she moved on to much more interesting things. Like the backside of the iPad, the side with the embossed apple shape on it. Or to her thick paged books, the ones with bright colors and the occasional textured pages.
On the same trip I spent some time around our friends’ young boys. They were 7 and 9, and couldn’t get their faces out of their iPhones. Then, once back from the trip I noticed that the family we share a nanny with had given their 2 year old son an iPhone too. He was walking about, proud as a peacock with his new toy, his face again buried in it.
On the one hand, I’m excited for my daughter to embrace and learn from the inevitable iDevice in her future. On the other, I’m a bit freaked. Nearly every kid I see with one seems like they are crack-addicted to it. There are two issues at the root of my anxiety.
The first is that the flat, smooth touch screen is too simple. I fear a day when life’s modes of input are reduced to a swipe, a tap, and a voice automated command. Perhaps the fact that I can no longer write a long letter by hand due to my reliance on cut, copy and paste has helped to seed this dread.
My second issue is the time kids spend with their faces smashed up against the screen. I don’t have a link to an article or paper reinforcing the following statement, but there is some quality of human socializing that is altered or somewhat missing when our interactions are mediated by screens. I give it two years before facetime is the new good night kiss.
Perhaps I’m having an Andy Rooney moment. Or perhaps I’m right to be suspicious. In any case, I’m happy that my daughter is more content to play with and explore tactile objects at this time in her life, than she is drooling over a pixelated landscape.
Interested in having your fingers do the talking? iFontMaker, a collaboration between Tomonaga Tokuyama and Pentacom, allows you to draw your own fonts, and then convert it to a TTF file. The subsequent file can then be used within the Creative Suite. Smart.
What I like most about this concept is that it leverages touch to allow people to express themselves in a new and creative way. Before iFontMaker, there were a few attempts at making type design fun and intuitive. Yugo Nakamura’s Font Park and Type is Art’s Parts of a Character come to mind. But for the most part the craft, art, and science of font design is limited to the obsessive few typographers in the world.
I can’t wait for my daughter to create her first font face.
Ethan Eismann is an Experience Design Manager at Adobe Systems. This blog is about Flash, Flex, AIR, Flash Catalyst, RIAs, design management, and design writ large.
