Psychology/Humans
Muji Chronotebook is a new dayplanner that uses an analog “clock” metaphor, with each page arranged around a circular center. The left page is AM and the right page is PM.
So, my first reaction was really positive. We desperately need more design that grounds our daily experience in the physical, and this appears to be beautifully expressive of circadian rhythms and the subjective experience of time, but…
… is it really so natural? Looking at the layout, I feel pretty uncomfortable. Sure, our experience of a sequence of days is cyclical, but I think our experience of the flow of a single day is much more linear.
I also wonder about writing around a circle. Maybe this works better for character-based languages, but it seems awkward for, say, english.
(Please note that I haven’t actually used the thing. Maybe it’s awesome ;)
In Scottsdale / Phoenix this week. This area is 20% beautiful and 80% ugly. The beautiful parts (red rocks, cactii, big sky) are just lovely, but the ugly parts more than make up for it in the brutal inhumanity of their aggressive greed. Capitalist geography at its most misanthropic.
Anyhow, I was wandering around in a bit of the 20% (specifically, the Desert Botanical Garden) when two Japanese tourists approached me with the universal sign for “please take our picture” (i.e. holding a camera out and gesturing at the panorama behind them). I happily obliged and only realized after snapping the pic and wandering off that only one of them had posed. So, what I’m still wondering 12 hours later in my hotel room is: why didn’t she ask her friend to take her picture? Is her friend a pathologically bad photographer? Or is it somehow that having your picture taken (i.e. by someone not of your party) is more important than the photo itself? Anyone have an idea?
This list of atrributes shared by all known human cultures is fascinating (tickling, hair styles), though I find myself not quite believing all of them are truly universal (males dominate public/political realm). (via)
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Fcuknig amzanig huh? (via taylor)
Update: Here’s an explanation of how this works as well as a debunking of some of the inaccuracies:
I’ve written this page, to try to explain the science behind this meme. There are elements of truth in this, but also some things which scientists studying the psychology of language (psycholinguists) know to be incorrect. I’m going to break down the meme, one line at a time to illustrate these points, pointing out what I think is the relevant research on the role of letter order on reading.
I just had an interesting online experience. I wanted to sell my old digital camera. First I listed it on craigslist, which is essentially a glorified newspaper classified. Multiple people expressed interest and arranged to come see the camera but then never showed up, thereby wasting a fair amount of my time. Finally I listed it on ebay. The up-front effort of wading through the (none-too-spectacular) ebay interface was a bit onerous, but then a magical thing happened: someone won the auction (for more than I had expected) and the exchange went smoothly, camera sold.
What I find noteworthy here is that, while interaction designers often talk about software enabling human interaction, in this case, the main benefit was that the software reduced the amount of human-human interaction. In many cases, I’d rather deal with a machine than a person, no matter what Clifford Nass says.
Modafinil is a new drug that lets you stay awake for 40 hours with no impairment. And allegedly “The next generation… will be more effective. You’ll be able to stay awake for X amount of time and not add sleep debt.”
Computer Human Values is a nice rant about Cliff Nass’ research (amazing stuff which demonstrates that people interact with computers astonishingly similarly to how they interact with other people—like saying nicer things about an application if they are in the same room as the computer on which they saw the application!)
I just learned there’s a whole baby sign language phenomenon. That’s cool!
An interesting paper, subtitled Knowledge Dynamics in Silicon Valley, explores why knowledge clusters (e.g. Silicon Valley) aren’t disappearing despite the rise of networking.
In my own work, I’ve definitely been getting the collaboration religion. The breakthroughs always seem to come when I’m talking to someone, whether it’s something they notice or just the act of describing the problem out loud. And that’s why I like to be around smart people.
Heh, I like the Windows International Word List. Now I know how to lament Amazon’s Scheda problem in Italian.
When thinking about usability, I believe there’s an important distinction between empirical usability (whatever that is) and perceived usability. Here’s an interesting CHI-Web post from Jared Spool on what determines perceived speed of a Web site (hint: it’s not load time).