More on brainstorming

MIT Building 20

Another piece, this time by Jonah Lehrer, that casts doubt on the effectiveness of brainstorms for idea generation. One of the points he misses, although he talks about the productive strengths of collocated interdisciplinary teams, is that brainstorms are often a microcosm of those teams, bringing together  people who work together, are comfortable with one another and share a set of goals, in many cases with clients or specialist outsiders who bring in new perspectives. (He cites a nice alternative analysis to the business and technology studies of team work that are usually quoted: sociologist, Brian Uzzi, found an increased likelihood of success for broadway musicals if they are created by teams who have worked successfully together before; with even greater chances of success if the team also includes the stimulus of new people.) So the point is not that brainstorms don't work, but that brainstorms as an isolated technique don't work.

Lehrer's article includes a lengthy description of Building 20 at MIT (pictured above), a legendarily uncomfortable but equally legendarily productive, temporary structure, that housed and serendipitously brought together a wide ranging group of scientists and technologists (including, incidentally, Noam Chomsky and Amar Bose). I work in a 1940s temporary structure (originally a prosthesis centre for injured WW2 airmen), with all that that entails for comfort, at least in Winter. I will keep Building 20 in mind.

Periodic table of visualisation techniques

Here. Lots of clever detail. Read more from its creators, Ralph Lengler and Martin Eppler, publishing in 2007, here.

[Via Jack Schofield from Visual literacy.org]

The impact of touch screen interaction

A little while ago Bill Wessel, of Foviance, blogged on how the iPhone and its successors had changed mobile interaction in a way that couldn't have been envisioned, as recently as 2006. The shift in expectation was brought home to me over the holiday as I tried using a basic Kindle, and found myself constantly wanting to interact directly with the display, and frustrated by the tedious process of navigating a keyboard using a cursor key and select option.

This video shows clever work by Jack Zylkin that turns the whole sequence of progress on its head, with an iPod driven by a typewriter.



[Foviance blog via Usability News; video via John Naughton]

Digital inequalities

John Naughton reports a NY Times article on wireless bandwidth consumption. Not surprisingly, 10% of users are consuming 90% of the bandwidth...and Finns consume 1 gigabyte of wireless data a month; 10 times the rest of Europe.

Graphic Medicine

From I am not these feet by Kaisa Leka

...not what you might think, but the use of comic techniques in health and healthcare communication. Ian Williams, Welsh GP and graphic artist, has a web site dedicated to this growing field and has written this article, describing its development.

[via Dentsu]

Designing for developing communities

Fastco debates the ethics of user research in developing communities, to help global companies target their products. The discussion is sparked by Jan Chipchase, once a researcher at Nokia, now at Frog, who has made a career of reaching otherwise unresearched locations and whom I suspect may have been in Don Norman's mind when he wrote critically of the relevance of user research 'you get to go to exotic locations, to watch people do intimate acts, and then to come back and tell the world what you have seen.'

I understand Norman's tetchniness; I understand Chipchase's critics who question the use of his research to create artificial need for global products; the communication of some global research projects has made me wonder 'for whose benefit' in the past. But the alternative of imposing unresearched products and services on developing communities seems even less acceptable. As Chipchase points out 'the poor can least afford poor products'. Fastco describes the development of the Firefly infant phototherapy unit, developed by Design That Matters for use in Vietnam, and I'm reminded of the incubator developed by Stanford's d.school, neither of which would have been developed in their current form without research in the context in which they are to be used.

John Naughton on email

Direct quote, 'Zuck says: email's end is nigh. I say: LOL'.

Precisely.

Sketching Apple's first icons

Steve Silberman writes about the sketch books of Susan Kare, who designed the first icons (and proportionally-spaced font) used in the Apple GUI. Silberman discusses how Kare sketched her ideas first on paper, there being no drawing programs available at that point. A nice reminder of how designers' working methods have changed with the development of digital tools.

[via Jason Kottke]

Long term impacts of cigarette pack design

Nature discusses Australia's policy on cigarette pack design and notes that the effects of the new packs are anticipated to take effect across generations. Smoking among Australian teenagers is now the lowest it has ever been, thought to be the consequence of a full ban on tobacco advertising in 1992, more than ten years ahead of the UK. The article points out how the resistance of the tobacco industry suggests the new pack design is likely to be an added deterrent to smoking (presumably there will be a new market for old-style cigarette cases for hardened smokers).