Extravagant claims for big data

Concise review by Tim Harford of the promise of big data and how it can go awry, citing inaccuracies that emerged in the celebrated Google Flu Trends, possibly because Google's own search engines may have been prompting searches, even when the searcher's own symptoms didn't suggest flu. According to an analysis in Science, in 2013 this led to an over-estimate that almost doubled the actual data on the incidence of flu. Harford also covers the problem of multiple comparisons which can yield patterns that, although significant, are spurious. While comparisons that fail to show effects remain in the desk drawer.

Related, but not quite: xkcd's 'little data' representation, Frequency.

Nominet UK's top 100 social technology enterprises

An eclectic list, presented idiosyncratically (the tiled layout, amongst other things, limits each entry to four classification categories; if tile size is of significance that beats me). But an interesting few moments' browsing. Charlie Leadbeater's description of the selection process provides some useful background.

Employee manual from heaven...

...according to Mark Barratt. Valve's manual does, indeed, achieve an imaginative (as you might expect) balance of information, inspiration, reassurance, humour and self-deprecation (passing over the section on T-shaped people). A new benchmarking standard.

[Image from BoingBoing]

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]

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.

The rhetoric of video presentations

John Pavlus, of Fast Company's design blog compares the utopian (dystopian) corporate video style of a recent Microsoft promotional video, Productivity Future Vision, with the innovator/craftsman style, usually showing clever bits of technology embedded in familiar, everyday life, adopted by Berg. Ouch.

On a different tack altogether, it's lovely to see this little piece of video nostalgia to promote a project to preserve Ludlow typecasting matrices.

iMuse launch

From yesterday's tea party at the Museum of English Rural Life, to launch iMuse, a collaboration between the museum and the charity AACT (Access Ability Communications Technology) to make museums accessible.

In the picture, an attendee is shown how to use QR codes to find out more about the museum's exhibits.

Visualising Kiva

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva on Vimeo.

Even if the music's a little clunky, the story's compelling. Best seen large scale to pick up some of the nuances.

[via Alex Pang]

Michael Stern Hart

...who quietly invented ebooks, 30 years ago, died on 6 September. He recalled 'I envisioned sending the Declaration of Independence to everyone on the net... all 100 of them... which would have crashed the whole thing...'. This toe in the water led to Project Gutenberg, run by volunteers and, currently, the largest repository of free books. Its mission statement is delightful including it's management policy, written by Hart:
Because we are totally powered by volunteers we are hesitant to be very bossy about what our volunteers should do, or how to do it.

[via Guardian books]

What's the use of an iPad?

John Naughton quotes Andrew Orlowski's review of the HP's Touchpad:
'After just one year, the iPad is making more revenue than Apple's 30-year-old personal computer division. It's almost bringing in as much as Dell brings in from PCs. This is a huge business, already. And nobody can quite say what their iPad is good for. If ever a computer was a means to an end, then the iPad is it – rather than doing anything uniquely iPad-ish, it takes lots of "ends" a laptop (or Kindle, or smartphone) gets you to, and just gets you there slightly more conveniently. PCs are going to be around a long time; the iPad will be right there alongside them.'
Reminds me of Clayton Christensen's assessment in The Innovator's Dilemma of Apple's early abandonment of the Newton:
'...when they initially emerge, neither manufacturers nor customers know exactly how or why the products will be used...Building such markets entails a process of mutual discovery by customers and manufacturers - and this simply takes time.' (p.135)
Times have certainly changed.

Data visualisation and information graphics

Interesting data visualisation projects, some more accessible than others, sponsored by GE. This one (tiny illustration above) comparing perceptions of innovation with measurable indices, is particularly compelling.

 If you needed a contrasting example, to show where data visualisation and information graphics part ways, Data in context, by Peter Orntoft might be a good choice. Eye-catching, although for me the image gets in the way of the data (particularly when the detail is in white on grey).  

[GE projects via iotwatch, Orntoft graphics via designlessbetter]

Design thinking won't save you

Nice post by Helen Walters, which makes a point some people have missed: that 'design thinking' is a multi-disciplinary idea generation process, but isn't 'design'.

Solution to a seasonal problem

Pondering what to do with unwanted gifts (alternatives to a trip to the Oxfam shop) I came across news of Amazon's recent patent of a 'gift conversion rules wizard' which enables customers to seamlessly return or convert gifts ordered via Amazon before they are sent. The user can set up rules along the lines of 'nothing from x' or 'nothing containing wool'. A logical extension of the wish-list and time and resource-saving, I suppose, but there's something dispiriting about it.

Information overload - and the printed text

Ann Blair reflects on the innovations (indexes, libraries, catalogues etc.) that helped 15th and 16th century readers cope with the sudden explosion of information available through printed books. Some lovely parallels with current struggles with digital information. She quotes Erasmus' opinion of printers: “[they] fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness".

Design thinking and the king's new clothes

'Design thinkers over-simplify by presenting design to business as a clear and codified process of methods, tools, and steps that can be learned by nondesigners. While explaining design as an algorithm goes down well with managers, this pitch skips over the pivotal importance of talent and craft.'

From one of two recent articles by Kevin McCullagh dissecting some of the hype around design thinking. The methods designers use can be a revelation, and very productive, when introduced to organisations accustomed to linear, top-down processes. When used collaboratively with expert teams (who have deep understanding of their own organisation), they can produce great solutions. They're also useful life tools for people to learn, redressing the balance in an education that can be over-focused on analytic and reductive approaches. But they're not 'the solution' in themselves. And, actually, there not always simple to carry out. Reflecting on my earlier posting on Axel Unger's presentation of IDEO's user-centred design methods (which I think avoided over-hyping the process) I neglected to mention the effort that is required to visualise and prototype ideas in order to get feedback and refine them. Even relatively rough prototypes can be difficult (and, potentially, expensive) to prepare, and so can be challenging for non-designers and their organisations. Certainly the level of prototyping shown in Unger's case studies was not trivial. 

In his second article, McCullagh tackles the myth of the T-shaped designer (i.e. that the designer has specific, inspirational skills in thinking about the broad context of design work, as well as skills in the detail of proposing, developing and specifying design solutions). McCullagh points out how the myth can result in a naive overconfidence about designers' capacity to solve complex social problems (and that there is a history of failure when designers over-extend themselves). Timely. I still wince to recall a TV interview where a designer claimed, with no apparent foundation, that while designers were T-shaped, architects were not. The truth is, if you like T-shaped as a metaphor, that within any profession there will be people who are better able than others to think across boundaries, or to work with others to do so, and to bring that expertise to their own deep understanding of their core domain, to develop ideas creatively. 

Police PR on Twitter

The one-day experiment by Greater Manchester Police to tweet all its calls was, imo, an inspired piece of PR. John Naughton picked out a particularly endearing extract (above) in his discussion of the media's reaction to it.

Design process and user participation

Balanced presentation by Axel Unger of IDEO Munich, on design process and its potential role in healthcare innovation. Gives a well-reasoned explanation of the processes user-centred designers use and encourages people commissioning design to 'design everything' i.e. think not just of the product but the context in which it's embedded (in service design speak 'the touch points'). I can't emphasise the importance of this enough. It also shows how IDEO involves end-users in design i.e. giving tools and supporting idea development, without making wild claims for participation and co-creation. Refreshing.

The talk includes PR videos of IDEO's work both with Mayo and Kaiser, both strong on user involvement and participation. Doctors from Mayo explaining that it's not the just the medical technology that's critical, but how it's implemented (pace the references to left and right brain!), and the Kaiser case study shows a participatory project to develop better processes for hand-overs including checklists and structured communication between medics and between medics and patients. IDEO claim that the Kaiser work has reduced both errors and the time nurses need to spend communicating with patients, and results in happier patients.

The future of interaction design and its ethics

Matt Webb gives his vision of 'What comes after mobile' here. Paraphrasing very crudely: more nuanced, emotionally-based and sensitive interactions between people, information, things and environments, using artificial intelligence as a component of design, with apparently simple interactions often supported by heavy-duty computational resources. At the end of his talk there is an interesting question about the people who do not want to be part of the tagged, networked, tracked world that Webb envisages, and a good response from Webb on the failure, often, to question the ethical implications of design projects.

More directly, Harry Brignull, presents his thoughts on Dark Patterns (see his dedicated web site here), where design gulls users into giving information, signing up for and paying for services etc., often without intending to. Brignull comments on how some UX professionals must be allowing/enabling some of these tricks. Indeed, or pointing out that they're problematic and being ignored.

My own experience is that there can be really awkward situations where the only options is to bow out of a project when you have picked up on factors that are potentially harmful to users (for example compromising personal safety) but your concerns have fallen on deaf ears. Bound by commercial confidentiality, and assuming the intention behind the project isn't criminal, there's nothing else one can do. However you're left with the knowledge that someone else, perhaps more compliant, will take over where you've left off.


[Matt Webb talk via InfoDesign]

Going global without air travel

Heart warming article by Richard Leyland, founder of Worksnug (which locates places for mobile workers to work), on the challenges of building an international business while remaining consistent with his company's commitment not to travel by air (one of 10 founding principles of the company).

Don Norman (again) and incremental innovation

Don Norman at IIT Design Research Conference 2010 from IIT Institute of Design on Vimeo.

Don Norman is still working through the relationship between design research and innovation and has reached some clarity on the difference between invention (or radical innovation, as Norman calls it) and incremental innovation (which is where user centred design fits). With some helpful insights from Roberto Verganti he now has a characterisation of design research and innovation that fits together, notwithstanding a few quips about 'design thinking' along the way.

[via Harry Brignull]