Design Vacant
15 November 2004. Inspired by .
Sadly, unlike many of my favourite bloggers, I wasn't at the Design Engaged conference, but I'm enjoying them talking about it on their websites.
The mighty Matt Webb, for example, who has mentioned how good it was and also how random his own talk was. He's very kindly placed his slides online here (pdf download). The only thing is, I found it tricky at first to work out the details of his presentation. Fortunately, for those of us who missed the event, I think I've pieced it together pretty much as it must have been.
Download the PDF, open it and click MORE... to read a slide-by-slide breakdown of his interesting and illuminating talk on Neuroscience and Interaction Design.
Matt Webb's talk, according to his slides and my head.
Page 1.
Welcome to my talk on Neuroscience and Interaction design, though in fact it's really more about psychology.
Page 2.
Let us begin with the neuroscience of visual perception. When working on interaction design, we must first of all start with monochromatics. The colour blind have a revealing perception of our world, and the differences between light and shade have a significant effect on the way we interact and design.
This is demonstrated here by a well-known abstraction that first appeared in a study by Zimmerstein and Koffler (University of Chicago, 1968) where they drew colour-blind Mike Gatting's view of a Wasim Akram over, left arm medium-fast, twenty runs to get off 5. They proved that, nine times out ten, England would win by four wickets.
Page 3.
If we transfer that theory to grey bubble-wrap, we'll see that people will always pop the middle one first. But it feels so goooood.
Page 4.
Directional psychology. People who travel to the left are 30% more likely to have roof racks than those who travel to the right. That could have something to do with the effect on the parietal lobe as explained in the Mandierbracht theory, based on a survey of 1,412 owners of Ford Escorts in Sussex.
Page 5.
A warning: this is what happens if you try to build your own laptop. It's not as easy as it looks. Is there an Apple technician in the house?
Page 6.
Is that robot eyeing me up?
Page 7.
Robot: "Do you speak here often?"
Page 8.
Monkeys. And, in this case, cheeky ones. Example (b) here has been accused of killing Monkey (a) and removing him from the presentation. Fortunately, Dr Gil Grissom has just sprayed some fancy chemicals on his hand and, by using the exact level of ultra-violet light that looks good on television, proved that he was at the scene of the crime. And, worse, Monkey (b) killed his partner while in his day job at the casino. The moral: never trust a croupier with his nipples out.
Page 9.
But, in a cunning twist revealed ten minutes before the end of the episode, it turns out that Monkey (a) is not in fact dead. Instead he's taking part in The Krypton Factor and is thinking of spending his prize money on a trip to New York. This is an important step forward in human-simian relations and could even one day lead to coherent thought-action development on the part of Gordon Burns.
Page 10.
What to do with too much Photoshop is the great problem of our time.
Page 11.
A nineteenth-century Russian pod incubator for hatching monkeys. As we can see, six have escaped from row four. Current statistical evidence suggests that two of these will go on to bowl left arm medium pace, one will own a Ford Escort with a roof rack, one will get addicted to grey bubble wrap and all six will be framed for murders they did not commit. This is an important development in neuroscience for reasons I can't be bothered to explain.
Page 12.
Tee-hee. Weather looks like a penis.
Thank you very much. Any questions?