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04 May 09

A List Apart: Articles: In Defense of Eye Candy

A truly valuable and important article about learning

www.alistapart.com/...indefenseofeyecandy - Preview

learning design usability reading aesthetics webDesign userinterface

the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond.
Our language constrains visual design to mere styling and separates aesthetics and usability, as if they are distinct considerations
14 more annotations...
- “the science of how things are known via the senses,”
- how we perceive and interpret the world
- how people respond to these elements. Our question becomes: how do aesthetic design choices influence understanding and emotions, and how do understanding and emotions influence behavior
- Cognitive science studies how people know things and aesthetics plays a critical role in cognitive processing
- When designing, we must consider how our brain interprets the meaning of color, shadow, and shading. We rarely notice these aesthetic choices, except when people get them wrong:
- how our brain interprets the meaning of things such as color, shadow, shading, and other natural occurrences.
- the more attractive button is likely to be more usable by most people
- “...emotion is not a luxury: it is an expression of basic mechanisms of life regulation developed in evolution, and is indispensable for survival. It plays a critical role in virtually all aspects of learning, reasoning, and creativity. Somewhat surprisingly, it may play a role in the construction of consciousness.” [1]
- According to a 2002 study, the “appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size, and color schemes,” is the number one factor we use to evaluate a website’s credibility.
- Attention to design details implies that the same care and attention has been spent on the other (less visible) parts of the product—which implies that this is a trustworthy product.
- The only difference was that one machine’s buttons and screens were arranged more attractively than the other. In both Japan and Israel (where this study was repeated) researchers observed that subjects encountered fewer difficulties with the more attractive machine. The attractive machine actually worked better.
- we can’t actually separate cognition from affect.
- Separate studies in economics and in neuroscience are proving that:
  
  “affect, which is inexplicably linked to attitudes, expectations and motivations, plays a significant role in the cognition of product interaction…the perception that affect and cognition are independent, separate information processing systems is flawed.”
- We’re not nearly as in charge of our decisions as we’d like to believe.

23 Apr 09

Why we design — Before & After | Design Talk

We start reading (and understanding) BEFORE we decode a single word. Design IS communication!

www.mcwade.com/...design-is-worthy-toil - Preview

design communication_skills

Oddly enough, having been raised as a practical farmer, one of my biggest problems has been getting to believe that making something merely look better was worthy toil. I often justified hours spent on design (expensive hours, paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) by emphasizing the benefits of ‘clarity’ or ‘ease of understanding for busy folks’ that it gave to the production.

“I am coming to believe that pleasing design needs no apology, even, if not especially, in scientific publications. Our societies are now at the stage that a great number of us can not only appreciate the pleasures offered by good design, but almost demand that artistic expression be placed on the same level as informational expression. I’m not sure why, but it has much to do with why we are human.”
Design is about communication.

To take a word or a thought and design it is to give it form and body, so others can see, too, and respond.

The more compelling the design, the deeper the response.

By more compelling, I don’t mean prettier, necessarily, or artsier. I mean richer, more complete, more efficient. The design I’m talking about isn’t about making something only look better, but actually function better. Design has to do with how a thing works.

18 Jan 09

YouTube - History of the Internet

www.youtube.com/watch - Preview

Internet design information_design

31 Dec 08

Presentation Zen: Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?

"Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused and abused to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish. But whether we’re talking about bad TV or boring presentations, shouldn't we blame the content producers not the content medium?" via Stephen Downes

www.presentationzen.com/...is_it_finally_t.html - Preview

powerpoint presentation design WRI330

Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused and abused to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish. But whether we’re talking about bad TV or boring presentations, shouldn't we blame the content producers not the content medium?

25 Jun 08

globeandmail.com: Q&A with Bill Buxton

"we have a new class of product—PCs, mobile phones, MP3 players and GPS—but there's no user interface in either the hardware or software. Traditional industrial designers can't solve the problem. They understand the hardware but not the software. Computer scientists understand the software, but they have no experience with design. To get that right, we need a new kind of designer who understands both the technology and the context. There's no place to learn that right now,"

www.theglobeandmail.com/...home - Preview

globeandmail design

13 Jun 08