Tentempié

Smart cities, ubiquity for all

2010-02-03T10:22:06+00:00

South Korea is planning a new city called "New Songdo", 40 miles away from Seoul, which aims to be the largest (and first?) ubiquitous computing urban area. All city services (water, power, telephony, traffic, etc) are planned to be linked to internet.

Since now more than half the world population live in urban areas, it's a good point to start thinking about new notions of being human on a metropolis context. Let's hope it's not just an ostentatious project with fancy propaganda.

Seen at The China Observer.

Fast Company: Cisco's Big Bet on New Songdo.

Promotion Video on youtube: Songdo Vision.

Principio de semejanza

2009-10-13T09:42:15+00:00

"Nuestra mente agrupa los elementos similares en una entidad. La semejanza depende de la forma, el tamaño, el color y otros aspectos visuales de los elementos."

Psicología de la Gestalt

Y un bonito ejemplo del principio es la sección Bicis de Giant (Fijaos en los bloques "On-road" y "Off-road"). Un esquema muy claro de toda la gama de bicicletas, organizado por sexos/edad y tipo de actividad:

Enlace al catálogo de Giant.

Interfaz de las conversaciones sobre salud en el NYT

2009-10-10T18:58:02+00:00

Me ha sorprendido gratamente la forma que tiene el New York Times de presentar el conjunto de conversaciones que mantienen los lectores del periódico acerca de distintos temas relacionados con salud.

Se trata de una retícula que simula habitaciones y donde el tamaño de cada celda está directamente relacionado con el número de participaciones en la misma.

Una bonita metáfora de presentación.

NYT - Health Care Conversations

Philips says: Wake up suprachiasmatic nucleus!

2009-10-07T20:37:00+00:00

Philips had developed an amazing wake-up machine that acts directly on one of our self-regulation center of time.

It lights up as the daylight used to do over our face when we lived whithout watches, mobile phones and anoying alarms. Telling our bodies that the time has come, regulating our circadian rhythm as we wake easily and more peacefully. At least that's what they say.

A wonderful example of what can be done in interaction design if you pay close attention to human physiology.

Algo sale de nuestros ojos

2009-09-30T01:11:17+00:00

[...]"Aplicamos sesgos a las pruebas en las que nos fijamos para que encajen con nuestras teorías sobre cómo creemos que en realidad funciona el mundo."

Bruce Hood, reflexionando sobre que el hecho de que la mayoría de las personas están convencidas de que son capaces de percibir cuándo les miran por la espalda.

El último capítulo de Redes cuenta con muchas joyitas sobre percepción y desarrollo de las habilidades cognitivas.

When intensity means time

2009-09-23T20:26:52+00:00

It's widely accepted that domestic appliances are the kings of everyday misunderstadings. From video recorders to washing machines, they all share a so broad range of diferent controllers that makes semantic hard to reuse.

We all have to learn them one by one, but one it's learnt we are supposed to know how to set the devices. But there is one concern that seems still to be resolved:

How can we remove the gap between selected intensity and time to reach the expected outpout?

Most small and major appliances (specially those related with temperature) run in a nominal power, leaving the control of the result to a matter of duration in time. Some of them express clearly the final state of the expected effect in numeric indicators, such as degrees for a central heating system, and others rely on a continuous scale of simulated power variations like electric cooktops.

Although cuantitative controllers are widely present, why is still so insanely frequent that people keeps misunderstanding these stuff that they use every single day?. Some examples:

Will my air conditioning machine works faster setting a lower temperature?. It won't, because its coefficient of performance is fixed. Will the cooktop heat more at higher values? It will heat water quicker but maximun heating power is limited. In most of them the selected value of intensity means an inverse rate of time pauses between heat activations.

The solution could be to make obvious that they work at a linear rate. A good solution for cooktop could be to avoid relative numeric controllers and to ask always for the desired temperature, showing through process the expected time for reaching the goal. An easy way to accept that intensity means time when power is fixed.

Unexpected uses

2009-07-29T23:38:58+00:00

Technology is full of beautiful unexpected uses. Even the most simple act of use innovation should be take as an inspirational example.

Is it possible to design for unknow needs? Probably not. But you must always keep an eye on what people are doing with your product.

Reinforce your message

2009-07-29T23:39:01+00:00

"Why should we keep that thing there? It's already at the sidebar/body/somewhere else..."

This is my favourite of client's recurring questions. They all fear something is wrong when repeated. Probably driven by some obscure space scarcity fear they tend to identify those repeated items as threats to its siblings.

Placing something more than once in an interface you create diferent relative weights in terms of business relevance. Scarcity of space is a fact, but scarcity of attention is a psychological asset we should use for our convenience.

What is the most important thing for your business?. Answer that and make sure it's visible enough upon the rest.

Game theory course

2009-07-29T23:39:11+00:00

Ben Polak, an economics and management professor at Yale University, talked in this course about interesting concepts such as "strategic thinking", "evolutionary stability" and "Nash equilibrium", all applied to game thinking.

Lectures are avaible in multiple formats, enviable organized and described at Open Yale Courses.

Share it or forget about it

2009-07-29T23:39:09+00:00

For the Net Geners, the stories of their lives become more important than the lives lived. It is not the experience itself, it is what they can tweet, blog, Flickr about it. An event has not happened if it is not being shared.

By Tim Leberecht on Design mind.