Boxes and Arrows investigates the unintended uses of technology.
No matter how hard we try to create designs for certain uses, people will always utilize them in their own way. These unintended uses can be strange, even brilliant. In the end, you have to tip your hat to the ingenuity.
David Brooks of the NY Times writes about our externalized cognitive functions. In the beginning it was only the calculator, now it is everything, even things we couldn’t think that would be outsourced:
Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like.
I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that appeal. I look on my iPod playlist and realize I’ve never heard of most of the artists I listen to. I was once one of those people with developed opinions about the Ramones, but now I’ve shed all that knowledge and blindly submit to a mishmash of anonymous groups like the Reindeer Section — a disturbing number of which seem to have had their music featured on the soundtrack of “The O.C.”
Whether such phenomena will be used as scaffolds to further our cognitive abilities, or we will merge into a mush of crowdsourced, web2.0 mediocrity remains to be seen.
He may be arrogant, obnoxious and his last book “The God Delusion” was mediocre… Still, he is a brilliant thinker which shows in his response to Edge’s excellent “What’s Your Formula?”:
I think that there is a parallel here with cars (albeit in the ultrafast timescales of IT). Cars keep getting bigger and bigger: I think know the current VW Polo is larger than the 1st generation Golf we used to own. So with software: if the free app you used to enjoy has added too many features for your liking (in part in order to justify some paid version), you just bail to the next simpler thing (e.g. Media Player->Media Player Classic, iTunes->foobar2k).
There is another reason and it has to do with systems (be it ecosystems, companies, software etc.). Things “teleologically” tend to grow more complex and in this complexity lies their downfall. In order to combat this one must be extremely disciplined (example: Google front page gatekeeper).
A more fruitful approach is to “underbuild” the surface (fast changing) features and focus on a solid architechture that will support end-user contributions (e.g. a “Shearing Layers” approach to Software -see also my paper in the references).
For those who want to get things done fast, or just want to study some of the principles, Smashing Magazine has published 30 Usability Issues to be Aware Of. It is a mix of rules, principles and phenomena related to usability.
For serious studying, I suggest to delve into the depths of Interaction-Design.org.
Also, for the attendants of OpenCoffee IV who asked, here is the brief overview of
Personas for user-centred design (in Greek).
Sure, I’m a veritable genius when I’m on the grid, but am I mentally crippled when I’m not? Does an overreliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?
How much has “googling” changed us? Are we more powerful because we are allowed to do what we are best at (pattern matchers) without memory limitations? Are we weaker because the misuse of memory itself has hampered our cognitive abilities? I think the lifestreaming generation will be as much a cognitive as it is a social experiment
I’ve uploaded the short (following Guy Kawasaki’s rule) presentation I gave in OpenCoffee IV. It was an interesting event and the presentations showed that something IS moving. Onic’s especially was inspiring even for me, a conservative non-entrepreneurial kind of person.
Thanks to the OpenCoffee Athens organizers for the great event!
