by Sarah on February 28, 2010
On one of my recent flights, this was the view of the tray table on the seat-back in front of me, pretty much at eye level:
Staring at it through my normal take-off angst, I found myself trying to imagine who had decided this was the right text to inscribe on every tray table. It’s hard to read in this photo, but these two sentences are, “Fasten seat belt while seated,” and “Use bottom cushion for flotation device.” The first one seems appropriate to me, as it is a helpful bit of advice that can be applied to a scenario that happens on 100% of all flights: sitting. The second, however, addresses a catastrophic scenario that is EXTRAORDINARILY rare. (My totally unscientific Google research indicates that “ditching,” the only way your plane can end up in the water with you still alive, is less than a one-in-a-million occurrence.)
I wonder if the benefit of reminding passengers of a single step they could take in a specific type of super-rare emergency really warrants constantly reminding of the possibility of such an event. My mind read those two sentences as, “We could experience turbulence,” and “We could crash into the OCEAN, OMG!” Just imagine if the home screen of your cellphone always said, “Lock your phone when not in use,” and “Text GSF to 011 in case of phone-ignited gas station fire.”
Also, how did the message about the cushions win out over other, possibly more useful safety info like, say, the emergency landing brace position? Because it’s short?
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And then, boarding a different flight, I saw that the safety information cards were stuck into the tops of the seats like this, instead of hidden away in the seat-pockets as they usually are:
I got sort of excited by this, thinking that it was a change in airline policy toward passenger engagement with the safety information. Having the cards like this, and requiring each passenger to move their own card from here to the pocket in front of them would change the act of looking at the card from opt-in (passengers have to first decide to pull it from the pocket) to forced-choice (passengers have it in their hand, and then have to decide whether to look at it or not).
The web equivalent would be changing it from this:
to this:
My nerdy excitement was for naught, however, because it turned out the cleaning crew had just accidentally left them like this, and the flight staff quickly tucked them all back into the seat pockets.
Perhaps if they could guarantee more people looked at the safety card, they wouldn’t need to inscribe scary safety messages everywhere?
by Sarah on February 22, 2010
It’s been almost two weeks now since I returned from Interaction ‘10 in Savannah, which was a fantastic conference packed with phenomenal people and content. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect (and recover from post-conference illness), here are some of my takeaways.
Meaning
Finding and providing meaning in the products and services we create was one of the repeated themes of the conference. Jon Kolko discussed the emergence of this theme in his post reflecting on the conference, as did IxDA board member Matt Nash-Lapidus.
This year the discussion moved from designing to affect behavior to designing to inspire. ‘Meaning’ was presented as the apex of design resonance, more central than aesthetics or emotion, and connected to a greater societal sense of ‘good.’ Nathan Shedroff said, “All design is the process of evoking meaning,” and Jon Kolko named ‘meaning’ as one of the four pillars of our profession and offered this quote from Yves Behar, “If it’s not ethical, it can’t be beautiful.”
Design as Collaboration with End-Users
Aside from debates about what to call ourselves, it seemed to me that the community has accepted the idea that we don’t design ‘experiences,’ because each person’s experience of an interaction is personal and individual. Many of the talks this year encouraged embracing the users as active participants in design. Cindy Chastain related interaction design to storytelling and made a clear point that a central component of every story is the context and expectations of the audience. Liz Danzico spoke about designing “frames” within which users can successfully improvise interactions. Allan Chochinov (in his standout presentation) said, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you facilitate.” Ezio Manzini encouraged us to “enhance people’s capabilities.”
From Screens to Physical Objects
Christopher Fahey had a slide in his talk showed a quoted from Don Norman in 2007 claiming that one of the “next UI breakthroughs” will be “the return to physical devices.” It seems that future is now. Timo Arnall and Matt Cottam both gave thoughtful and thought-provoking presentations of tangible interactions and physical computing, often in devices without a screen. Richard Banks, in his talk titled “The 40 Year Old Tweet,” spoke about the possible need to make digital objects tangible when preserving them as heirlooms.
In his FastCompany piece, Rob Tannen sees this as retrospection, but I saw it more as a sign of the inevitable seamless blending of technology into our surroundings.
Real People Are Compelling
The standout moments of the whole weekend for me were the moments in presentations that showed real-life (non UX) people. Just as our work suffers when it doesn’t have regular exposure to the people we are designing it for, some of the weekend felt a little light on perspective from outside the design world.
One of the reasons Allan Chochinov’s presentation of his students’ work was so outstanding was that most of the student pieces referenced actual people’s stories, such as the supremely touching story of a mom with cancer who wanted to make her baldness less scary to her children. Jon Kolko presented a fascinating student project which designed encouragement for college dudes to use condoms (“Man Shields”), complete with chuckle-inducing quotes and photos. Matt Cottam showed a very funny video of unsuspecting city residents taking an “abandoned” chair off the street and giving it a place in their home. Timo Arnall included captivating video and photos of a young girl delighting in toys and objects embedded with RFID chips. Richard Banks spoke of a man who had inherited a box of rocks from his grandfather, with no note or context to explain why.
These are just a few of the examples of real, non-designer people mentioned in the talks, but to me they clearly illustrate that (in presentations, anyway) people are more interesting than principles.
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Below is a slide-show of my notes from the conference. For in-depth, thoughtful recaps of all four days of the conference, see the Johnny Holland recaps.
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
