Neuroscience
Fascinating column by Donald Norman about simplicity, design, and marketing. In Simplicity Is Highly Overrated, Norman argues that while people may say they want "simplicity" in their products (cars, washing machines, etc.), how they feel about products and what they're willing to pay for is a different story. He describes a Korean toaster: "It had complex controls, a motor to lower the untoasted bread and to lift it when finished, and an LCD panel with many cryptic icons, graphs, and numbers" for $250! Why? "Make it simple and people won’t buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity."
Found this article via the Dec. 2006 issue of Current Cites, where reviewer Leo Robert Klein argues that "it's hard to say what impact this approach should have on design decisions, particularly on the Web. We're not buying products for ourselves after all but making them for others. If features in this context were so attractive, then 'Advanced Search' would be the first stop of even our most neophyte users."
Hmmm.
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Here's a really alternative conception of time... Reproduced from THE ORDER OF TIME. FILOGNOSY Statement of Purpose The purpose of this site is to give clear and unequivocal instruction on the filognosy as proposed by The ...
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Neuroscience
Is Simplicity Overrated?
Fascinating column by Donald Norman about simplicity, design, and marketing. In Simplicity Is Highly Overrated, Norman argues that while people may say they want "simplicity" in their products (cars, washing machines, etc.), how they feel about products and what they're willing to pay for is a different story. He describes a Korean toaster: "It had complex controls, a motor to lower the untoasted bread and to lift it when finished, and an LCD panel with many cryptic icons, graphs, and numbers" for $250! Why? "Make it simple and people won’t buy. Given a choice, they will take the item that does more. Features win over simplicity, even when people realize that it is accompanied by more complexity."
Found this article via the Dec. 2006 issue of Current Cites, where reviewer Leo Robert Klein argues that "it's hard to say what impact this approach should have on design decisions, particularly on the Web. We're not buying products for ourselves after all but making them for others. If features in this context were so attractive, then 'Advanced Search' would be the first stop of even our most neophyte users."
Hmmm.
- Alternative Time Consciousness Platform
Here's a really alternative conception of time... Reproduced from THE ORDER OF TIME. FILOGNOSY Statement of Purpose The purpose of this site is to give clear and unequivocal instruction on the filognosy as proposed by The ...
- Design & "remediation" In Technology Review
Just got the new issue of Technology Review, which had some interesting design articles, plus an interesting description of "remediation." Quotes from the articles I liked: Q&A with Bill Moggridge, industrial designer for 40 years and author of Designing...
- (database) Feature Fatigue?
Heard a great story on APM's Future Tense about "Feature Fatigue." Jon Gordon interviewed Roland Rust (U Maryland) about his recent Harvard Business Review article (Feb. 2006) called Defeating Feature Fatigue. From the citation in PubMed (who knew...
- Interview With Donald Norman
The Fall, 2005 issue of Technical Communication Quarterly features an interview with product design / usability guru Donald Norman. He talks about his latest book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. The article covers lots o’ things...
- Longest Common Subsequence And Numpy
Perl may be crafty and efficient like a ninja, Ruby may be written like a prose or work of fiction, but, for most purposes, Python, with its simplicity and elegance, is usually my weapon of choice when it comes to programming languages. (To be frank,...