Friday, June 05, 2015

This Week in EID - Episode 57



The articles on EID this week ran the full gamut of human factors and UX subjects.

Monday covered crowdsourcing innovation, looking at two models being used by Quirky.  One is pure crowdsourcing all the way through development (with some expert engineering added as support).  The other is to use corporate sourced requirements and scope and then have the crowd get them started.  This helps them think “outside the box” but leaves most of the project (including the IP) with the company.

On Tuesday we questioned whether Apple’s Light Phone had a real use case.  There were many conversations on Linked In, with a pretty solid consensus that there is not.  I guess time will tell if we are correct.

Wednesday continued our series on standing versus seating but in a very specific and constrained context – elementary school.  Kids don’t have the knowledge to give themselves the variety that consensus suggested for the workplace.  They also don’t have the apps to remind them to walk around, or the flexibility to do so if they wanted.  Schools don’t have the budget to use a workstation that supports variety.  So what do we do?

Then finally we took a deep psychology dive into a concept that we all probably knew about but didn’t think of as a strong influence on us.  The surprise validator is someone we trust who presents us with an idea we were previously against or didn’t believe.  It is the trust we have for that person and their authority on the topic that determines whether we can be convinced.  At it is perhaps the only way we can be convinced if the belief is strongly tied to our self- or group-identity.