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.
