Friday, November 20, 2015

This Week in EID - Episode 81



This week, all four EID articles focused on a design or psychological phenomenon that I see as a positive in the world.  Not all earthshattering, groundbreaking innovations or discoveries, but at least positive.

For example, Monday showcased “The Edge”, Deloitte’s headquarters in Amsterdam. The building integrates innovations across the spectrum, including big data analytics, eco-friendly designs, collaboration psychology, work design, and so on. Some of the commenters on Linked In were concerned about the privacy implications of the monitoring.  This is a very legitimate concern, but one that can be dealt with through good, ethical, policy design and encryption.  No NSA issues here if we are cognizant.

Then Tuesday looked at a wireless meat thermometer connected to a smartphone app.  This allows the visually impaired to cook meat without risking (or at least not more than the rest of us) undercooking the middle. Again, the Linked In crowd had concerns.  One regular reader didn’t think the visually impaired should be cooking meat in the first place. I think he assumed an open flame would be dangerous in ways the thermometer can’t handle.  But those hazards can be dealt with as well.

Wednesday looked at the psychological construct of framing. We focused on how designers can use framing to nudge users into taking the interface and content more seriously than they otherwise would have. This can be for electronic signatures, contracts, and so on that seem more like play acting when they are on-line.

Finally, I shared a story from standardized testing that I got from Annie Murphy Paul.  It dealt with the subtle but important difference between equality and equivalence, how this can be a powerful tool for students to learn and use, but how it is unfair to use in standardized testing when it was never taught in school. It is definitely not intuitive.

I hope you enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Have a great weekend.