The WELL: inkwell.vue.283: Dan Saffer, "Designing for Interaction"

#117: James Leftwich, IDSA (jleft) Wed 18 Oct 06 22:03

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:03:00 PDT

Yes, thanks so much Dan. Your book is a really valuable addition to our discipline, and I've enjoyed the opportunity to have this discussion with you immensely!

And thanks to everyone else that came and participated! [Read entire topic]

#116: Dan Saffer (dansaffer) Wed 18 Oct 06 16:44

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:44:00 PDT

You're welcome everyone. And a special thanks to Jim for both his questions and answers! [Read entire topic]

#115: Dan Saffer (dansaffer) Wed 18 Oct 06 16:43

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:43:00 PDT

That's one possible suggestion. Another could be that your icon subtly changes. Any number of ways. But like all changes like this, it would have to be pretty subtle so that it doesn't get annoying overwhelming. And yes, there needs to be a way to tell your device to knock it off. :) [Read entire topic]

#114: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 18 Oct 06 16:21

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:21:00 PDT

Quite thought-provoking. Thank you and keep up the good work! [Read entire topic]

#113: Barry (barryp) Wed 18 Oct 06 16:09

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:09:00 PDT

I've enjoyed it and learned a lot. Thanks! [Read entire topic]

#112: Trevor van Gorp (trevorvangorp) Wed 18 Oct 06 12:19

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:19:00 PDT

Indeed... thanks Dan and Jim! Good talking with you both. [Read entire topic]

#111: David Adam Edelstein (davadam) Wed 18 Oct 06 12:14

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:14:00 PDT

As Dan says, this is the last official day of what's been a terrific talk.

Thanks, Dan and James! [Read entire topic]

#110: Trevor van Gorp (trevorvangorp) Wed 18 Oct 06 12:04

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:04:00 PDT

Are you suugesitng that, for example, the typeface of your message would shift to reflect your emotional state? This is one feature that would require an override, since there's times that I don't want the perosn on the other side of my email or IM conversation to know how I'm really feeling, just like in face-to-face interaction. ;) [Read entire topic]

#109: Dan Saffer (dansaffer) Wed 18 Oct 06 11:23

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:23:00 PDT

BTW, everyone, this is the last "official" day of this Inkwell interview. If you have any final questions or discussion topics, now is the time to air them. After today, I'll check in occasionally, but I can't keep up this running dialog forever, as fun as it is. :) [Read entire topic]

#108: Dan Saffer (dansaffer) Wed 18 Oct 06 11:21

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:21:00 PDT

Right, this is all absolutely true. We're taking in all this data and responding to it both consciously and unconsciously. One thing we could do is build in more ambient cues into our devices. I type differently and use different phrasing when I'm annoyed or angry over IM. Why couldn't the form of my messages reflect that? (This would be really hard to do well, however.) [Read entire topic]

#107: Trevor van Gorp (trevorvangorp) Wed 18 Oct 06 10:47

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:47:00 PDT

Actually, most of our communication is processed unconsciously, and responded to emotionally in an unconscious fashion. This is another reason that attention is so important. Often, our unconscious emotional responses wind up demanding and commanding our attention much of the time. It's another way that design should be utilizing our unconscious responses to direct attention at the appropriate time to the appropriate things.

For example, you pay more attention (at least initially) to a page where the type has higher contrast against the background. A good web example would be the status window in BaseCamp, which quickly changes colour to something more attention grabbing (in this case yellow from white) when a file is uploaded, and then fades back to normal. This utilizes unconscious emotional responses to colour to direct attention. This doesn't qualify as subliminal, since it is noticable, but is still equally powerful. [Read entire topic]

#106: Cupido, Ergo Denego (robertflink) Wed 18 Oct 06 09:17

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:17:00 PDT

>face to face communication and contact is extremely high bandwidth. You are seeing,hearing, smelling, and possibly touching people and their environment,receiving tons of data every second--more than our brains can process in fact (I think I read that somewhere, but I can't find the reference).<

Very little of the communication is going on at the conscious, mostly abstract, level in fact. This is often overlooked because of the modern bias toward thinking that we are totally (OK, mostly) conscious. The effort to abstract has considerable value in itself, however.

I've noticed that people often expect intimate relationships to operate with little abstraction or conscious analysis. A grunt or whine should suffice to get the partner to do what is expected. Too much consciousness seems to spoil the mystery.

Perhaps this is a subliminal issue when it comes to designing for interaction [Read entire topic]