Friday, May 23, 2014

This Week in EID - Episode 5

Monday - We started out the week with a piece from BUMP CEO David Lieb on Cognitive Simplicity.  Making things cognitively simple doesn’t mean shortest and fastest.  It just means easiest.  That requires knowing something about how people think.  Good thing we have HF pros around.

Tuesday - On Tuesday I talked about using comics as a design deliverable.  These can be really effective at presenting the design narrative because of how well they present action and emotion.  Give it a try and tell us how it was (in the comments section on the blog, if you don’t mind).

Wednesday - In the alliterative title award post, we talked about giving users peer data to evoke behavioral change.  It is amazing that as much as we think we are driven by logic and reason, we really just want to fit in. It makes sense adaptively.  Running around the savannah 100,000 years ago, insisting that you were right is a lot more likely to get you killed than going along to get along.  This explains a lot if DM heuristics.  Apparently, we evolved not only to do this, but to hide it even from ourselves.

Thursday - Thursday’s post talked about a pet peeve of mine – people designing based on instinct (which is OK) but then thinking that their common sense makes them an expert.  Sometimes that can work – like making eggs and toast.  But not when designing information-rich visuals.  Sorry, but you need some training.