Creativity, Law, and Change

I recently listned to a well-articulated TEDTalk by Larry Lessig on "Laws that Choke Creativity". A really interesting and thought-provoking piece about how the changes in culture are leading to creative conflicts in the newest generations.

"We made mixed tapes; they remix music. We watched TV; they make TV. It is technology that has made them different, and as we see what this technology can do we need to recognize you can't kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground. We can't make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good? We live in this weird time, it's kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law, and that's what I -- we -- are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting. And in a democracy we ought to be able to do better."

I thought this was one of the best summaries of one of the biggest social difficulties of the times - the shifting notions of right and wrong, and what kind of impact that has on us as a culture. I think I have some more thoughts on this, but for now I have to get back to writing a paper on the concept and ethics of a national "smartcard" ID. A fascinating topic that has led me down many tangents (such as this video) though most of the diverging hasn't been useful for the paper. Oh well. At least the tangents are interesting and educational.

The Beauty of Data Visualization (David McCandless TED talk)

I have to do a quick post about this TED talk from earlier this year. David McCandless talks about "The Beauty of Data Visualization". And it's beautiful. I've been digging around the newest website, "Information is Beautiful" having a lovely time examining all the truly lovely visualizations they've created.

I really do believe that pictures/visuals really are the next sets of vocabulary for communicating data. We have spent a lot of time in using words to describe data (and believe me, I love words), but there's so much power in a picture. And the visualization of data can give you an immediate grasping of context (accurate only if done right, of course) that words just can't quite capture.

For example, McCandless et al. produced a "Billion Dollar-o-Gram" in 2009 to give some context to those billions being thrown around. Go look at that for a second, and then come back after finding the cost to "Wall Street Revenue 2009", "Cost of Obesity Related Diseases", "Eradicate AIDS worldwide", and then "Worldwide cost of financial crisis".

McCandless talks about how the sometimes quoted "absolute figures" don't give you a whole picture - the relative presentation of data through visualization can give you a better view of the landscape. Visualization creates an information map for people to explore, and helps expose the hidden patterns among the data.

One comment he makes was interesting - he challenges the saying "data is the new oil" with a slight modification: "data is the new soil". It is this rich resource, and there is so much of it. We just have to figure out how to ask the right questions of it to get the answers.

"Let the dataset change your mindset" - the use of visualization is definitely a part of making sound decisions that can be backed up by data.

Design & The Platinum Rule

We have Alix Han (@uxkungfu) talking to students today about user-experience (UX).

You know the "golden rule": Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Alix tells us the platinum rule of design: Do unto others as they would have you do to them...

What?

Well, it goes like this - you might like to be kicked, but that other person might prefer hugs. Seems a bit simplistic, but ....

Stealing some of the main points from her presentation, there are a few key elements that make up the desires/needs of humans and their interactions.

Talking About Emotional Design

Certainty: I want to know that things will work the way I expect them to

Variety: I want fresh, entertaining content

Significance: I want to feel special and important in some way

Love & Connection: I want to feel connected to someone or something

A designer's job is to research/discover how these come together and make a user's experience awesome.