Authors:
Jofish Kaye
The book I'm most excited about this year from an HCI/UX point of view is Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality. It's about building a top-tier restaurant, one capable of winning three Michelin stars. Those of you who have seen the show The Bear might have seen the book flashed on-screen in "Forks" (season 2, episode 7). It's about that kind of absolute obsession with the experience of your user. But it's also about experience design, service design, and having a customer-centric mindset, about acts of service as the foundation of professional practice. We've started to see these kinds of approaches in app design: thinking seriously about how to reduce friction, how to make your users feel valued, how to deal with onboarding. Inspirational.
In 2017, I developed shingles, which I strongly advise against. (Get your vaccine, folks!) A few weeks later, one side of my lip had gone numb and I drooled when I brushed my teeth. I posted on Facebook and a friend replied that I probably had Ramsay Hunt type II syndrome—Bell's palsy co-occurring with shingles. Searching turned up disconcerting statistics, such as "90 percent of people recover, eventually." Luckily, that weekend I saw my acupuncturist, who took one look and said, "Oh, you've got Bell's palsy. That happens to my pregnant clients all the time. I know exactly what to do!" Two weeks later, I was cured. Unfortunately, playwright (and mother of three) Sarah Ruhl was not so lucky. Her memoir of her time with Bell's palsy, Smile: The Story of a Face is touching, sad, and beautiful, engaging deeply with health, disability, and what it means to communicate. Again, great lessons for both our field as a discipline and for the everyday practice of our work.
Smile: The Story of a Face is touching, sad, and beautiful, engaging deeply with health, disability, and what it means to communicate.
Another book I've really enjoyed is my old housemate Eric Nehrlich's You Have a Choice: Beyond Hard Work to Meaningful Impact. He spent several years as chief of staff to the VP of search ads at Google, and then gave it up for executive coaching. You Have a Choice is the distilled essence of that coaching practice, and the distillation is what I like best: The book is a scant 200 pages, with a hands-on exercise after every section. Super thoughtful, super readable, it's a valuable resource for thinking about what you want to do with your limited time in the world.
Finally, I've never been one of those people who can fall asleep easily. When my twins were born, I started reading the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout to help drift off, and they're the perfect balance: interesting enough to keep you reading but not so exciting that they keep you awake. I was delighted when I read an obituary of pioneering sleep scientist William Dement [1], who had settled on exactly the same trick. There are dozens of Nero Wolfe novels, but The Doorbell Rang is a superb exemplar. I know this isn't the normal kind of recommendation for this section, but if I can help a few Interactions readers fall asleep more easily that seems like a mighty good thing.
References
1. William Dement died on June 17th. The Economist. Jun. 9, 2020; https://www.economist.com/obituary/2020/07/09/william-dement-died-on-june-17th
Author
Jofish Kaye directs research teams to produce thoughtful, ethical, and effective HCI- and AI-driven products and prototypes, using tools such as user studies, surveys, and big data analysis. [email protected]
Copyright held by author
The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2024 ACM, Inc.
Post Comment
@Mark Albin (2012 06 30)
This is a very interesting article about social bots, thanks for sharing.
@Aman Anderson (2012 07 18)
This is great
“So what’s the center of a design? In one sense, it is the designer’s nuanced understanding of the problem or opportunity at hand. The focus of design is problem solving, not self-expression.” - Uday Gajendar, Interaction Designer
@Bill Killam (2012 07 31)
This is a long overdue article. And I couldn’t agree with it more. I’m current working on yet another Federal RFP that is asking for us to do work using short cut methods that are likely make it harder to get them quality results, and we can probably propose a cheaper and more data rich approach if they didn’t specify how we had to do the job. Sad.
@Demosthenes Leonard Zelig (2012 08 12)
Great Article, it is funny to notice that such huge corporations do not even bother to do a market research before releasing products on a new market. However, I guess we are still learning from our mistakes.
@[email protected] (2012 10 24)
Hi everyone, In the Technological University of Panama there is also a movement. There is a 2 years MS in IT with a specializtation in HCI. We are also trying to include HCI as part of our main curricula. This year we started a research with a company interested on incorporating usability in their development. We expect to receive a Fulbright Scholar next year in this area…
Regards,
Karla Arosemena
Professor
@John Michael Sheehan (2012 11 06)
There are thousands of blogs that requires comments on them. What is the intention of blog comments? Sent From Blackberry.
@Junia Anacleto (2012 11 07)
A very shallow and naive view of a much more rich and complex context.
I am still waiting for a fair position paper to be presented.
@Rick Norton (2012 11 17)
Excellent article raising significant issues that are largely overlooked. The prospect that the collapse of sustainability for a growth/consumption related societal model is inevitable, is a topic I have often wondered about, given the nature of capitalism as we know it today. Even the “Great Recession” of current times gives me pause to wonder just how long we can keep this economic engine going before we have to face the reality that we are all going to have to learn to “live with less”. (A quantitative assessment, not necessarily qualitative.)
Keep up the good work. Hopefully, you will raise awareness of these topics.
@Noah McNeely (2012 11 27)
Very nice article, that raises meaningful questions. I actually think that the idea of sustainable products and sustainable product development is a bit of a myth. All products consume energy and other resources in one form or another during their production, use, or re-use. The key, ultimately is to balance resource consumption with resource production, but we will always need to be producing new resources. See my blog post on the subject at ( http://productinnovationblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/are-there-sustainable-materials_7159.html )
@[email protected] (2012 11 30)
The quote in the article mis-contextualize James Landay ‘s essay. James actually is actively working to break down those stereotypes, but you can’t do that without understanding what the deep problems are.
James’ blog post on this is at
http://dubfuture.blogspot.com/2011/12/china-will-overtake-us-in.html
@Lee Crane (2012 12 03)
This is a topic that is thought provoking and important. The message explores how humans can escape and survive the world they have jumbled. So many of the theories and ideas are basic. Our future may look a lot like the distant past. And indeed we may be happier for it.
@ 4996484 (2012 12 19)
this is a great article David and Silvia! I’‘m so excited that you guys wrote this up and are showing everyone the complexities in this space. I hope Interactions features more of this kind of research on China. Although I agree w/ @landay’s assessment of China’s creativity problem - but he’s working with a very different population than you guys. I think you research is absolutely on point - creative folks are going to hacker spaces like Xinchejian, they aren’t ending up in institutions like Tsinghua! I explain more here: http://www.88-bar.com/2012/12/where-are-all-the-creative-chinese-people-hanging-out-in-hacker-spaces-apparently/
@Joe (2013 01 04)
I think that if you study the Elliot Wave Theory it can answer your questions.
@Rafeeque (2013 01 06)
good one
@zhai (2013 01 16)
Enjoyed reading this article. I finally got why Harold wants to call it “the Fitts law”. If enough people write it that way I would never have to correct another submission making the embarrassing mistake of ‘Fitt’s law”.
I did not completely get the following remark though:
“The Accot and Zhai paper about the Fitts Law [3] has a clever title that illustrates
the rules on letters, “More than dotting the i’s…”—a bad pun on eyes.”
I came up with the title, but the word “eyes” never came to my mind. We meant that the point-and-click style of UI is like dotting the i’s everywhere—- placing a click on constrained targets as the fundamental action in interaction. Why not using ” Crossing the t’s ” as an alternative action? Indeed, we presented models of a new style of UI, which systematically reveals when crossing is superior to clicking, hence the subtitle of the paper “Foundations for crossing-based interfaces.”
Shumin Zhai
@Mohamadou M. Amar (2013 03 22)
I am a Doctoral student in I/O Psychology with Touro UW and need to access your articles.
@Mohamadou Amar (2013 03 22)
Need access for Doctoral Research
@William Hudson (2013 04 09)
Gilbert overlooks the important issue that the ‘big boys’ largely do not appreciate the need for design all and the problems that real people have with technology. I admit that we’ve had a hard time selling UCD but I am not persuaded by the arguments here to abandon it. Perhaps have a look at my article on a similar subject - User Requirements for the 21st Century - where I take a more pragmatic view of trying to address real users’ needs in the development process. http://bit.ly/agile-ucd
@ 0343665 (2013 04 29)
Fantastic text. I came here by searching for people that quote the Standford study on multitasking. The introduction is fantastic as it builds up an argument that attention has some features that do not change over time.
@Simon Taylor (2013 04 30)
not wanting to do anything so grandiose as building a (technology for) a world parliament, I have in essence been working on the same problems and facing the seven challenges with a project called ‘company.’ [https://gust.com/c/littleelephantltd]
In 2011, working with senior software developers - gratis - although neither the ethical undertaking nor the promise of sweat equity were enough to keep them involved - I established the technical feasibility of ‘company.’
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In 2012, turning from the ‘voluntary’ ‘principled’ participation model - because the attractions of real paying jobs had lost me my team - I received financial support from the New Zealand government. This part-funded an Intellectual Property Position Review - which government considered a pre-requisite - as commercial due diligence - to investing in an initial build, or beta. The IPPR recommended I do proceed… However, government offers only part-funding and without a team - either technical or commercial - there has been little to no investor interest.
As things stand at present, I have the tools and schematics for a beta build of something which would fit the sort of use imagined here. If you have any interest in helping, please contact me.
Best,
Simon Taylor