Learning to Look Up Preview
by Guest Author, (0 comments)
One of the best books I've read lately is something I picked up while on holiday in Spain. I'm always trying to look for new ideas and learn from people and situations I wouldn't normally run into. So while I was looking for something exciting and fresh to read lazing by the pool, I had a look at what the children's section had to offer. I came across ""The Phantom Toll Booth"" by Norton Juster. It's not new, in fact as I found out later, it's a children's classic, but it was new to me.
So anyway, while the whole book is just a fantastic read, full of imagination, one passage really stuck with me. The lead character comes across a town that has completely disappeared. The buildings are still there, it's just that they're invisible to everyone who lives in the town. Why? Because they are so engrossed in getting as quickly as possible from A to B, everything else in between simply disappeared. Because they don't bother to look up anymore the world around them fades away, unneeded by the people.
But this is no fantasy. This happens to you, me, everyone everyday of the week. And I don't mean we forget to notice the beautiful buildings around us. I mean it's sometimes far to easy to be drawn in to a Äúdefault settingÄù and do what we know, what we feel comfortable with. It's much harder to stop, look up and ask ourselves - is there another way? Is there an alternative?
In my own field of interaction design the evils of comfort are always present, waiting to seduce you with their standards, ease of use and tried and tested methods. But is this really what design is about? Shouldn't we be scaring ourselves rigid, putting ourselves in situations that stretch us beyond what we think we can do creatively? Like taking ridiculous objects such as Play-Doh and asking ÄúCan this be used as an interface to a computer?Äù The answer is of course yes - everything in nature is a number after all - and computers love numbers!
So in my session I'll take you through some of my thinking when it comes to what we perceive interactive design to be, how jazz musicians are as much about hacking as any computer geek, how technology should appeal to my mum and not just my designer mates and how looking what lies between those sterile ones and zeroes can take interaction design beyond the domain of the keyboard and mouse.
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