Breathing Of Fish

When we go see a doctor to heal illness of the mind, doctors often use retrospection through colors, pictures and conversations to check and access our psychological state. Based on this context, these things were incorporated in the Breathing Wall.

Breathing wall 

 

Expressions

The people who use your designs have faces. They are not anonymous, faceless eggs with little lab coats, or stethoscopes, or something that "shows" what they do.

And faces have expressions that you can draw. There is a world of difference between a sketch of a person that looks like a cue ball, and a sketch of a person that has an expression. You just need to practice.

Wong-Baker FACES Foundation

Start with the Wong-Baker pain scale. These are really simple, useful expressions that are easily recognized.

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Poorly Draw Lines 1.

Or, if that's a little to healthcare-centric, then start here.

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Because expression is, in fact, everything.

  1. Via PS.CJ

Patient Room 2020

"Hospitals are going to get paid because their patients don't fall, because they don't get sicker while they're there, because they understand their care so when they leave they don't come back -- these are all performance metrics the federal government is tracking. So this is not just about putting in technology so we can have fancier electronic medical records."

Can design rehabilitate the ailing health care industry?

 

False Choice

Are you giving the people using your design a choice they don’t need to make? 

(Think about it. What is the choice really bound to? Maybe a data table they don't need to know about, or a new customer form they don't really need to fill out right now?)

 

Malleable

I can't listen to Smoosh playing "Find a Way" and not hear Dave Grohl screaming "Find a way!" (ka-thump ka-thump) "Figure you out!" 1. Not that he's ever covered the song. But that's the way popular music works for me — it's malleable in sound and meaning. In your head, you can mix it up.

Design, I think, works the same way. The people using your designs will change them, make them into something they aren't, or weren't meant to be, but are meaningful to them.

Sometimes this looks like misunderstanding.

Listen for the next time a person using your design says you have to click three times. Listen for when they say that the application is slow because there's been a rainstorm. Before you get all Vally of the Jolly Ho-Ho-Ho Green Giant and say, "Did you try unplugging your computer from the wall and blowing the dust off the prongs?" listen again to what they are saying. Because it's a tell. They don't even realize it. They are covering for you.

It's not a misunderstanding, it's a favor.

The next time one of the people using your design says, "Oh the application is slow in here because this room has a bad wi-fi connection," what they are really telling you is "There is a problem in your design should think about." I know, I know. When you get all of these problems into Rally and start prioritizing them, the "bad wi-fi connection" problem may trace back to a low priority bug. But you still should think about it.

Maybe your design already has something that you can use to explain what is happening. Can you take some of the mystery out of it with a better label, or a clearer alert message? Or a spinner that says, "Go get a cup of coffee."2. to manage their expectations? Why not?

Be accommodating. Be crazy. Just don't think they are stupid.

  1. Don't believe me? Make a playlist with "Find a Way" b/w "My Hero" and then put it on repeat. Listen enough times until it all kind of blurs together.
  2. Via KV

Can't Not Look

Designers, by in large, are compulsive observers. They can't not look. 

HC: Guess what my question is going to be?

BS: What?

HC: Is looking enough?

BS: No, but it's where we start.

HC: I like that answer.  

Handful of Days

So there are a handful of days every year where I have to have to think about the distance I have come - this year, the distance I have come in eight years. And what will always amaze me are the people who have helped me, walked with me, across that distance. So there are are a handful of days where I want to want to say thank you to those people.

Thank you. 

Douglas C. Engelbart, Inventor of the Computer Mouse, Dies at 88

From the New York TImes:  

"In his epiphany, he saw himself sitting in front of a large computer screen full of different symbols — an image most likely derived from his work on radar consoles while in the Navy after World War II. The screen, he thought, would serve as a display for a workstation that would organize all the information and communications for a given project."

Not sure how long the link will last.