The saturation point of interaction design

The saturation point is generally referred to a product in society when it has reached the tipping point to use a more common metaphor. Some examples are the abundance of cell phones, text messaging, and in the early 90's fax machines.

Interaction design has reached a saturation point in my personal life. I realized that this holiday season as I bought gifts.

I hate wrapping gifts and have been known for giving them to people in the store bag. My plan was to follow this tradition.

That was until I realized the whole point of gifts is the experience of unwrapping them. I don't see the purpose of wasting paper wrapping a gift but I more than respect the experience expected. Receiving a gift is not about what is inside. Instead it is similar to a video game. What I am talking about is the element of discovery.

Give someone a bagged gift and it is opened and done with. Wrap it and there is the piece by piece reveal of what's inside.

I took this a step further this year. Giving one friend a series of similarly sized gifts I wrapped each in white printer paper. This effectivley blindboxed the gifts in the baseball card or Kid Robot style of packaging.

After wrapping these toys I could not help but laugh at how much design has saturated my personal life. I have been examining signs and interfaces for years now but this is the first time I conciouslly designed an experience for a friend knowing both the expected goal and the work flow to reach it.

Now at what point is the line drawn between designing social interactions and me just being crazy?

Failed psychology of waiting lines... Airlines

Airlines fail at pleasing passengers because they fail to sucessfully follow Don Norman's psychology of waiting lines.

Without rewriting Norman's paper, airlines fail to give an accurate wait time.

Sure they give estimated departure and arrival times but they are often delayed, updated, and still incorrect.

Sure there is a line to take off and land but toss bad weather into the mix or low fuel and cutting in line is common.

Add the stale air, confined space, and lack of entertainment, can someone redesign the experience of flying?

And I am back

The last two weeks my iPhone app has not allowed me to publish. I am now enabled to mobile writing again.

Smart phones destroy the forgotten password

Smart phones have enabled us to view email anytime, anywhere. With this we have entrusted our devices with our user ID and password to ease our desire for instant gratification.

Now a brief thought experiment...

You lose your smart phone. Your user ID is saved in the device for your bank, facebook etc. All a dishonest individual needs is five minutes of patience after selecting the forgotten password link and they have full access to your account, thanks to the saved access to your email.

So now I ask: how useful is that link when the reset is sent to the least protected account a user owns? What good are passwords at all if they can be so easily reset?

The next step in mobile security needs to be developed and sent to market immediately. If I had the solution I would be doing more thanbloggibg about the problem. Instead I wait and watch. What will we see.

Biometrics?

Face recognition?

An increase in challege questions?

The balance has always been between uniqe passwords and memorable passwords, ease of access for account owners and protection from fraud.

Good Marketing?

Driving out to Squirrel Hill recently I saw a billboard that read:
Text BELIEVE to shortcode.

Now I don't remember the short code and have no intention of sending that message but it got me thinking about some new marketing technology has enabled.

The billboard was consumed with maybe 18 characters total. And they were white letters on a red board. Very noticeable-very clear- the message told me what to do and it was my decision wether or not to follow it.

I am curious though what type of information I would have received had I sent that text.

I assume it is put up by a religious organization so would I get a quote from a book of prayer?

Would it start an SMS conversation with a higher being?

Would it charge my account an absurd amount of money?

What type of spam list would I be subjecting myself to?

Or is it all an elaborate social experiment of a bored researcher to see how many hits the billboard will actually summon.

Regardless of the reason the direct messaging is fascinating and I am curious how the marketing team decided on a brief viral campaign over an image or text heavy message.

Is print dead? How we get the news

An interesting observation today as I eat my lunch.

I sit in my chair eating and reading articles from my iPhone.
The other designer in my office sits, eating his lunch, reading news articles from the newspaper.

So I ask, is print dead? Many would say yes or at least that it is a dying media. It is interesting though how two people can access the same information from different sources.

Really that's not the interesting part but our choice in methods. I have a background in industrial design and HCI. His background is in graphic design and information architecture. That being said our choices for how we reach media is clear.

He is grounded in the tangible print while I am grounded on the multimedia realm. One is not better than the other and there is no right and wrong. I find it curious though how our training permeates through every part of our lives. It also shows the importance of understanding the entire work flow and process of a user. People don't describe their motivation. Look a little closer though and reasons for choosing chocolate over vanilla are clear.