anant

Anant's Personal Space


 * Week 1 Articles**

1.) Apple is meticulous in both aesthetics and design. They choose to design their products from the outside in, worrying first about how the product looks, then moving on to how the product actually works. They are meticulous in both areas, which is probably a huge factor in Apple's success. The strangest thing is their decision to chain-outsource the design of the player. No one company could be attributed to the design of the Ipod, instead the Ipod seems to be the result of a number of different subcontracted companies working in iterative loops to create the finished product.

2.) The main thing that separates Apple from the rest of the market is their insistence that a product should be at the intersection of art and technology. Jobs and Ive create their products to make a statement; not only is it easily accesible product, but is a design statement as well. Ive claims that the company had lost this focus, until Jobs re-joined the company. He also talks about their attention to detail in everything, including things like power cords and external accessories, things other companies usually ignore as irrelavant. New technologies allowing the moulding of plastic and metal together help differentiate Apple products. This means that their products usually have no fasteners, and are a completely sealed item.

3.) Apples design team is important because it is small, international, and elite. They are mostly young designers, who not only know the technological side of their products, but are culturally chic as well. They also focus on a small core of products, which helps keep their new designs fresh. Other companies claim that the small focus is damaging, but these companies usually have a large variety of products that are nowhere near as popular as Apple's.


 * Week 2 Articles**

Question 1

There are three primary types of economics. __Physical__, __Cognitive__, and __Organizational__.
 * Physical ergonomics deals with how the body handles physical stress in various situations, in this context work related. These can include repetitive stress and posture.
 * Cognitive ergonomics is similar to physical, except it deals with how various stresses affect the mind. Work can usually be mentally stressful, with pressure from management, constant decision making, and similar situations.
 * Organizational ergonomics deals "with the organizational structures, policies and processes in the work environment" (http://www.tifaq.com).

Question 2

The case study I chose was the truck drivers. The main problem seemed to be that one person was forced to control many different things, forcing their bodies into awkward positions. A simple solution would be to split the work among two people. It would raise company costs, but would probably create fewer injuries, and help reduce ergonomic stress. This would mean that one person would drive the truck, while the other person used the controls for the arm.

Question 3

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=043

I remember many years back when Microsoft came out with the first version of this keyboard. It seemed unwieldy and ridiculous. But using it completely changed my mind. Microsoft took a huge risk when coming out with a different design for something as standard as a keyboard, but in todays environment when work related injuries like CPS are extremely common, these keyboards seem like excellent foresight. The weird shape of the keyboard fits your natural hand placement much more easily than the standard keyboards.


 * Week 3**

After reading through a few of the products produced for Africa, a few norms for socially acceptable design became clear.

1.) Low cost was the most obvious one. These products would all be useless unless they were affordable and practical . For example, the One Laptop Per Child costs $100, which is extremely cheap for a laptop. The cheap price makes it accessible.

2.) Function over form. In sharp contrast to last weeks article which dealt with Apple, socially responsible design does not care too much about aesthetics. Practicality and usefulness are much more important than how good a device looks.

3.) Usefulness over entertainment. We often forget that a lot of our products are there to to entertain us, rather than serve any practical purpose. For example, video game consoles are there purely for entertainment, and serve no practical purpose. Socially responsible products aren't built for luxury; they're built out of necessity.

4.) Sturdiness and durability. Unlike products made in our consumer culture, a socially responsible product needs to be last. Disposability is the least favoured quality. Products need to last for at least a few years.


 * Week 5**

Imagine an idea for a device. You have everything planned out in your head, but you have no prototype. You're impatient to test it's application in the real world, but you have nothing to work with; so you pretend you do. You pretend the device exist, and you act out it's usage in the real world, as if you actually owned the device. This in effect, is bodystorming. This method is not necessarily confined to simple testing of devices, but for any research that requires interaction in the real world.

In the first example, the test subject stimulated blindness. The researchers found that a blind person made much more use of their other 5 senses than normal. The test subject also adapted very quickly to her circumstances, like counting steps to create a mental map of her surroundings. She also made use of features on devices usually ignored, such as the touch and feel of elevator buttons.

The second test subject simulated attention deficit disorder. He tried reciting a phone number while doing math problems, and had difficulty doing the concurrent tasks. He would get the math problems //and// the phone number wrong. As a result, his self esteem became negatively impacted. I found this interesting, as this is not a usual connection; a good example of why bodystorming is useful.

The third subject simulated chronic arthritis. Unusual effects were observed; the subject had increased anxiety in all tasks, for fear of injury. This led to a rise in body temperature, further increasing anxiety. The researchers realized that speech recognition systems were important for people with arthritis, as well as safer utensils.