Friday quote: Friction

“If the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the Industrial Designer has failed.”
Henry Dreyfuss, Designing for People, 1955

Cognitive friction is one thing, and generally a result rather than a deliberate strategy; process friction is something else, and can very much be a deliberate strategy, as well [...]

Biting Apple

Interesting to see the BBC’s summary of the current iPhone update story: “Apple issues an update which damages iPhones that have been hacked by users”. I’m not sure that’s quite how Apple’s PR people would have put it, but it’s interesting to see that whoever writes those little summaries for the BBC website found it [...]

Mentor Teaching Machines: The ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Textbooks

An Introduction to SI Metric and Applications of SI Metric, published by Mentor Textbook Teaching Machines of London, 1971.
Back in January, in a post looking at the use of forcing functions in education, I mentioned a type of textbook I remembered having somewhere which guided the user through learning in a kind of ‘choose your [...]

New, more concrete opportunities

School of Engineering & Design, Tower A, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex.
After a month of lifting and shifting boxes, frantic cleaning, driving lots of different vehicles, and dealing with bureaucracy, I’ve now moved house and started my PhD at Brunel; with broadband now set up, and enough space to sit with a laptop amid the not-yet-unpacked [...]