“Yeah well Neville Shute is a master of sensuality. He has some wonderful erotic passages, like in ‘A Town Called Alice’ in the hardcover version, page 81. If you go down the library, it falls open at that page.”

http://www.uiandus.com/2009/05/20/cognitive-science/beausage/

2) Diego Rodriguez wrote a post a while back ( http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2005/05/beausage.html ) about products becoming more beautiful with use – I wonder if that’s the same thing as Crosbie’s thought above (albeit with ‘trust’ and ‘authenticity’ replacing ‘beauty’

Pictures aren’t online yet, but I did see this at the Grand Place in Brussels last week with the rub-her-leg-for-good-luck (?) bas-relief, but otherwise, for a couple of examples, see http://www.portigal.com/blog/desire-lions/

I love the idea of designing to enable wear marks. I’ve seen that done as an investigative method, laying down a layer to dust to and later seeing what’s been disturbed.

That’s a fun insight: using the techniques of faux antiquing as a control device. Could a shop keeper do something to his entry that signaled to random consumers that everybody else steps into his shop? Could you run with the idea of those faux page corners on web pages to creating affordances that signal everybody uses me.

Perhaps one could adjust the contrast of menu options based on popularity? Or even create finger wear ‘halos’. Perhaps as with Star Wars, we’ll soon see the introduction of grime into GUIs to provide the subtle cues as to what’s been exposed to use and what’s brand new? Perhaps grime and use lends legitimacy? If you haven’t been exposed to the elements, been exposed to the grubby hands and fingers of the masses, then you haven’t been tried and tested.

Akin to the introduction of scratches and crackle into music on CD? Pre-worn jeans? Pre-loved teddy bears? Distressed furniture? Fake verdigris?

*Click my name to link to photo

Deep packet inspection can be used to sniff packets for copyright violations, just as MPAA-trained dogs can sniff packages for the tell-tale sign of burned CDs.

Clicks and beacons can tell you where a person goes on the Internet; cell phone trackers in malls can do the same with real customers.

Etc.

I’m reminded of keypad locks whose designers may not have foreseen a compromise in security through ‘digital’ wear and tear on the keypad – especially as many of them don’t rely upon digit order (a vital detail they prefer not to inform the purchasers/users of).

I’d also make the observation that in betraying use, wear, or rather a lack of wear, can thus betray that which is not useful.

My guess (from past observations) would be that it stems from the situation where two or more people are looking at the map, trying to make sense of it. The first thing they do is scan for ‘you are here’. The first person who spots it then puts their index finger on it to point it out to their friends.

So perhaps it’s possible to infer from the use-mark how usable the design of the ‘you are here’ mark is. ie the more its worn out, the harder it is to initially spot, leading to people feeling a greater urge to physically point it out to the person they’re with.

You’d have to control for factors such as the length of time the map has been in place, and the estimated number of people using it, but this would be an interesting theory to test!