TED TALKS TUESDAYS!
Tuesday’s always bring a fresh TED talk featuring interesting “ideas worth spreading”. This week’s TED talk, featuring Seth Godin, was especially applicable. Godin spent a large majority of his “talk” being our tour guide to “broken things” and making them unbroken. He pointed out humorous and often poorly designed public service announcements and warning signs. He also points out seven reasons that he believes the designs don’t work. I liked his third point which was that the design could be broken because things changed in between the time it was designed and the time the design got used. Our world (particularly where technology is concerned!) is fast paced and it can be a struggle to keep up. Designs should be made to last. Godin’s energy and enthusiasm was refreshing and I found myself wishing his talk was a bit longer – which would have also given him time to explain more fixes for broken things. In my google searching, I found that on Seth’s Blog he wrote,
“I did this talk about three years ago. I have to admit that very little in the way of progress has occurred.”
Well, I suppose it might finally be time to change this.
This TED talk was worth the second viewing and I would highly suggest that if you liked it the first time, you give it a second go. His list of seven reasons why the designs don’t work are good to remember.
Additionally, the website that Seth Godin mentions gives even more examples of poor design. Ironically, the design of the website isn’t totally appealing and comes off a bit boring.
However, I do recommend the content for its entertainment value as well as more of Godin’s unique talking/writing style. In viewing this website, I also realized that it functions much like the journaling work we’ve been doing with designs that are working and not working. For example, one person wrote in to criticize the design of the Chevy Impala’s AC design.
“At night, this is very readable and easy to see. However, during the day, the blue LED is very hard to find in all the chrome reflections – it takes a concentrated effort to tell where the dial is pointed.” – Doug Shaefer
ARE YOU INDISPENSIBLE?
I also looked a bit further into Seth Godin’s work and found that he wrote a book called “Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?”
The description of the book says that it is more than a how-to, but rather that it pushes you to see things differently and make changes. Godin said about this book:
“a linchpin is the essential element, the person who holds part of the operation together. Without the linchpin, the thing falls apart.”
Not so surprisingly, this got me thinking about the UX Design Team Projects that we are currently working on. I don’t mean to get sappy or sentimental, but I think it is important to remind ourselves that we are each a linchpin in this project. Each one of us has a distinct role in the assignment and we are not as interchangeable as we may seem. Group projects can often be stressful and cause us to crave a temporary coma allowing us a grace period in which we don’t have to complete the assignment and can leave our group members to do it. That being said, the group presentations this week of the work done so far showed some excellent ideas and a really interesting dynamic in each group that I’m excited to keep up with.
IN CLOSING
Phase two of our UX Design Team project is upon us which means task flows, wireframes, and design brainstorming are all due. Thank goodness we already know how to do these things. Good luck to everyone !
Principles of Usability 