A while back, I asked (and sought to answer) the question, “Can you know something if you didn’t learn it?” The question I was pondering today is, “Can you know something, and apply that knowledge, without understanding it?”
The short answer, I believe, is yes. Need to give some more thought to the long answer.
In one of our local grocery stores, mayonnaise is located in the aisle with salad dressing. In another, mayonnaise is located with condiments (such as ketchup and mustard).
According to Wikipedia, mayonnaise is a condiment. A variety of sources talk about mayonnaise as a base for, but not necessarily being, salad dressings of various sorts.
What intrigues me here is the decision making process of the store managers or, if there is such a thing, the “person who decides what products get placed on what shelf in which aisle” when evaluating where they should shelve mayonnaise in their store.
And, even more so, how they came to these different decisions.
When designing and building restrooms in public facing spaces, for example at a restaurant or a gas station, there are many things to consider. How many stalls and/or urinals, how many sinks, paper or air dryers, etc. Some of this, I’m sure, is dictated by public law, some by architectural standards, and some (I hope, anyway) is determined by the artistic and aesthetic desires of the designers themselves.
Having been at a few places over the weekend, I noticed something else about the design of these spaces that hadn’t occurred to me before: in some places, the Men’s room was on the right, and in some places it was the Women’s room that was on the right. And some doors open in, some open out.
Which got me wondering:
What is the decision-making process that goes into deciding which restroom – Men or Women – goes on the right, and which goes on the left? Which door opens out and which opens in? And what about those occasional “family” restrooms, what goes into the planning for those in terms of their placement?
The absolute best user interface idea ever in a car is that little arrow next to the fuel pump icon on the fuel gauge, you know the one I mean. (And if you’ve never noticed this before, you’re welcome 🙂
Maybe not absolutely necessary after you’ve had your car for a while, but very (very) useful when driving an unfamiliar car, like a rental. Other than that, I have to admit never really paying much attention to the fuel gauge in a car (at least not until the low fuel light starts blinking!). Not until I found myself in one of those aforementioned rental cars, anyway.
In my experience the fuel gauge in most vehicles, such as my Nissan Frontier, is based on textual indicators, specifically Full and Empty.
On the other hand, the VW Passat I once rented had a a gauge based on numerical indicators, with a full tank represented by 1 and an empty tank interestingly not indicated by either text or number.
Having the fuel gauge top out at 1, with the halfway point being 1/2 and empty (presumably) 0, is somewhat reasonable in a mathematical sense. And interestingly, the value of “half” works in either/both the textual and numerical senses.
But most people aren’t really interested in the math of the situation, they’re not thinking, “Oh, I’m almost at zero fuel.” They’re thinking (as the low fuel light blinks at them), “Oh, the tank is almost empty.”
I can’t help wondering how the systems engineers and the user experience team at VW decided to use 1 to indicate a full tank. What was the decision-making process, and what were the evaluation criteria? Is this a case of engineers being engineers? Perhaps a cultural thing, something uniquely German? Or is there something else at play here?
If you know, please share.
Have you ever noticed, when you pay with a credit/debit card just about anywhere, after the questions to enter your PIN, do you want cash back, etc., the machine asks you a question along the lines of, “$99.99, is this OK?”
Well, chances are it’s not OK. But chances are very good that it is correct.
This is one of those things that I’ve noticed, and sometimes commented on (to the obvious pain of the cashier, “No, it’s not OK”), for a while. But it wasn’t until I saw one recently that actually said, “$99.99, is this correct?” that I really noticed it.
And wondered why the rest of them don’t do it that way, too.
I like movies. I watch them a lot. Probably too much. Though I of course prefer good movies, “good” is a randomly moving target sometimes. I have been known to get sucked into what turns out to be just an awful movie, but still get something out of it. This comes in large part from my interest in the overall process of making a film, my appreciation of a movie beyond just the story.
To me, watching a movie and only seeing/hearing the story is like looking at the Mona Lisa and just seeing a portrait of a woman. It’s not just “a” work of art that appeals to me, it is from an appreciation of “the work” of art that I derive pleasure. Everything that went into it.
You probably won’t be surprised that I often enjoy the “making of” documentaries (audio, visual, written) as much, or even more, than the actual thing being made. And this isn’t limited to just movies. I love it when bands include mini-documentaries with CD releases, and interviews or talks by authors about how they developed the ideas and narratives of books simply fascinates me.
It’s hard to overstate how much I’ve learned from them.
I started and saved a draft of a post titled “In defense of meetings” back in summer of 2013. Just a title, no content, not even any notes. I have no idea what I had in mind to write. My guess is that it was something to counter the assertion that “meetings are toxic” put forth in the book Rework back in 2010.
That assertion, of course, resonates with anyone who has ever had to endure a meeting culture in their work. Meetings for the sake of meetings. Meetings to plan the next meeting. Meetings to talk about what was discussed in the most recent meetings. How are you supposed to get any work done with all these meetings?
More recently I’ve put to paper (well, screen) some thoughts on Meetings in the age of working out loud, in which I too bemoan the time spent in meetings when we have all these great collaboration tools we can use to keep everyone “in the loop.” And there is no lack of others who express a similar sentiment, for example Email is A Problem, But Meetings Are the Collaboration Issue. « Simon Terry.
More recently still I’ve been involved in conversations with other members of Agitare about meeting design, looking not at the day-to-day (sometimes hour-to-hour) meetings that plague organizations but rather at the possibilities and potential of well designed meetings beyond the “everyone get together in the same room (physical or virtual) and we’ll go around the room so everyone can say what they want to say” meeting that is so typical in most work places. (Wow, that was a long sentence.)
As part of these conversations I let them know about the great work in this area my friends at Filament are doing here in St. Louis.
WE DESIGN, FACILITATE & HOST AMAZING IN-PERSON AND VIRTUAL MEETINGS THAT HELP SMART PEOPLE THINK TOGETHER BETTER.
Filament
I in turn have discovered some great resources about meeting design, most notably the book Meeting Design by Kevin R. Hoffman. In an excerpt from chapter two posted on A List Apart, Hoffman focuses on the one design constraint all meetings share: the ability of the participants to remember the discussion. From the excerpt:
The brain shapes everything believed to be true about the world. On the one hand, it is a powerful computer that can be trained to memorize thousands of numbers in random sequences.1 But brains are also easily deceived, swayed by illusions and pre-existing biases. Those things show up in meetings as your instincts. Instincts vary greatly based on differences in the amount and type of previous experience. The paradox of ability and deceive-ability creates a weird mix of unpredictable behavior in meetings. It’s no wonder that they feel awkward.
Meeting Design by Kevin R. Hoffman
I’m looking forward to digging into this deeper.
no straight lines 