Tag : psychology

What is Information Design?

Coined by Richard Saul Wurman in 1976, Information Design is a field and approach to designing clear, understandable communications by giving care to structure, context, and presentation of data and information, in the effort of making information as effective as possible.  According to the Information Design Institute: information design is the defining, planning, and shaping of [...]

Education in China: universities asked to include romance in courses

Can romance be taught? Is falling in love so important that it has to be included in courses in universities?

Watch Oliver Sacks’ “What hallucination reveals about our minds” talk at TED

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnet syndrome — when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon [...]

Watch Philip Zimbardo prescribe a healthy take on time at TED

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives [...]

Watch Peter Morville’s “The Future of Search” talk at IxDA | Interaction ‘10 Conference

In this talk, Peter Morvile defines a pattern language for search that embraces user psychology and behavior, multisensory interaction, and emerging technology [...]

[EVENT] IxDA Shanghai presents “An evening of conversation about Design, Interaction, Work and Life” with Marc Rettig: May 25th, 2010, 6:30PM

In the midst of a global conversation about change, many designers are pondering their own impact in the world. How does our experience in software interfaces, web sites, and physical products prepare us to address the profound issues humanity is facing? These issues involve many complex systems, systems too big to fit into the scope of any single company or institution. Design methods are potent at large scale and scope, but what does it take to be effective as a practitioner, as a team, as a company? What is it like to actually achieve a meaningful, sustainable, positive difference in life? In this evening of conversation, Marc Rettig will moderate a few discussions about the fundamentals of design work, and the need for designers everywhere to be working to have impact beyond making money for their employers [...]

Watch Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” talk at TED

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied [...]

Watch Tim Brown’s “Innovation Through Design Thinking” talk at MIT Sloan School of Management

Not so long ago, Tim Brown recounts, designers belonged to a “priesthood.” Given an assignment, a designer would disappear into a back room, “bring the result out under a black sheet and present it to the client.” Brown and his colleagues at IDEO, the company that brought us the first Apple Macintosh mouse, couldn’t have traveled farther from this notion [...]

Watch Steven Pinker’s “Language and Thought” talk at TED

In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds — and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize [...]

Design in China: differences between Western and Chinese Consumers

Tom Doctoroff, North Asia Director of JWT Advertising, shares some interesting angles on Chinese consuming patterns: The Chinese consumer is becoming increasingly modern and internationalized. However, while “egos” and ambitions are huge, the “new generation” is not becoming “individualistic” in the Western sense — i.e., the peoples never define themselves independent of society. The middle class, those who can afford non-essential items, is torn between two impulses. The first is projection of status which leads to a desire to be noticed (in public contexts), aggressive self-expression and experimentation with new modes of style and design. The second, in vivid contrast to the projection, is protection, a fear of sticking out too obviously or challenging existing hierarchies and social restrictions. The Chinese saying — “the leading goose gets shot down” — is as true today as it was yesterday [...]