devices

communication devices: technology and industry developments

suffering from bad design

Imagine sitting inside a car on a blistering hot day, with the windows rolled up, without air conditioning, waiting 20 minutes for the car’s security system to reboot after you placed a call to roadside assistance. That’s a bad distribution of control logic. A human confronting exceptional circumstances is likely to be better able to … Continue reading suffering from bad design

more on distributing computing

Developing good social networking technology requires thinking about distributing computing between humans and computers. Way back in 2002, a human-computer interface designer discussed some problems with the then-trendy idea of context-aware computing: I suggest rather than trying to take humans out of the control loop, we keep them in the loop. Computational systems are good … Continue reading more on distributing computing

Not on speaker phone, on social mode!

Device design is a significant problem for a show-and-tell communicator. Designing a “phone” that integrates talking and showing would be a useful project for a design school class. Re-describing features is less costly than redesigning devices. Speaker phones are used for long, boring meetings. But a social mode is just what teenagers need. That’s right … Continue reading Not on speaker phone, on social mode!