Design for everybody…
This weekend I was lucky enough to join in a session of SF folks with a passing interest in Cognitive Science talking with Keith Lang of skitch, who put forward an interesting premise:
Most software is designed by men. It is precise, evaluates yes and no in binary, and relies on thinking in hierarchy. He had been referred (by Professor Stephen Pinker no less) to this book about the differences between how men and women think and had some interesting insights about how an interface built for different styles of thinking may have different characteristics…
- more ambiguity
- more concurrent activity
- more emotional engagement
- more interest in the user as a person rather than a task-doer
There was some controversial stuff that made up the premise Firstly that people involved in system creation are typically men with brain patterns that tend towards the highly structured/mathematical – out of necessity because early computers required heavy math. So what would an interface designed by, and for, a broader range of mindsets work.
During the session I was pleased to (personally, I cannot speak for the groups conclusion) arrive at a synthesis of design patterns as metaphor built on metaphor (in the same way that Stephen Pinker describes metaphor in language toward the end of Stuff of Thought) and that early design patterns were necessarily boxed and binary. Listening to the members of the group who were not computer industry guys was quite interesting, it certainly suggests that we need some new patterns.
So let me ask you…
If you were designing an interface for the entire spectrum of how people think/interact – what would it do differently to current applications?
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