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Maybe tiki taka, like democratic government, is fast emerging as the only game in town, meaning we will all soon inhabit Barney Ronay’s personal dystopia where every team plays like Barcelona, passing sideways until they reach the edge of the earth. Somehow I doubt it.
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I see an analogy between the process of science and of evolution by natural selection. For evolution, too, is characterized by periods of stasis (= normal science) punctuated by brief periods of accelerated change (= paradigm shifts) based on mutations (= anomalies) most of which are lethal (false theories) but some lead to the budding off of new species and phylogenetic trends (=paradigm shifts).
— Vilayanur Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor with the Psychology from Responses | 2011 Annual Question | Edge
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Design for a world where Google is your homepage, Wikipedia is your CMS, and humans, software developers and machines are your users.
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What’s the take-away? When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
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On pause
I’m sitting in a restaurant. I pick up the menu and my choice is made: Eggs Benedict it is. The waiter approaches – he’s called Dave – and I place my order. Dave dutifully records my choice, smiles and retreats to the kitchen.
With little more than a grunt, Hans (the chef) takes the order from Dave and sets to work on my breakfast. He’s done this a million times.
After just a few minutes, Hans has finished; “Service”. Dave returns and in one swift motion the eggs benedict pass from hot plate to waiter’s arm and begin their journey back to my table.
I pretend I don’t notice him re-entering the dining room but secretly I’m thrilled. As Dave approaches the table, my silent mental preparation gives way to the physical. Knife, fork: armed. Dish placed. “Thanks. This looks lovely.” And it is.
Restaurant service reminds of the web. And by the web I mean the original sir-tim-at-cern-web-as-pages-connected-by-hyperlinks version. Substitute me for the user, Dave for the browser & Hans for the server and you have a stupidly tenuous analogy for the experience of loading a web page.
Tenuous it may be but both processes – ordering food in a restaurant, requesting a page from a web server – have one thing in common. They are asynchronous. Each step of the process has to wait until the preceding one has finished before it can start.
In a restaurant the ‘wait’ is part of the experience. I’d go as far as to say I enjoy this. There’s an element of theatre to the whole thing wouldn’t you say?
Of course on the web, the wait is over in split seconds. But it is undeniably part of the experience. Rendering engines get faster, bandwidth gets wider, but there remains a momentary pause between clicking that submit button and the confirmation page loading. Watch closely. It’s surprising how often you see a blank screen between pages, albeit for a millisecond or two. It may not be ‘by design’, but I’d speculate that this is still the most common form of feedback on the web. We’ve become accustomed to it and in a fairly crass way, it works.
Fast forward to the ‘realtime’ web and things have subtly changed. Pages load and the lack of an obvious page refresh means I don’t even notice it. Pretty snazzy I guess. But you know what, I don’t mind the gaps. It gives the web rhythm.
Still, there’s lots of interaction design to be explored. If the native feedback mechanisms of the browser (blank page, loading animation) aren’t enough, we’re going to have to design these ourselves. Something we seem to be pretty bad at so far. iOS has helped demonstrate the gaps between pages (or states) are important to the experience. The transitions are subtle, tasteful and have an element of physicality, but only designers pay attention to them. For everyone else they’re just the seams, the edges of the experience and unbeknown to them, feedback.
Things are changing. Back to my eggs…
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Enduring principle
“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
Composed in 1215, this (design?) principle from The Magna Carter remains as relevant to today’s society as it did some 800 years ago. Atonishing and gratifying in equal measure.
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A gesture is an action that you finish without conscious thought once you have started it. Example: For a beginning typist, typing the letter “t” is a gesture. For a more experienced typist, typing the word “the” is a gesture.
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If you tell your barber that you like it short, but your significant other likes it long, you’re gonna get a mullet.
— http://weblog.muledesign.com/2010/12/giving_better_feedback.php
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It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
— Voltaire
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…let’s be honest: although most of us have plenty of perfectly serviceable spoons, everybody knows collecting cutlery is way more fun than using it to swallow yucky medicine.
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The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
