Posts Tagged ‘computer’
Extreme makeover: Dell edition
Posted on: April 30, 2009
Here's the lede for Wired magazine's article on Dell's snazzy new PC designs:
Dell has been long been the Ugly Betty of the PC industry–functional, smart but severely lacking in the looks department.
But over the last two years, the company’s consumer-targeted PCs have gotten a design makeover that would make Tyra Banks proud.
I understand the journalistic strategy of including cultural touchstones that will draw readers into an article, but comparing product design to fashion makeovers really underscores the point from Frog Design's Max Burton, quoted in the Wired piece:
"Dell needs to treat design as something that is not superficial," says Max Burton, executive creative director for Frog Design in San Francisco. "What they have right now is more of applique design — [it's] more about finishes than real change to the materials and process."
The focus of the article encourages you to believe that it's only the cosmetic changes that garner attention, create desire, and produce results. The fashionistas that Wired mentions probably want a good-looking computer, true–but what about function? No one wants a beautiful plastic brick (at least, I'd hope not). For products to truly evolve, design needs to consider materials, manufacturing processes, new technologies and thoughtful interface design. And as any Ugly Betty fan knows, true beauty is on the inside, anyway.
The Romance of Objects
Posted on: February 9, 2009
MIT professor Sherry Turkle has a brief piece in Seed encouraging children to fall in love with the world of things after noticing that her students and colleagues developed scientific curiosity “by the physics of sand castles, by playing with soap bubbles, by the mesmerizing power of a crystal radio.”
Objects don’t nudge every child toward science, but for some, a rich object world is the best way to give science a chance.
Objects, Turkle argues, inspire scientific inquiry and encourage children to construct relationships with their environments. Turkle starts with relatively low-tech objects, but even though she touches on beginnings of computer culture, she seems hesitant to include computers in that category of objects that motivate young children to learn. If you pick up some of her books (The Second Self, Evocative Objects) it becomes clearer that—at least with those she’s interviewed, both children and adults—computers are some of the most influential and intimate objects of our lives.
Though Turkle has widened her studies from computer culture to a broader understanding of material culture and the role of objects in our lives, the Seed article merits a second read with a tech context, since that’s the focus of much of her previous research, and, after all, technology is encorporated into many of the objects we use. Replace “object” with “computer”, and the argument becomes a little more contentious:
…Many of us discourage the object passions of children, perhaps out of fear that they will become “trapped,” learning to prefer the company of objects to the company of other children. Indeed, when the world of people is too frightening, children may retreat into the safety of what can be predicted and controlled. This should not give objects a bad name. They can make children feel safe, valuable, and part of something larger than themselves.
Searching for an algorithm for taste
This week’s New York Times Sunday magazine checks in with a few competitors in the Netflix competition. One of the contestants estimates that an accurate predition of whether someone would like the movie Napoleon Dynamite—a film that viewers seem to either love or hate—would put him 15% closer to the algorithm that would earn a $1 million prize.
When Bertoni runs his algorithms on regular hits like “Lethal Weapon” or “Miss Congeniality” and tries to predict how any given Netflix user will rate them, he’s usually within eight-tenths of a star. But with films like “Napoleon Dynamite,” he’s off by an average of 1.2 stars.
According to the article, the “Napoleon Dynamite problem” exposes the “a serious weakness of computers”: their inability to anticipate all of the factors in a person’s decision-making process. Someone could decide to watch a movie after a Blockbuster clerk’s passionate recommendation, or to understand a cultural reference point, or simply to try something different.
Another critic of computer recommendations is, oddly enough, Pattie Maes, the M.I.T. professor. She notes that there’s something slightly antisocial—“narrow-minded”—about hyperpersonalized recommendation systems. Sure, it’s good to have a computer find more of what you already like. But culture isn’t experienced in solitude. We also consume shows and movies and music as a way of participating in society. That social need can override the question of whether or not we’ll like the movie.
An interesting read. [If You Liked This, You’re Sure to Love That | NYTimes]
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