Designing for the Sandbox
A very insightful design concept - control vs. non control ...
"People who design experiences often believe that in order to succeed they must exert complete control. And while in extremely rare instances they might be afforded the opportunity to dictate an entire environment (say, in a casino, or a theme park), when designing for the real world, for the ebb and flow of actual lives, such control is impossible. Often, the designer's response is to exert as much control as possible on their portion of this world. (Jeff found out this sad fact when reviewing submissions to an interactive design competition.) In fact, the best thing a designer can do is dictate *as little as possible.* Because the point isn't to control, it's to connect--to weave your offering into the complexity of people's life experiences, to allow them to figure out how to make sense of your offering within their world.
In my head, I've been calling this "designing for the sandbox." This acknowledges a space for content, tools, and people to interact and create their own meaningful experience. This is not a monolithic creation, that dictates how the content, tools, and people best interact. This is instead reminiscent of David Weinberger's phrase "small pieces loosely joined" -- things that connect, but aren't bolted onto one another.
The example I've been thinking of compares Ofoto with Flickr. Ofoto wants nothing more than to exert control. Hell, if I post photos to Ofoto, and want you to see them, you have to register to do so. Flickr wants nothing more to do than provide a space for interaction. Post your photos. Others can see them, no hassles. Connect photos with tags, groups, sets. Connect with people. Flickr has simply provided us a database of photos, people, and tags, with some ways to loosely join them, and let us go to town." continued ... (Via peterme)
"People who design experiences often believe that in order to succeed they must exert complete control. And while in extremely rare instances they might be afforded the opportunity to dictate an entire environment (say, in a casino, or a theme park), when designing for the real world, for the ebb and flow of actual lives, such control is impossible. Often, the designer's response is to exert as much control as possible on their portion of this world. (Jeff found out this sad fact when reviewing submissions to an interactive design competition.) In fact, the best thing a designer can do is dictate *as little as possible.* Because the point isn't to control, it's to connect--to weave your offering into the complexity of people's life experiences, to allow them to figure out how to make sense of your offering within their world.
In my head, I've been calling this "designing for the sandbox." This acknowledges a space for content, tools, and people to interact and create their own meaningful experience. This is not a monolithic creation, that dictates how the content, tools, and people best interact. This is instead reminiscent of David Weinberger's phrase "small pieces loosely joined" -- things that connect, but aren't bolted onto one another.
The example I've been thinking of compares Ofoto with Flickr. Ofoto wants nothing more than to exert control. Hell, if I post photos to Ofoto, and want you to see them, you have to register to do so. Flickr wants nothing more to do than provide a space for interaction. Post your photos. Others can see them, no hassles. Connect photos with tags, groups, sets. Connect with people. Flickr has simply provided us a database of photos, people, and tags, with some ways to loosely join them, and let us go to town." continued ... (Via peterme)
2 Comments:
I've just bought adobe photoshop offered for cheap at http://www.software-cheap.net but they sell it without the box and manual. Just want to know what's there so special in the manual taking in account that i've been working with photoshop?
recomendations?
There is good information in the manual but you can get buy with the online help.
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