Personality, perspective, and funny pencils
“Shifting perspective,” as mentioned on the Adaptive Path blog, is an important strategy when designing something that will be used by other people. This video shows a series of experiences, each from an object’s point of view; whether the object is a skateboard, a railroad gate, a robot, or a door handle, each perspective you consider reveals new problems, concerns, and contexts. (Maybe the next step is to consider the pen from the paper’s point of view and the robot from the ball’s point of view.) Anyway, here’s the post/video: “Shifting Perspectives” / “From the Object’s Point of View”
Obviously, these objects aren’t alive. But on the other hand, personality can be a useful device for communication and usability. Cennydd Bowles writes about the forms of personality that appear in technology and their relevance to a product’s usability and effectiveness. “Does technology need personality?”
On a side note, here’s a funny idea: a pencil with a pencil on the other end, so you can celebrate your mistakes instead of erasing them—mistakes are, of course, an essential part of the process.