Friday, July 26, 2013

In 20 Years, We’re All Going To Realize This Apple Ad Is Nuts

APPLE’S "DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA" AD INADVERTENTLY DEMONSTRATES THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF THE PERSONAL ELECTRONICS AGE, AND ONCE YOU SEE IT, YOU CAN’T UNSEE IT.

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“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product.”

These are the opening words of Apple’s heartstring-tugging "Designed In California" commercial. Read them to yourself a few times. Then wonder why someone inside the company didn’t insist upon this copy edit:

“This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a person.”

Watch the ad closely for me. As we’re told that products are what matter, we see a series of shots in which people actively turn away from life to engage with their technology.

A woman closes her eyes on the subway to soak in electronic music.
A room of students looks down at their desks instead of at their teacher.
A parent and child cuddle, focused on a screen that’s so powerful it illuminates the kid’s face.
A couple kisses in the rain, then immediately turn away to look at a phone.
A tourist opts to FaceTime instead of bathing in visceral, smoky yakitori.

In what should be a warm, humanizing montage, people are constantly directing their attention away from one another and the real, panoramic world to soak in pixels. They’re choosing the experience of their products over the experience of other people several times in quick succession. And Apple has a warm voice in the background, goading us on.

This is a crazy world. Please tell me you see it, too.

Now I’m not saying the ad isn’t representative of real human behavior. Indeed, since Apple changed the world with the iPhone’s multitouch screen, the fundamental interactions behind our gadgets are designed to constantly lure us back into the four-inch world, nudging us with vibration, push notifications, and impromptu xylophone solos to almost touch all of the people in our lives doing the same thing on another four-inch screen somewhere else.

My fundamental problem with the ad--why it’s begun to make my shoulders tense and stomach churn every time it comes on TV--is not that it’s lying about how we use technology, but Apple’s consecrating the behavior, and even going on to say that their products, not the lives they serve, are “what matters.“ That outlook is so different from Apple’s other recent, non-advertised piece on design.

Ironically, in Apple’s flag-planting ad about design, their marketing department (and at least a few execs) have shown how fundamentally little they understand about the field. Design is at its heart a service for humanity, it’s crafting solutions for people to live with more security, efficiency, or happiness. So the experience of a product will never be what matters to a great designer. It’s always been about the experience of a person using that product.

It’s the most subtle, most important difference that this ad buries under its own hubris. And the commercial’s own audience seems to agree.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

WHY SUMMER MAKES US SO UNPRODUCTIVE

THE DOG DAYS TAKE A BITE OUT OF YOUR WORKFLOW. SCIENCE IS HERE TO EXPLAIN WHY THAT IS.

BY: DRAKE BAER

Do you have the feeling that summer is your least productive season? As Maria Konnikova reports in the New Yorker, it may just be a part of human nature. And the nature of heat.

"Our brains do, figuratively, wilt," she says.

But what's with the wilting? Why do the dog days make our minds melt, during a season where we can indeed be productive? Research suggests at least three options:

we'd rather be doing other, more summer-y things,
the humidity makes us stupid,
the heat makes us feel good, which makes us stupid

Let's find out exactly why. You may wish to bring a Popsicle.

WE WANT TO PLAY

Better weather places less emphasis on workflow fidelity, as a 2012 study between Harvard and the University of North Carolina demonstrated. During one portion of the experiment, students were given data entry. Konnikova recaps the hilarity that ensued:

The students were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: before starting to work, they were either shown six photographs of outdoor activities in nice weather, such as sailing or eating outdoors, or were asked to describe their daily routines. The researchers found that participants were less productive when they’d viewed pleasant outdoor photographs. Instead of focussing on their work, they focussed on what they’d rather be doing—whether or not it was actually sunny or rainy outside (though the effect was stronger on sunny days). The mere thought of pleasant alternatives made people concentrate less.

Fascinatingly, it's not just in the option to opt out of data entry and go play in the grass that is a part of summer's productivity-sapping sweetness: Other research has shown that during higher temperatures, people are prone to what psychologists call "heuristic thinking." That is, the unexamined, superficial thought processes that rely on mental shortcuts instead of critical thinking. (To wade deeply into the critical and uncritical systems, read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow--one of our fave popular psychology books.)

And if it's not the heat, it's the humidity: Mugginess, Konnikova reports, reduces concentration, too.

WE FEEL GOOD, SO WE DON'T THINK GOOD

But the emotional input of summer may have the most intuitive--and strange--results. People tend to be happier in the summer, research has shown, and the better people feel, the less vigilant they are about their thinking. A similar example has been found in the way your playlist relates to your workflow: If you're nodding your head to the beat, you're getting energized, but if you're singing along with Frank Ocean, you're getting distracted.

A hidden key to a productive summer, then, may be getting a little grumpy.

SEE VAN GOGH PAINTINGS COME TO LIFE BEFORE YOUR EYES

BY: JENNIFER MILLER

An artist brings animated life--and shadow--to painted masterpieces.

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Italian artist Luca Agnani has done an odd thing with Van Gogh: He’s animated 13 of the legend’s paintings. We’re not talking Loony Toons here; these animations are subtle--the flickering of candles, the lapping of waves, and sunlight brightening a room. "Van Gogh rarely used shadows, and I was curious to see how his work would have looked if he did," says Agnani. "Working on the paintings of any other painter would have been easier, but this challenged me to interpret Van Gogh’s perspective." Among the paintings are Bedroom, in which all visuals are static except for a singular shadow. Other paintings, like Evening the Watch (after Millet)convey more action.

In order, here are the paintings Agnani brought to life:

1. Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries
2. The Langlois Bridge at Arles
3. Farmhouse in Provence
4. The White House at Night
5. Still Life
6. Evening The Watch (after Millet)
7. View of Saintes-Maries
8. Bedroom
9. Factories at Asnieres Seen
10. The White House at Night
11. Restaurant
12. First Steps (after Millet)
13. Self-Portrait