The Age of Man

Last night, I was zapping trough the channels on my TV, looking for something to occupy my mind or empty it (depending how you view your TV), after a quick round of channels, I discovered that there is nothing good to see (expected) and just left the TV on a random channel – some music or show and took my computer to read RSS feeds.

My girlfriend always complains about the way I zap trough the channels, she says she can’t see anything like that.

Well, for me it’s good enough.

After some reading I found out I am listening to a great music concert – Tori Amos (she is great!).

Now, how didn’t I notice this when doing my channels round?

I think it has something to do with the way we gather information in this time and age, we get quick pieces of data and make quick, flat based, decisions.

It’s all quick quick quick, cut, cut, cut, I am going through my RSS feeds, interesting, not interesting, sometime based on the first word of the feed header.

Many people complain that we don’t stop any more to smell the flowers, I agree (like the concert).

So?

I think the age of man is finally here. Human is not meant to read long boring articles, we gather the data on the surface, and make quick decisions, and move on to the next topic in line.

If we lost time we lost.

So?

As interaction designers we have to keep that in mind. We are not designing so the user will have the complete set of information; we design in order to get a user to make a decision.

What does this mean?

It means we need to always keep in mind what is the desired decision we want to generate and provide the crumbs of data the user eat in the easiest and fastest way possible.

And with this note, listen to Tori, she is great, and once in a while, stop to smell the flowers, you might discover there’s flowers there.