The cult of good design
Brighton left me buzzing with new ideas. I began to think about monkeys, Madison Avenue and how to avoid being recruited by the Moonies.
I have a renewed appreciation for getting out there and blowing some money going to conferences. On one hand my bean-counter mentality says don’t do it – buy a book, it’s cheaper. The problem is knowing which books to buy. I had forgotten that reading feeds, papers and blogs is only part of the story. Going down to dConstruct at the Brighton Dome made me rediscover the value of real networks. Experiencing knowledgeable, well written presentations in person has dynamic, context and intonation which is rarely (rather ironically) captured via electronic networks. Facebook is trivial and sucks by comparison.
Please give Joshua Porter a medal for probably the most valuable presentation - Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design . Joshua introduced some well known Madison Avenue ideas to a whole new audience. I think it’s fair to say that Social Psychology is fairly unknown to the average web designer who probably tends to design from the hip. Porter’s ideas while not new did get us thinking about the bias of loss aversion, crowds and ownership, and how we could apply these principles to good design.
I ventured down to the book shop following the conference and came across Robert Levine’s The Power of persuasion: how we’re brought and sold which expands many of Joshua’s presentation points – but wait, there’s more. It’s goldmine for the manipulative at heart covering attitudes found in advertising, supermarket product placement and cults.
Joshua himself is currently applying his cunningness to his new venture Chimp. A plug for Chimp is the least we can do to say thanks. I did get a nice T-shirt with a picture of a monkey on it which I am now wearing as I revisit Machiavelli’s The Prince for more ideas about design. Exciting stuff.
Tags: Brighton Dome, Ch.imp, Conference, dConstruct, electronic networks, Joshua Porter, Madison Avenue, Robert Levine, Social Psychology
