S1E14 – Questions

With this season finale we are answering questions that you, the listeners, have been asking. So, take a few minutes to sit down and listen to us funble around, trying to answer these excelent questions !

You will learn the following

  • Why roofings have a pitch (And we will learn about “The Potatohole)
  • Is there a rotation and trends in design that repeats itself over time?
  • Is the “Decoy effect” only effective for marketing purposes? And how does it relate to bringing your ugly friend to the Disco?

Thank you for listening to our podcast, it have been a blast making it, and we learned so much 🙂

Shownotes

Lego Mindstorm

Bermuda Roofing

The decoy effect
Wiki
Short explainer video
Longer video

If you want to get in contact, or just ask us questions, you can find us here

Martin Whiskin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-whiskin-voiceover/

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabuman/

S1E13 – Season End, “The test”

The season finale is upon us, but fear not, its only a short break while we prepare season 2.

We will be back in September again.

In this episode you will learn if Martin paid attention during class, and that Thorbjorn prepared some really though questions for Martin to answer.

So Quizz along with Martin here, and see if you can get a better result than Martin.

See you in Season 2. Where we improved a lot of things, so dont miss out!

S1E12 – Gestalt

“Alright, folks! Buckle up for another mind-bending episode of Hidden By Design, where we unravel the mysteries of perception with a dash of humor and a sprinkle of wit. Prepare to have your mind blown!

According to the legendary words of Gustave Flaubert, ‘There is no truth. There is only perception.’

In this episode we talk about the fascinating concept of perception from the angle of “Gestalt laws of perceptual organization”.

Your brain is like a supercomputer, taking in the world around you and serving up a customized reality that suits your taste. It’s like your brain is the ultimate DJ, remixing the chaos of the world into a catchy tune that you can groove to.

We will be taking on the laws one by one. From the intriguing ‘Figure Ground’ to the difficult to pronounce ‘Law of Prägnanz,’ we’ll break them down and make them as easy to digest as your favorite snack.

Once you learn these laws, you’ll never look at the world the same way again.

By the time this episode wraps up, you’ll have basic knowledge of the 8 Gestalt laws—Figure Ground, Law of Prägnanz, Uniform Connectedness, Good Continuation, Proximity, Closure, Common Fate, and Similarity.

Thorbjørn ask Martin a LOT of interesting questions and the conversation gets a little be off track, when Martin mentions is Squad cage.. witch for some reason sends Thorbjørn into a “hard to control giggle” – he never knew that there was such a thing!

This brings us to the big takeaway. The world is a crazy place, and our brains are the ultimate simplifiers, which is really good as it enables us to comprehend, but also a thing that is good to be aware of as it will often result in us misleading ourselves.

Join us on this episode, and have some “perception party time!”

Disclaimer: No brains were harmed during the making of this episode. We promise.

There is a lot of references to other episodes, but in particular Episode 3 – The Brain is used as a reference point.

References

https://www.nngroup.com/videos/figure-ground-gestalt/

https://www.andyrutledge.com/gestalt-principles-1-figure-ground-relationship.html

https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/research/projects/DeptIII_Feest_Gestaltpsy#:~:text=The%20three%20founders%20of%20Gestalt,decade%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Flaubert

S1E11 – Emotional Design

Welcome to our latest episode on Hidden by Design where we will be talking about ‘Emotional Design,’ we dive deep into the magical world of aesthetics and its impact on our creativity and problem-solving abilities.

As Don Norman famously stated, ‘attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively.’ And who doesn’t want a little more creativity in their lives?

To understand the nuances of emotional design, we embark on a journey through the depths of our mind (and Marins Guitars, hehe). We will cover the Viceral, Behavioural, and Reflective parts of our psyche, as these elements influence us and our actions as humans, often without us even realizing it.

We explore the different dimensions of design and Functional Design, Reliable Design, Usable Design, and finally Emotional Design. Each layer plays a vital role in creating products and experiences that captivate hearts and minds. But it’s emotional design that adds that extra sprinkle of magic, the cherry on top of the design cake.

Why do we strive to create emotional design, you ask? It’s because we’re not just designers; we’re sorcerers of delight, architects of joy. We understand that our creations have the power to elicit smiles, spark inspiration, and tug at heartstrings. And isn’t that what life’s all about? We want to craft experiences that make people feel something, that leave a lasting impression.

So, buckle up and join us as we unravel the concept of emotional design. Get ready to be enchanted by the fusion of aesthetics and functionality, and remember, as designers, we have the power to make the world a happier and more delightful place, one beautifully crafted experience at a time. Let’s spread some design magic, shall we?”

While listening to this episode we mention Episode 8 – Usability and Measuring Design and Episode 3 – The Brain

Resources

The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman (I know, I know.. I said the wrong title in the podcast)

Emotional Design – Love Everyday things, Don Norman

Chriss Hannon Creative wrote this nice article about emotional design

Interaction-Design.org have this nice post about emotinal design

Topal super post about Emotional Design

Another amazing article from uxdesign

S1E10 – Colours

What do you really know about colours? That there is 3 primary colours, or do you know the colour wheel.. or who invented the colour wheel?

Well, we can promise you, that in this episode of Hidden by Design, we will teach you something that you did not know. If that is not the case, we will do a full refund 😉

We go through the theory of how the eye work, what warm and cold colours are.

In the end, we talk a bit about how you can apply all the things we talked about to the work you do.

And a few fun facts at the end.

Sit down, and enjoy this episode of Hidden By Design

Resources

The Elements of Color – Johannes Itten, Bauhaus

The Art of Color – Johannes Itten, Bauhaus

S1E9 – Mental Models

Perception and reality is two different things!

This is the quote that we start out this episode with, and it set the stage for what you are about to learn.

What is actually there is not the same as what people believe is there. And this creates the foundation for how people will try to interact and operate your designs. Mental models is what users know, or think they know, about a system or object, and how it should be operated. Listen to learn more!

As a designer, or someone who create experiences for others, this is really important to understand, as this is fundamental when creating something nice.

So, what is a conceptual model? And how can you use mental models? This is some of what you will be learning by listening to this episode of Hidden By Design.

Reference:

Sweden and shifting side of driving

Toothpaste, and the feeling of smooth [Link Coming]

Start with why by Simon Sinek

S1E8 – Usability and Measuring Design

Is it possible to meassure how good your design is?

In this episiode we will be discussing Utility and Usability, how they are connected and talk about how this is part of understanding and creating userfriendly design.

There is 5 traits of good usability as described by Nielsen and Normann.
Learnability, Effeciency, Memorability, Errors and Satisfaction

We will go through each of these, and help you understand what they mean and how you can use this understanding to become a better designer.

We are referencing the episodes of Affordance and Conventions, which you should listen to as well as this episode.

Resources

Nielsen and Normann Group – Usability 101 Introduction to usability

Interaction Design.org – Usability

S1E7 – What is intuitive design

Have you ever heard someone say: “Thats not intuitive!” ?

Well, chances are that you have, and especailly, as a designer, you will hear this phrase a lot.

But what does it mean?

In this episode of Hidden by design, we will explore the idea of intuition, and what it means for the way that you experience the world.

You will learn, that intuition is subjective, and it relies on your past experiences.

We talk about what art is (finally, this is the definition you have been waiting for your entire life)

Note: In the episode, I claim that the painting “Red, Yellow and Blue” was destroyed twice, although some believe that is was destroyed twice, once when it was attacked, and again when it was restored. The second real attack on the painting never succeded. I have added a link in the reference section of these shownotes. This was simply a memory slip from my side 😉

Bonus:

After we stopped recording, we had a conversation, and started recording again, as there was more to be said.

References:

Whos afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue

Comedian – Banana Duch taped to a wall

Take the money and run

S1E6 – Noise and Biases

Do you have good judgment? Are you able to reflect properly on available information, and come to a sensible conclusion?

What can affect your ability to come to this conclusion?

Get the answers to all of these question by listening to this episode of Hidden by Design, where we take you through some of the things that will influence your ability to make good decisions, and maintain a good judgement!

You will learn what an Anchor is, how Confirmation Bias affects your beliefs, self assesment bias can help you in your creative journey and how knowing all of this will make you more prone to the negative effects of them in the G.I Joe Bias!

Refrences

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman – Noise: A flaw in human Judgement

S1E5 – Flow

Did you ever say that you were in flow? Most of us have, but have you really thought about what it means, and where the word “flow” comes from?

In this episode of “Hidden by Design” we are going to take you into the realm of optimal experience, and talk a bit about how to get others and yourself into flow, and why this is an extremly important idea, both when you are create User Experience and when doing game Design!

Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.
Søren Kirkegård

You will learn that Flow is an activity, that you are so involved in, that nothing else matters. It’s a complete focus on the task at hand, Where your ego leaves the body.

If you have not heard it, it is a good idea to listen to Episode 3 – The Brain before listening to this episode.

Thank you for listening, this means the world to us.

Resources

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

S1E4 – Constraints and Conventions

Our brains really like that things are the way it believes that things should be! So, how do we determine how our brain believe that things should be?

Give this episode a listen, as we discuss the ideas of constraints and convensions.

I’m in favor of progress; it’s change I don’t like. – Mark Twain

What are constraints and conventions, and how can we use them when doing design?

In the episode we split constraints into 3 categories

  • Physical Constraints (Not big enough, or too big.)
  • Logical Constraints (Can I figure it out, do I have cognitive power)
  • Cultural Constraints (Reading from left to right, Gamers, etc)

This is then related to conventions, which then again leads to talking about the good old days.

Find out all of the basics you need to know about Constraints and Conventions by listening to this Episode of Hidden by Design.

Its a good idea (but not nessecary) to listen to Episode 3 – The Brain, before listening to this one.

Resources

Don Normanns Book – The Design of Everyday Things

S1E3 – The Brain

This Episode will cover how the brain work, and what to be aware of as a designer.

How does the human brain work? (It doesent)
What is Automatic thinking and Reflective thinking? How do we remember things? (We dont)

“Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!” – Homer Simpson

The the answer to all of these questions and much more will be discussed in this Episode of Hidden By Design.

Resources:

100 Things that every designer should know about people

Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Don Normanns Book – The Design of Everyday Things

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking Fast and Slow

S1E2 – Affordance

Affordance is one of the Key ingredients to understand in Design.

Affordance, is a word that is thrown around a lot in Design. But what does it actually means, and how do you approach it as a designer?

We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are! Anaïs Nin? Babylonian Talmud? Immanuel Kant? G. T. W. Patrick? H. M. Tomlinson? Steven Covey? (We do not know who said this)

This episode explains this really difficult topic of what affordances is, and how you should percieve it as a designer. We cover other things like, signifiers, toddlers and their perception of chairs, and a lot of other topics.

Resources

Don Normanns Book – The Design of Everyday Things

JJ Gibsons Idea of Affordance – The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception – Chapter 8

Interactiondesign.org article on Affordance

S1E1 – What is design

Hidden by Design Episode 1 – What is Design

Design, what is it? A question that have a lot of different opinions attached to it.

Design, and the job of a Designer, often gets reduced to “Just make it look pretty” or “This is not intuitive”. But what is design then, if it is not just about making things look great? Get the answer by listen to “Hidden by Design”. In this very first episode will will discuss and set straight what Design really is.

We open up this episode with a quote from a guy called Cast Stengel, an American Baseball player.

Never make predictions, especially about the future! 
Casy Stengel!

This opens up the conversation about the essence of design, that as a designer, your job is to predict the future.

We also touch on the idea of keeping your tounge straight and the difference between computers and human beings.

The conclusion is: Design is planning ahead by making people do or behave in a specific way.

Resources:

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking Fast and Slow

Don Norman – Design of Everyday Things Revised Expanded

The Decision Lab – Decoy Effect

Personal notes for this episode

I was thinking recently, that maybe my notes will make things easier. As you can see, its not everything that we talked about in the show. But these were my initial notes on this episode

Transcript

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:02
Hi, my name is Thorbjørn, and I’m your teacher.

Martin Whiskin 0:06
And my name is Martin, and I’m your student,

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:09
you’re listening to hidden by design, a podcast about design for ordinary people, I guess,

Martin Whiskin 0:16
are you calling me ordinary?

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:17
For everyone? A podcast about design for everyone. We believe that the most pleasurable and best design is the design you don’t see. That’s why it’s called Hidden by design, and the kind of design that works without you noticing. Typically, if you notice that you don’t notice the design, that’s when you will notice that it’s just a nice experience. Everything we say in the show is our own opinion, and interpretation of current knowledge and how that trends are. And what’s happening. And it’s what we understand. Now. We might be right, we might be wrong. But it doesn’t really matter. If you think we’re wrong, and you want to challenge what we’re talking about and what we’re saying or what I’m teaching, then just write us, because we hope to become better designers and smarter people. And to use this in our everyday life. Thank you for listening.

Never make predictions, especially about the future. My name is Thorbjørn. And I’m a designer. I have a small game company that I run, where I also do design. And I’m accompanied today by Martin, who im attempting to I guess, to teach about design.

Martin Whiskin 1:40
I haven’t I haven’t had a teacher for about 25 years. Soooo

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:46
I promise I won’t be strict.

Martin Whiskin 1:47
Well, I quite like that. So

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:50
All right. All right. Then there’ll be district teacher talk, Martin, will you introduce yourself?

Martin Whiskin 1:54
Yeah. So my name is Martin whisking. And I’m a voice over artist, and I’m part of the poly spice team. And yeah, I’m here because I know nothing about design or seemingly know nothing about design. We’ve had a chat about this last week. And it appears that I did know about design, but didn’t know that I knew about design. I hope that makes sense.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 2:15
Exactly. Well, hopefully after this episode, it will be making sense to because design is everywhere. And it’s in everything. And I think you know today’s episode, which is just what is design is going to be talking about the specific bits about everywhere. Because like design is everywhere. The Quote of today, which is never make predictions, especially about the future is the exact opposite of what design is. It’s a dude called Casey Stengel, which I have no idea who is saying it’s just a quote. There’s a quote I found on the internet, which is, you know, you find stuff there

Martin Whiskin 2:57
Could be a complete nobody.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 2:58
Exactly, exactly. The other one was from a guy called Yogi Berra. So, so, yeah. So, I think, you know, we kind of covered, it’s not that difficult, like the core, or the big concept of what design is, is planning ahead or predicting the future. And there’s really not much more to it. And so as a designer, really, you have a lot of tools that you can work with, in order to trying to plan ahead and predicting the future. And typically, you will do that with, you know, either shaping the, the path that I use, or we call it an actor, and I’m going to explain that in a minute. But someone using an object or like a designed thing is, you know, we create as a designer, you create a decision architecture, you, you plan ahead by saying, Alright, the user will do this at this point. And that will make them understand that then they can do this at the next stage. So, you know, if we want to advance it a little bit, like make it a little bit more advanced in terms of planning ahead, then one of the tools that we have as designers is that the knowledge that, that in order to do that, there’s a relationship between an actor, which is, you know, an actor can be a lot of things. It can be an audience, or it can be individual, it the actor is the person or the persons that you’re trying to get to do something. So the actor has to really

Could it be an animal?

It could be an animal, it absolutely could be an animal

Martin Whiskin 4:45
I try to think of things that that things that weren’t humans that might have to react to something

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 4:50
exactly. So it’s you know, the act can be anything, it could also be a machine and so can the object. So you have you have this You know, relationship between an actor and an object. And you know, the object could also be anything, it can be a speech, or it can be, you know, an emotion or anything, but you can react to that object, and the relationship between the actor and the object is designed. And so typically you will have the actor and an object in an environment. And so the understanding of the environment in relation to myself, if we just take the simple model and say, an actor is a person, then that person is an environment. And, and I understand myself in this environment, which makes me capable of understanding my relationship with the object that that I the designer is creating. This is me trying to make it very, very simple. But does it make sense?

Martin Whiskin 5:57
yes.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 5:57
that you have these three, you know, the environment that you’re in, and the actor and the objects, and then you make that decision architecture between the actor and the objects, you create decisions that I have to make in order to go. So if you put an animal as an actor in a maze, which it’s the object, but also the environment, you can make them, you know, follow a specific path. If you don’t make any junctions, you will just make them go from one end to the other. And so that’s the design right? So a thing that, that people generally understand is computers, right? In when you’re a programmer, or a developer, what you do is typically make a computer do something. So in many ways, you’re, you know, you’re designing for a robot or a computer. And, and so here is, as a designer, you really have to keep your tongue straight, or I don’t know, is there an English expression? In Denmark, you have this? Keep your tongue straight means, you know, look ahead and and focus

Martin Whiskin 7:12
Uhhmm, Yeah, it would be, I don’t know, I guess the negative way of saying it would be tunnel vision. So you’re just looking in one direction?

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 7:20
Yeah, yes, yeah. But here, you have to focus. Because when you are programming a computer, you do this by making logical instructions, right, you type down and you like, with a computer, you’re also trying to predict the future. And you’re making logical arguments. So instructions to the computer is, if this happened, then do this, if this happens, then do that, right. So in many ways, when you’re programming on the computer, you’re trying to predict what’s going to happen, and then you’re telling the computer how to react to these instructions, like these, these environmental changes, right? With a human, you are also programming humans. But instead of logical instructions, you use emotional instructions. So path of the decision architecture is emotional instructions in in this is how you behave because most of the behavior of a human being comes from emotions, right? If you’re angry, angry, you, you, you know, you will lash out, or you will be frustrated or use like happy, all of these small emotions kind of dictates how you behave.

Martin Whiskin 8:39
So this is where when we were chatting before that, that I felt most sort of bonded to this part because when you started talking about humans and how it’s tied to emotion, then being a voice actor, one of the first things we have to ask about every script we do is how do we want the audience to feel and of course, that’s all to do with emotions. And that’s exactly what you’re saying here. So, this bit this bit I’m getting

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 9:06
and that is a really, really, really good question. Right? So because making people feel is making people act and you will see this from a lot of different commercials and a lot of different things that you observe in everyday life is this emotional instruction like if you can make a person feel you can make them act. And so typically, when you know when someone talks about emotional instructions or emotions in general, you you get this feeling that these are big emotions, right? It’s like anger or a tantrum or slight you someone throws a fit or is frustrated so that they don’t know what to do with themself but these are micro instructions of micro emotions. Some very, very tiny, you know, I feel a little bit good. I feel You know, connected to this person I see a picture of right.

Martin Whiskin 10:03
And sometimes it could be that they don’t even realize that it’s happening, it’s just a natural thing, especially if they’re immersed in what they’re doing.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 10:11
Exactly right. So so for example, you will see a picture of a person smiling, and that person is relatable. So typically, you will pick your audience, and you will find a person that you somehow, either by the way that they dress or the way that they look like, you know, it’s a male or a female, and you will relate to that person on the picture, and then you will see the person smiling, and that triggers a micro emotion inside of you. And so that makes you act upon that picture, because you want to be with that person, or you want to do something with that person, not your, you know, cognitive thinking part of the brain. But the lizard, you know, the old old part of the brain kind of reacts to this. And, and so most of all of our action comes from that part of the brain. There’s guy called Kahneman, who split it up into two the brain into two, the reflective part and the automatic parts. And, and I want to talk about that in a later episode, because it’s really digging into, you know, behavioral, like how how, how we behave as human beings, but also how animals behave. And then, you know, robots is a little bit different, but it’s kind of the same principles is said, you you try to do this, you know, prediction of the future. But I guess that’s, that’s more or less it, right? If you have to, if we have to just stay on the very high level of what design is, we end up with, you know, that design is planning ahead, by making people do or behave in a specific way or a certain way, right? We make them, we make them do things, as I’m going to touch just lightly here in the end, on this theoretic part about, you know, we, it sounds now, once I’m done with this, that what we’re really doing as designers is just manipulating people. And so typically, manipulating people is a very negative, you know, imbued I don’t know imbued is the right word, it’s like it’s, it’s a negative word, it tells a negative story. And obviously, some designers do manipulate people, I like to say that slightly a good designer, guides people. And so I think there’s, there’s something called Dark design patterns. And there’s something called, there’s another term that’s called nudging, which is making, you know, small micro, not just in a direction, so that in the end, like, it’s basically the decision architecture, right? It’s like nudging people in a specific direction. And in the end, they make the decision that you want them to do. And so the difference between, you know, just design a dark design patterns is that with design, you want to make people’s life better. Right, so you’re making them, you’re notching them, you’re putting them in a direction where that life of that actor gets better. Whereas dark design patterns, you want to make your life or your company’s life or, you know, a cause. So you’re not in it for the individual who you are designing for. You want them to make something or take actions that leads them to do something that’s not desirable for them. But for you,

Martin Whiskin 13:58
there was something that you said about manipulating people and guide guiding people. And there’s something that I do when I when I meet businesses, I’ve got a little pitch that I do and one of the things that I say in there is one of the things I do is I control consumers minds without them knowing by using my voice. And that feeds in your in terms of other design. People just accept, don’t they? It’s just there it happens. Yeah, yeah,

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 14:25
absolutely. And it’s back to the smiling person or the friendly voice or anything that makes you think, ah, that is something I would like to follow. And then there’s the other one where, you know, companies use specific techniques to make you pay or pay a higher rate or there’s you know, there’s a technique called the decoy effect, and I believe that everyone see this all the time. So the mind work in the way where any number you see it We can’t make decision or we don’t understand thing unless it’s in relation to something else. So everything we see and experience is based on the relationship we have with some other experience we had. So the trick here is to either make a very high or very low number, and it doesn’t have to be related to what you’re going to see next, it just sets an anchor of your perception of the next thing. So if you write, you know, a million people do this thing, and then the next screen will be in here is the price, then it’s it, it feels like it the deep part of the brain, it feels like a lower number than it really is. Because you put it in relation to the big number that you just saw. Okay? Then they take it even further. And they go like, you have the free option here. And then you have the Pro option here. And then you have the small business option in the middle. And that’s called the decoy effect, where they set the high number of the professional so high. And the low number like the free version, or the very cheap version, so low, so that you you kind of have this dis gap in between, and then the one they really want you, which is the one that typically gets like the best offer. You know, it’s like a little mark, and they put it closer to the high offer because it you know, but then it feels like alright, the high offer is, is giving me all of these features, but only these two are different from the one that’s a little bit lower. So that’s obviously a better choice. So it feels like it’s cheaper, while it’s actually really expensive. And they get you to pay a higher, higher rate. By doing this, do you see this with ice cream as well?

Martin Whiskin 16:53
That’s the more relatable topic. Yes.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 16:57
So you have a small ice cream, and you have the big ice cream, and then you have the medium ice cream. And the medium ice cream is always just a little bit cheaper than the big one, but almost as big. And so you can

Martin Whiskin 17:08
choose that. Oh, I’m going to notice this next time I go to the ice cream parlor.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 17:12
Yeah, exactly. Like, you’ll know, the decoy effect is just used everywhere. If you have three choices, look at the prices, and you will see that they want you to do something, it’s it’s an it’s a dark design pattern is they do this to trick you into paying more money

Martin Whiskin 17:26
Well hopefully, you know, this is educating people and to open their eyes to these things,

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 17:32
I hope so. that was actually the hope of doing this. I don’t know, like I have an example of a car, and how a designer and an engineer kind of work differently. Because typically, you know, as we talked about an engineer, typically, you know, designs or program, computers, but engineers also do stuff. It’s like when designing a car. It’s really interesting. So so this my example with the car is, is an example where typically there’s a vision overlap. And as a designer, just like a very important to understand all the things that happens in general, and understand the systems that you’re designing for, like both the environment, which is would be the car and the interior of the car, and that environment that the actor, which is the driver is going to sit in. And then the objects. So let’s just imagine that we designed a car, we made a car, and the brakes, it doesn’t have any brakes, right? Somehow, we forgot to add the brakes. So now we have a problem. You know, there’s there’s a, you know, all of the product managers are now investigating the market and they see there’s an overwhelming need. From people who’s asking, Can we please make the car stop? Right? It’s like, it’s really great that the car can go. But we also need it to stop once in a while. Right? It’s, you know, it makes turning corners really difficult when you’re at high speed velocity. Right. And, and also, respecting red lights is also a problem. So the designer and the engineer sits down and they talk together about right how are we going to do this. So what the engineer will do is they will go into this with a functional mindset, right? They need to make the brakes work, the meet the need to make the brakes work so that we can stop the car. And the designer solves the same problem. But from an emotional mindset, right? So they think about how can we make the driver trust the brakes? And how can we make the brakes do as the actor expected to? Right? So there’s this tension of friction between the engineer and the designer, because both of them wants to solve the problem. And they have, you know, two different approaches to it, which makes everything very strong. If if, if you can, you know, use that to your advantage. So one of the things set the designer will do is they will talk to users and try to understand, the mindset of that user and say, Alright, we don’t need the car to stop, right. So a button that stops the car is not what the user wants, right? Even though and the engineer will go, well, we understand that if you can’t break, you know, you will drive into houses or trees, or some accident will happen. So we need something that’s reliable, and that will work every time. And something that can be trusted. And so, so the combination of feeling that I can trust, and that I can actually trust. So here’s where the design work, where a lot of people get confused, because the design work actually starts way before the brakes, right? So there’s a, there’s a desire that the, if we make a brake pedal, the more I push the pedal, the more it will break, right, so it can control the force. That’s kind of engineer design thing, what where the Designer comes into place. And this is like, as a kid, I remember hearing this, like someone says, In at BMW, or like these other Volkswagen, they have, they have a person whose only job is to make the sound the door makes when it shuts sound, just right. In our mind, as kids, we were just like, wow, that sounds stupid. Why would you ever do that? And the reason you want to do that, is that that sound, kind of if we talk about decision architecture, that sound is the first step in making the user understand that this is a solid car that I can trust. The interior designers like how does it feel when I sit in the car? Does it feel kind of, you know, plasticky? Or does it feel solid, it makes me trust the car. And it makes me trust the brakes, right? If I get into a car that where the the door is like, it feels like it’s gonna fall off. And when I touched the gas pedal, it’s kind of loose, a little bit loose, right? And the brakes is the same, right? There’s, they’re not attached properly, like and feels that they don’t have it or not attached properly. And there’s a little bit too much leeway in the steering wheel and all of these things, right? That makes me trust it less. So now I will drive a little bit different because I don’t trust the car. And I don’t trust that the brakes will work if I hit them.

Martin Whiskin 22:52
So it’s all about the bigger picture of the the the whole the whole thing of the car than than just working on those brakes. It starts right at the beginning.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 23:02
Yeah, because it’s designers we can we understand that threat, that decision at that moment relies on all of the other things in how the environment around you, right, so the environment is the car, which makes you trust that the object which is the brakes will work as intended. I don’t like this. I think this is this is a good example, also to understand the difference between, you know, engineering and, and and design, because they’re typically mixed together a little bit. But I think, I don’t know, do you have any more questions?

Martin Whiskin 23:38
There was one thing that you were you summarized it in the middle of the episode, I think when you said and I wrote this down, specifically, because I thought it is a really good quote. Design is planning ahead by making people do or behave in a specific way. And that’s so plain to me. And also, like I said, because of what I do, you know, that’s what I do. I make people behave in a certain way, like I tried with my voice. If it’s a commercial, like the example you used. You try and make them react, or do something or feel something, it doesn’t even need to be to go and buy a product, you know, you could make them remember something or just build association with a brand. And yeah, that so that that that totally just summed it up for me.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 24:22
But that’s really nice. Yeah, so design is planning ahead by making people do or behave in a specific way. Yeah, maybe that’s, that’s, that’s a good. That’s a good headline.

Martin Whiskin 24:33
And maybe that’s a good place to wrap up as well.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 24:37
So that is design. So I guess next episode, I want to talk about something called affordances or affordance.

Martin Whiskin 24:45
I have literally no idea what that is not just because I don’t think there’ll be more questions next episode.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 24:52
Yes, absolutely. Eight so so I wanted to start like I think we should start out a little bit simpler. Just get the ground works. Skinner in place. So I talked about some of the tools and I think the next couple of episodes will be about some of the tools we have as designers. And one of these tools or one of these understandings that we have about things is something called affordances. And and very interesting.

Martin Whiskin 25:21
I look forward to it. Well, thank you, teacher.

Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 25:25
Thank you for being a very good pupil. That concludes it.

Martin Whiskin 25:29
Cool. We’ll see you next time. See you next time.