Ejaz Asi - Information Designer from Karachi, Pakistan

This is supposed to be precursor to my longer post on the idea of “how I became web designer and how I came to love it”. It has to be short and contain the hints of what’s to come.

Someone said somewhere:

Not long ago my youngest son told me “I’ll do anything for money!”

“OK, ” I said “I’ll give you 20 kroner ($4) to pick up the dog poo in the garden.”

“Yuck!!” the kid said, “there’s no way I’m taking a sh*t job like that!”

Kids today - there’s no way they’ll grow up and work jobs that don’t make them happy. That’s why companies today need to shape up and become great workplaces - or they’ll only ever be able to hire old, crotchety types who accept the idea of spending their days in unpleasant or just mediocre workplaces. I’m telling ya - the future belongs to the happy!

Why growth no longer makes us happier. “The formula for human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?”

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I started reading on Emotional Design last week in order to gain more insight and knowledge about the Persuasive nature of design, the sensual and pleasurable nature of the design (of anything) etc. I have come across so many great articles, sites, projects, books and people that I am spending almost four hours a day since last week on reading online which is way big and sudden increase since my eye-sight has been worsening lately.

But I haven’t felt such kick in ages so who cares. I just

“We are accustomed to think of any particular response as either learned or innate, which is apt to be a source of confusion in thinking about things… Is the response inherited or acquired? The answer is, Neither: either Yes or No would be very misleading.”

Donald Hubb in “The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory”
The book is at Google Books too.
Pioneering neuropsychologist Donald Hebb highlights that fact that all human responses are a result of both inherited attributes and learnt experience.

Hebb is best known for his theory of how learning can be supported by networks of single neurons.

The theory, now called Hebbian learning, is a key aspect of artificial intelligence and neuroscience.

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Game designer Jane McGonigal has a vision for a new generation of network games that will pull players away from their lonely consoles, and get them out in the world, interacting with each other and changing their own lives, and society, for the better.

“When we play games, we experience relaxation, concentration, cohesion, elation, adventurous thinking, constant challenge, focus, and relief. We want more of these things in everyday life,” she said at O’Reilly’s ETech conference on emerging technology. “When we play games, we feel awed, sneaky and backwards. We should feel like this in real life, too.”

The “ubiquitous games,” or “alternate reality games,” are part of an overall change in how technology is being evaluated. In the next five years, the criteria used for evaluating personal technology will shift from things like cost and features. Instead, people will evaluate technology based on whether it improves their quality of life and happiness, she said.

McGonigal is a research affiliate and resident game developer at the Institute for the Future, in Palo Alto, Calif., which researches emerging trends and discontinuities that will transform global marketplaces, focusing on consumers, technology, health and healthcare, the workplace, and global business trends.

Read it all

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