Readings of the week
Readings of the week from December 14th - 20th.
- The Harry Potter Economy from The Economist
This article essentially takes a look at the history of the Harry Potter books and movies, and how they made it into being published and produced books and movies. It also looks at all the different stakeholders in the Harry Potter universe, from relatively obscure actors to the fandom to toy makers. - What Good is Design Research? by Adam Richardson
Frog strikes me as one of the ore thoughtful design firms out there. This was another response to Don Norman’s piece that I linked to before. The thing that I really liked about this article was this quote right here: “This touches on something that we have been talking about a lot at frog recently - the pendulum has swung so much toward doing user research that we (as a profession) risk losing the magic that comes from conceptual thinking. The seductiveness of evidence and insight that comes from design research can push inspiration, intuition, hypotheses, hunches and non-linear thinking to the sidelines. Analysis overwhelms creativity.”
I found that pretty interesting, too bad there wasn’t more discussion. The other thing I found interesting was the idea of the definition of ‘design research’ needing to expand. - Why Are Europeans White? from Google Knol by Frank W. Sweet
Everyone has seen the Ted talk that talks about skin pigmentation, about how people towards the equator tend to have darker skin and it gets less so as you move outwards. But this article considers why Europeans in particular are so uniquely depigmented. And what they found was that this actually had to do with agricultural habits in Europe. Fascinating bit of geeky science. - A Fish Oil Story by Paul Greenberg
Moving along from getting vitamin D to getting another health supplement de jour, here’s a shocking article about the environmental effects of our interest in this supplement. - Digital Ethnography for Social Interaction Design by Brynn Marie Evans
I had the opportunity to meet Brynn last week, and she’s great. This is an interesting look at different ‘digital ethnography’ research tools she used to develop her understanding of social search.
