If you possess intuition on a matter, it’s supposed to mean that you instinctively know something without having to apply a rationale.  IDEO, a hugely successful design firm in Silicon Valley, tries to design products that naturally apply user intuition.  I would say this is largely what makes them successful – they’re building products that don’t require a great deal of instruction to use.  Let’s take a look at one of their concepts currently being promoted on their website: Project Inkwell.

Project Inkwell is basically a concept for a highly mobile device that would enable learning anytime, anywhere, for kids grades K-12.  The prototype you see above is called the Spark.  It looks like it falls somewhere between laptop computer and smartphone, and it’s about the size of a small handbag or purse.

IDEO brought together a bunch of experts to figure out what the needs of students would be and how a mobile computing solution might fit those needs.  The Spark is lightweight, allows for wireless internet access, and with the right kind of educational software, strong multimedia collaboration.  Keep in mind this is all for kids, even as young as kindergärtners.  It seems obvious you can’t quite give a young child a Macbook, for example, and tell that child to do his homework on it, but the Spark might be more doable for such a situation.  Herein lay the intuition on the matter – Digital Natives (see this site for more on who digital natives are), or kids born into this high-tech world we live in today, are on the web and using mobile devices and other technologies from a very young age.  They understand these platforms and how to use them.  In my opinion, it is rapidly becoming instinctual for kids to understand keyboards, cell-phones, and computer mice.  The Spark has a flip-down cover that doubles as a keyboard, a great interaction element that makes the device tough enough to be carted around for kids and doesn’t waste space.  Therefore, Project Inkwell might be able to present an improved learning methodology for kids, by getting them plugged-in and using devices they already intuitively understand.

The Spark also appears to be considerate of the constraints inherent in mobilizing kids with portable electronic devices in this day and age.  It deigns to be a ubiquitous platform that relies on the Internet as a learning space and not on external objects.  There appear to be no extemporaneous ancillary features that would turn it into a distraction or make it too big or cumbersome to operate.  It’s all about being on-line and allowing a space for the educator, learner, and parent to interact.  Bill Moggridge, in his book Designing Interactions, points out the importance of understanding the constraints you face in design.  He relays one point from Chris Conley that designers must “synthesize solutions from all of the relevant constraints”.  Applying too much extra junk to the model, like a boombox speaker system or Barbie coloring book flip-out pad, would seek to over-do the purpose of the device, belay intuition and green-light gimmickry, and probably exceed the cost constraints that will naturally arise when considering the mass manufacturing of small computers like these Sparks.

Amanda McCoy Bast gave a presentation last week about her work at Adobe in my Interaction Design class at the MCDM.  One thing she pointed out was the need for “intuitive cohesion” in design considerations.  Project Inkwell’s prototype exhibits that cohesion – what could be more cohesive than a learning device that uses the web as it’s learning space, rather than some new-fangled network model that would not be automatically intuitively grasped by these young digital natives?

IDEO employs the Deep Dive method, as they call it, to design some of their products.  The Deep Dive can provide for exceptional turnaround for businesses – we watched a video in class about the Deep Dive in action from ABC’s Nightline back in 1999, and in the video the designers at IDEO had to come up with a design for the standard grocery store shopping cart in just five days.  Again, we saw the importance of seeking to understand human intuition – when you have five days to design something as commonplace as the shopping cart, intuition is critical.  But not only that, the designers at IDEO had a lot of fun working on the project for Nightline, so we can’t forget that fun in the process usually leads to fun final products. (Aside: I always feel like you can tell when an artist was enjoying making his or her creation versus when they were just doing it for the sake of it, and those creations that were born of that greater passion are always more enjoyable for the audience).  (Second aside: Nonetheless, I didn’t quite like their grocery cart prototype, which was a cart that basically had lots of smaller release-able baskets for organizing your items and centralizing your shopping experience, but you could still see that the designers were trying to come up with a solution to the matter of the human desire to be organized, a highly intuitive desire in many respects, one would argue).

So, with the Spark and Project Inkwell, you can quickly observe some of the tenets of the Deep Dive at IDEO at work, namely seeking out intuitive design.  What is intuitive for children?  Portability, customizability (which I didn’t even get to, which the device encourages), wireless Internet access, and so forth – all things digital natives already understand.  They can turn on the device and get going on their homework in no time.  Project Inkwell is an excellent case study in intuition in interactive design.

References

ABCNewsstore.com: NIGHTLINE: Deep dive: 7/13/99. Retrieved 10/30/2008, 2008, from http://abcnewsstore.go.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DSIProductDisplay?catalogId=11002&storeId=20051&productId=2001230&langId=-1&categoryId=100015

Moggridge, B. (2007). Designing interactions. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Retrieved from WorldCat

Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital : Understanding the first generation of digital natives. New York: Basic Books. Retrieved from WorldCat

WordNet search – 3.0. Retrieved 10/30/2008, 2008, from http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=intuition

Work – concept project for project inkwell – IDEO. Retrieved 10/30/2008, 2008, from http://www.ideo.com/work/featured/inkwell/

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