The "test on the young, old, and drunk" concept got me thinking: this might be why the winter travelers among us are so much better at design.
I always thought my design skill and difficulties were separate issues, perhaps connected at some neurological level, but I think the wide variations of intellectual ability (+/- 15 IQ swings that normal people don't experience) are why we develop such creativity and design sense. I have a week or two every year when I'm basically incapable of doing most of the stuff that's normally easy, but during that time I learn how to design for that person. How do you get the person whose cognitive resources are strained (fatigue, not stupidity) to see the value right away, rather than fear and uncertainty and chaos?
We have to be careful, though. It's not that the rest of the world is stupid. The cognitive-load problem isn't about stupidity. It's about the fact that there are a million things competing for peoples' attentions and unless we can prove right away that our wares are cool (by demonstrating value in a simple, low-cognitive-load way) we fade into the noise.
What is a "winter traveler"? On searching for the term, I only saw websites about travelling during the winter. Is it a sufferer of seasonal affective disorder?
Person with mild mental illness that results in clearer perception, e.g. depressive realism, and often better character. (When your biology is difficult, you don't get to fuck around the way most people do.)
Traveling through the forest during summer is much more comfortable, but you can't get as sharp a feel of the landscape because the trees are leaved out.
I always thought my design skill and difficulties were separate issues, perhaps connected at some neurological level, but I think the wide variations of intellectual ability (+/- 15 IQ swings that normal people don't experience) are why we develop such creativity and design sense. I have a week or two every year when I'm basically incapable of doing most of the stuff that's normally easy, but during that time I learn how to design for that person. How do you get the person whose cognitive resources are strained (fatigue, not stupidity) to see the value right away, rather than fear and uncertainty and chaos?
We have to be careful, though. It's not that the rest of the world is stupid. The cognitive-load problem isn't about stupidity. It's about the fact that there are a million things competing for peoples' attentions and unless we can prove right away that our wares are cool (by demonstrating value in a simple, low-cognitive-load way) we fade into the noise.