Here is another great talk by Chris Hecker on Structure vs Style. It’s an exploration of a pattern in problem solving, particularly for “hard interactive problems” common in games and other interactive systems, of separating structure and style. The primary example used to convey this decomposition is the texture mapped triangle. He goes on to suggest that AI is likely to have a decomposition based on this structure/style paradigm, and that this means we may someday have a “Photoshop of AI.”
This post shares an excerpt from The Design of Everyday Things. It expresses Donald Norman’s thoughts as a cognitive scientist on rote learning.
People who have learned to use computers or cook by rote are probably not very good. Since they do not understand the reasons for their actions, they must find tasks arbitrary and strange. When something goes wrong, they don’t know what to do (unless they’ve memorized solutions). Although rote learning is at times necessary or efficient–so that emergency procedures for things like high-speed military jet aircraft are handled quickly, automatically when the need arises–on the whole, it is most unsatisfactory.
I stumbled across this recent talk by Will Wright, speaking at a defense conference of all places. Will Wright is one of the most influential people in my life. He introduced me to systems, made me fall in love with history, and heavily framed my concept of games and design in general.
This 50 minute talk covers a lot of area, in parts summarizing and elaborating on bits from favorite talks I witnessed years ago. You can see he’s customized it for a military defense audience, but also, among other things, touches on education and even has overtones of general semantics. As usual for Will Wright, this talk is fast, dense, and interwoven with stories, cultural and historical references, great imagery and diagrams.
I wish this whole talk was in a single video because there aren’t a lot of talks online about Daniel Pink’s previous book from 2006, A Whole New Mind. This section quickly introduces the premise of the book, which revisits the left-brain/right-brain idea and builds on the fact that the 20th century was intensely based on left-brain thinking. That’s linear, analytical thinking typified by engineers, MBAs, lawyers, accountants, and doctors.
The argument of the book is that this is no longer sufficient. As far as western society, we’ve created enough of a surplus of left-brain thinking that it’s no longer competitive. Instead, we need to cultivate right-brain thinking. That’s holistic, empathic thinking exemplified by artists, designers, philosophers, and other more “liberal arts” professions. “High-touch and high-concept” thinking will be the differentiator in the 21st century, which seems to be supported by the increasing focus on fields like user experience, “soft” sciences, and the social dimension of problems.
