I’m reminded of reading Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Expereinces again for our first UXBookclub in Melbourne early this year. Particularly the chapter that starts with a story about the orange juicers; Experience Design vs. Interface Design. But this post isn’t about that, its about an experience I had a few months back that really brought home to me the power of physical form and object qualities.

Firstly, some backstory: a few years ago, my partner’s mother (okay, my mother in-law) gave us some china mugs that had belonged to her mother. We love them and use them just about every day. The porcelain is that just-right balance of weight for the cup to be delicate and hefty at the same time, while also having excellent thermal properties. The handle design works well for holding what can be a heavy filled cup in one hand, and its organic design compliments the squared lines of the cup.

No, this isn’t going to be a rant about the cups. Don Norman’s dome that about teapots already, and Bill Buxton’s excellent take on orange juicers prompted me to write this. But these cups do play a part, so it’s important to know that I like these cups and have often thought about their material and formal qualities.

Now, lets pick up the story: a few months ago my sister in law and her son were staying with us. Their cousins family visited and, being an unseasonably cold and wet summer day, we made a cup of tea.

As we handed the cup to our visitor, she remarked that they had exactly the same set… They were sitting in a cupboard at home. They never used them these days, but they couldn’t part with the set because it was from her mother who’d passed away.

As she got into the cup of tea, she remarked on the ‘feel’ of the cup.. and how it ‘took her right back’ to a time when she’d used the cup with her mother. There was a moment as her stare went into the distance and she huddled over the cup, breathing in the steam from the tea, and you could imagine her reliving a moment with her mother. 

That’s the story. how can something like a cup have such power? (and its clear that the cup is only one agent in this interaction, the hot liquid, the aroma and color of the tea also played a part) 

It reminds me of something from David Weinberger I read the other day the other day about the ‘trivial’ and its power to connect people:

 

Here’s another surprise online. The Internet makes it so easy to publish and to connect that people post about small details of their lives. To many, that can look trivial.

But, consider Twitter, where friends share brief snippets from their daily lives, one sentence at a time. The snippets of the people you subscribe to show up as a scrolling list. People twitter about trivial things in their lives, sometime. Even the name, “twitter,” refers to the chirping of birds. Yet, following a friend’s daily activities can bring you closer. These details create an intimacy. So, yes, from the outside, Twitter looks trivial. But it’s actually an example of our ability to use every tool at our disposal to create social depth.

 

there’s a corollary in the experience I described above. These most trivial objects become invested with more of the “stuff of life” (experience > emotions > meaning > memories) simply because they are trivial. They find their way into the everyday, with bit parts in all the big moments of life, and a “long-tail” of many small interactions throughout life.

I have realised for a while now that I need to get me some discipline around writing. Today I think I saw one way forward: do it the same way I learned to draw, start with tracing and then move on to drawing proper.. or in the textual mode, start with really strict templates that prompt a certain response, and then work my way up to things that are closer to a narrative.

like eating an elephant

Whenever we design something, we also design ourselves a little.

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