Workshop on designing cute interactive media
The upcoming ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems has a workshop called "Designing Cute Interactive Media ... that motivate the user in a happy, positive manner"
Cuteness has an effective design philosophy that can be used in many areas to make emotionally engaging user interactive systems, as well as evaluate existing systems. Cuteness can also be included as an engineering design framework that can assist designers and engineers when creating engaging interactive systems that motivate the user in a happy, positive manner.LinkWe look at a range of experiences involving the idea of “cuteness” and its related components. From a psychological standpoint, there are cues that are well known that are instilled in us at an instinctual level. An example is the features of babies that bring out a nurturing and adoration response. Measuring these reactions however is less discrete and is more qualitative in nature. From a cultural standpoint, the definition of how cute something is and what it drives the user to do in response is not yet fully explored.
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I can't believe anyone would do a workshop on something so incredibly intuitive.
Oh lord, here comes the emotion-engineers. Hey look, I'm happy! How did that happen! Oh well, might as well ride the high right through my interaction with this ATM. Later I'll probably really enjoy failing to find the supervisory contact information on the bank's website so I can explain my overdraft. And on the way to the internet cafe, I know the "service engine immediately" light has a certain exquisite size and shape that just gives me a whimsical lift...
A couple of points...
This could work, but what is cute for one person would be gag inducing cloying to another. It goes beyond cultural differences to personal differences. That's what I see as being readly hard to quantify.
Also, yes it is intuitive, but you'd be surprised how counter intuitive some engineering types can be. Le me quote from Cory's 'Eastern Standard Tribe' where his character, Art is describing what a UI designer does...
"It's all about being an advocate for the user. I observe what users do and how they do it, figure out what they're trying to do, and then boss the engineers around, getting them to remove the barriers they've erected because engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff".
Spot on.
Further proof that the neotenization* of the planet is in full effect.
Instead of growing up and solving the world's problems AS ADULTS, we must deal with semi-adults who refuse to grow up.
These are the same semi-adults who drive like cretins, yak on their sparkly cell-phones (in public libraries) and create things like "CUTE ENGINEERING"
I tell ya, these cute engineers are going to suck us all over the edge and into a cute abyss.
FOOTNOTE -
*NEOTENY: retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species, as among certain amphibians
Cute makes me want to maul things (to death). It's why I turn off the graphic smileys on any forum I'm on. It's why I changed my Windows XP 'look'. It's why I gave up on Myspace and YMash.
Cute is for fat lasses that have a whole menagerie of soft toys on the parcel shelves of their car, for fat goth girls that dress in purple crushed velvet. Cute is coloured pink and for 12 year old girls.
I want an interface that looks like it knows what it's doing. As a user I feel "motivated in a happy, positive manner" when I can navigate round something properly because it's laid out clearly.
Some bug eyed cartoon character is not the way to please me. It's the way to make me wonder were I left my axe and what I did with that piece of lead pipe & the heavy stick with the nail in.
Cute is the reason I'd punch a Panda.
Cute is the reason people hate that fucking paper clip so much.
I am Ren. Not Stimpy.
#4 Father Brown: You fail to convince me how implementing cute is a bad thing for a culture.
Cute-> People driving badly? WTF? People drive badly in Chicago because there's a pack mentality that normalizes being the 6th car to do a left turn after the light turns red or narrowly missing a collision and then crossing over to the opposite lane to escape the scene.
Bad mannered jackasses who talk loudly on cellphones are caused to do so by hese phones' cute designs? First of all, what kinda phone are you talking about, cuz I've never seen a cellphone whose design was "cute". Ergonomic? Sure. Sexy? Yeah. Beautifully designed? Yeah. But I've never seen a phone that tapped into the human desire to be soft and protective around things that remind us of human infants.
To all the people badmouthing cuteness:
Do any of you own an iPod? Or another piece of Apple hardware? Or use a pocket-sized diabetes tester? Or drive a Mini Coop, or, hell, even an H2?
Cuteness can play an important role in design. It's not just little girls and Hello Kitty and pink crap.
Bah. Either a good number of you missed the point or you're just being irascible old farts. Humans are wired to change our behavior around cute things. Hello Kitty might be an overdose for you (it is for me), but if any of you have toddlers at home I guarantee the cynicism stops milliseconds after starting to interact with them.
And that's what this is about. Not adorable warning lights. Subtle clues that, like color, shape, smell, temperature, and other attributes help us make fast decisions about what's safe, what needs our attention, what might be dangerous to grab without testing first.
Most people won't have any problem picking up a child (some will have to actively fight the urge), but most of those same people will take a lot of coaching before they're willing to pick up a tarantula. Mastering those cues could make life a lot safer for people who work in fast-paced, high-stress environments where mistakes are both easy to make and can have consequences like, oh, irradiating the surrounding few hundred square miles of countryside.
Saying that cute things annoy you isn't accurate. You're not talking about cute; you're talking about cutesy. Cutesy things need shot in the knees. But you respond to cute, no matter how curmudgeonly you try to be about it.
Cute Overload = primary source material on cuteness phenomenon. Check the Rules of Cute to see what makes males and females alike go "squee!!!!!"
But most interesting of all is what these cute addicts have to say on the subject of babies. Animals, including vermin of all kinds, seem to have universal cute potential, while pics of children seem most likely to evoke the "gag" response.