The Implications Of Directing The Iceberg

Sources / Additional Reading Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind Subliminal vs. Supraliminal Priming Last Week Tonight - Native Advertising Distinguishing Between Sponsored Advertising Which Way Did He Go? Lateral Character Movement in Film Six Feet Under Final Scene

Key Takeaways

  • CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS: With every decision you make, what are you assuming the user is already familiar with?
  • EMBRACE OBJECTIVITY: Appeal to the most broad objective truths.
  • UTILIZE TIME: Interactivity introduces an element of time you can use to your advantage.
  • DIRECT FOCUS: Design is often about what you’re not showing just as much as what you do show. The donut hole.

Lecture Outline

  • The Tip Of The Iceberg
  • The tip of the Iceberg is a hint or suggestion of something much larger
  • In design, this means most things we prefer or make judgments on occurs instantly, in more of an automatic, non-reasoned way
  • Creativity is just connecting more and more data points, not “random” ideation like most think (convergent and divergent thinking)
  • You Process More Than You Notice
  • “We reason our way to whatever conclusion we need to reach to support the judgments we have already made for intuitive or emotional reasons.” - Jonathan Haidt
  • Thought experiment: You can come up with a justification for pretty much any object to be in a room.
  • As a Society, We Make Divisions and Distinctions Arbitrarily
  • We like to think of these distinctions as being rules, or based on logic, but they’re often random, and reinforced through repetition
  • These distinctions are everywhere in design
  • Think about colors:
  • Blue + Green = Nature
  • Blue + Pink = Genders
  • Most advertising today is Supraliminal
  • The average person is jaded to advertising, it’s so present we ignore it
  • Companies bank on familiarity by exposure, and authenticity through influencer marketing
  • Where you intake your messaging matters
  • UI & UX
  • User Interface and User Experience. Understanding them and their journey.
  • People crave understanding WHY something happens. If you understand WHY a user does something, you can design for it.
  • Many industrial design tasks are becoming graphic designer ones due to the prominence of digital interfaces
  • Think about how things are revealed in movies.
  • Certain characters or design elements appear more often (scene by scene, page by page)
  • Knowing something in scene 1 changes the meaning of scene 8 (or screen design)
  • Show people, don’t tell them. Ex: Putting a sign that says “Push” on a door that LOOKS like a Pull doesn’t help anything.
  • Think about not only what you WANT to happen, but what you’re IMPLYING with your design
  • Left to right is considered progress, right to left considered regression
  • Newton’s Third Law / The Donut Hole concept
  • For everything you show, you’re deciding to NOT show something else. Think about that.
  • If you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing.