Always-On/Off/On?

As we move to  a pervasive, constantly connected state – and isn’t mobile just another word for everywhere – what does this mean for us as a whole? We’re already struggling for a work-life balance – and stresses are showing at the margins already. People are overwhelmed, unable to keep up and give up. These people are the new impoverished. Impoverished in the sense that they can’t control, manage and then articulate themselves in an information-rich environment. Will this mean a backlash? What will people do?

One thing might be that people create areas of their lives that are unavailable to networks – in essence a “safe room” or along the lines of a sensory deprivation tank. I can see this being something that futuristic home builders might already be working on; a bedroom where no wireless or cellphone network can access. Where else would you want this? Anywhere your privacy might be important. We’ve seen what happens when two people in a relationship at distance will do to show their love (lust), and then later embarrass the other in a revenge plot. Emotions can get in the way. I see the Japanese inventing private hotels, much like the love hotels they have now to service young couples who have no privacy at home.

As we see the Internet of things evolve, we’ll need these sorts of strategies to allow maybe our fridge, stove and phone to talk, but not our fridge and furnace. And this opens hackers to having a real effect on human lives – if we trust devices to tell us we’re out of milk – does that mean a hacker could get us to buy two dozen bags of milk because they spoof a message from the fridge? Brings a whole new meaning to “your fridge is running… you better go catch it”.

This post was inspired by:

Color

Considering I’ve been back on the aesthetics bandwagon the past few days (further carving out a niche as someone put it in an e-mail to me) I began to think about color. First thing this morning, an article about choosing the right color for your website – which got me thinking about the right colors for learning spaces online. Typically, I see white backgrounds with black text and maybe some selected images (much like this blog I suppose!).  I’m fairly certain that the reasoning for this is twofold. One, it harkens back to text, and particularly textbooks – so by designing with a black and white scheme and fonts that recall texts, online spaces gain a level of authority. Two, typically, black and white design has been viewed as “classy” and it’s easier to get something to look good with a limited color palette (black, white and grey).

Of course, that requires an understanding of complimentary colors and color theory. Color Matters has a good page on color theory which for some of you will recall grade 5 art class. If you don’t want to be bothered with the theory, just want to get down to brass tacks, Color Scheme Designer will give you a good selection of possible combinations to use in your designs.

Neither of those sites really talk about the psychology of color. The more I dig into it there isn’t much research that I would bet the house on, but Pantone has a good article about it as well. Well of course, Pantone will… they’re the biggest marketers of color (and consistent color) in the world. Is there real evidence of color psychology or is it just smoke and mirrors?

Type

As part of the ongoing aesthetic interest I have, I discovered a link to this blog post that discusses the basic properties of type (and fonts). As I was reviewing it, I realized that a lot of textbooks are set in serif fonts (such as Times New Roman) and wondered if that had some psychological effect on how people viewed sans serif (such as Arial) type. Will my blog seem more “professional” or “academic” if I use a serif font? Recently George Siemens redesigned the elearnspace blog, moving from a sans-serif font to a serif font. I wonder if that has changed initial opinions of his blog?

Another conflicting idea is that online spaces should have fonts set in sans-serif type, because on screen resolutions are low, and serif fonts are not always displayed with the same clarity. When doing web design (not so long ago now), I usually defaulted to setting clients websites into Arial, Helvetica and sans serif. I wonder what impact that had on the end user?