A Good Design Makes your Mind BLINK!

Designer Lifehack
Nov 12, 2008
5 Comments









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(This post was updated and edited. The original was published on the 19 Dec, 2005!)


John Maeda, formerly from MIT Media Labs, and now RISD President, spoke about how “good art makes our mind blink”. John was referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink with his art comment.

This is so true, and if we further extrapolate this, I would say “good design makes our mind blink”. In a “blink of an eye” we intuitively understand it, we know what it does, how to engage it, and best of all how to use it.

Intrigued, I manage to get my hands on Blink, and while it often comes across rather academic at times, it does give a better understand of how to harness the power of intuition, or what the author calls “rapid cognition”, in decision making. Designers can benefit from this, especially when our ideas get weighed down by constraints that often makes our concepts drift listless from specification creep.

Via: John’s blog.

Here’s a link to Malcolm Gladwell’s site.





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  • Comments

    [...] this causes your mind to blink and pulls from your mind the solution that is hidden within. It pulls from your mind all the [...]

    Jerry
    Nov 13, 08 – 11:10 pm

    I read this book a few weeks ago, it really does change the way you think about making decisions… reminded me of when people have the greatest ideas during most unsuspecting times.

    Mic
    Nov 15, 08 – 10:41 pm

    Hi jerry could you provide the book name?

    Jerry
    Nov 15, 08 – 11:18 pm

    I was referring to the book being reviewed. Blink :)

    Penter
    Nov 21, 08 – 11:43 am

    Wow, I just borrow this book from the library. I was searching good book to read, as I just finish “the Tipping point” from Malcolm Gladwell, I am just loving it, and I just search the amazon and found that his new book “Outliers: The Story of Success” is hiting height.
    So I just borrow this book from the libirary, and start reading it. It should be a very good read!


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