Designing around little minds [Article]

Joi Ito has an interesting blog post around design. This sentence caught my attention:

Why is it then that we seem to insist on building and assessing our systems based on what our little mind thinks? Think about the testing in schools that only measures local knowledge and logical skills, or designing user interfaces around what the user is focused on like pull-down menus and the mouse pointer.

Nothing new, but worth remembering that the “mind” is not as powerful as we consider it to be. Most response are inbuilt, unconscious  & far less under our control, even when we assume it to be.

Rewired nerves control robotic leg [Article]

A 32-year-old man whose knee and lower leg were amputated in 2009 after a motorcycle accident is apparently the first person with a missing lower limb to control a robotic leg with his mind. A team led by biomedical engineer Levi Hargrove at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in Illinois reported the breakthrough last week in the New England Journal of Medicine

Big Data & its sibling, Little Data [Article HT @dsearls]

Mark Bonchek has a suggestion for those businesses fascinated with Big Data. Writing in the HBR review, here’s what he’s got to say (HT Doc Searls)

If you want to build loyalty, spend less time using data to tell customers about you, and spend more time telling them something about themselves.