It is very interesting when an experienced driver tries to explain their complicated work to the layman. Take a good chestnut ———— and watch theoretical physicist Richard Feynman discuss magnets.

Watch video FUN TO IMAGINE 4. How does Feynman explain how magnets work

The reporter asked Feynman if he could explain the invisible attraction between two magnets. I suspect he will respond with intellectual rage:

“It depends on whether you’re a physics student or an ordinary person who doesn’t know anything. […]. I can’t explain that attraction in terms of anything else you’re familiar with.

I would be lying if I said that magnets attract each other like rubber bands, because there are no rubber bands attached to each other. Then I’m going to be in trouble because you’re going to ask me what the nature of this belt is. And, if you’re curious, you’ll ask me why the rubber band attracts me over and over again. So I’m going to end with an explanation of how electronics work. You see, this way I can’t fool you with a rubber band.

So I can only tell you that magnets attract each other, and I can’t explain to you why they attract.

Now, we’re all acting like idiots. Feynman managed to answer the reporter’s question with simple answers, but he did not need to surround himself with deep knowledge to explain electromagnetism to the layman. He is a practicing physicist, not an educator.

What would an educator do when dealing with the same problem?

How does a magnet work? www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFA…

Even in magnetic materials where the magnetic fields of the atoms are aligned together, it is possible to have some magnetic materials where all the atoms are aligned together pointing in one direction, some magnetic materials where all the atoms are aligned in another direction, and so on.

[Ominous medieval BGM sounds] If all magnetic fields are about the same size, then probably no atom’s magnetic field is big enough to force others to align with it. A piece of metal, for example, may have no magnetic field at all, because all its magnetic properties are intertwined.

Even if you provide a strong enough magnetic field from the outside of the material, you can amplify the force of the magnetic line on its neighbor, and so on. Until all the magnetic lines point in the same place, in the same direction. At this point, you can finally reach a conclusion about metals! Magnets, I think.

[…]. The most remarkable thing about magnetic fields is that they can be extended from quantum properties to the size of everyday objects, and each permanent magnet is a reminder that quantum mechanics is the foundation of our universe.

Read the original

This article answers so many questions that now we all get goose bumps from thinking in this area. It’s not trivial technical writing, but it manages to get complex information across. It didn’t show arrogance or disdain.

No one would get hurt in a sword fight like this.

This is educators creating resonance. The creators of the magnet video wanted their audience to be able to learn about magnets.

Software product designers can learn a lot from great educators because they work with information. We can imagine a user looking for information about jousting. I learned three things:

  1. The user has figured out what information he wants. For example, I heard about jousting, which sounds weird, so I’d like to watch some videos about jousting.
  2. The information that our users need actually exists in the world somehow. For example, a database containing video information and some metadata is kept on a server’s hard drive in North Carolina.
  3. A product designer will pass a certain level of abstraction to provide users with information, for example, in a specific URL of the page can provide users a place to enter a search query, a loading icon, some brand, a list according to your browsing the resulting classification, a sudden whim you trying to find something to pass the time. It also has a lot of buttons to tempt you to click.

The Jousting, by the way, is interesting.

Magnetized alloys and users watching “Jousting” videos on their couches are a bunch of abstractions. Therefore, it is a good product designer’s job to keep the information of the three models in mind and build Bridges between them. She fills the gap in how users use the machine, so they don’t have to bother to understand it themselves. Here’s Alan Cooper:

Computer literacy is an extension of a product that forces people to stretch their minds to understand the inner workings of application logic, rather than software features that satisfy their usual thinking.

Let’s take a closer look at three patterns. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design Alan Cooper (advocate of Interaction Design)

The first is the user’s mental model. Many people, Cooper writes, think when they plug in an appliance or computer that “electricity flows into the appliance like water from a cord in a small black tube on the wall.”

Of course, electricity doesn’t flow at all like water. In the real world, the abstract model of electricity is much more complex. But from a simple point of view, electrical engineering already has enough information for most of us to help us understand, for example, that we need to plug into a socket to charge our computers.

Finally, the presentation model is what ultimately finds the user. This is where the designer’s time is spent, and this is where people actually touch.

That’s the secret of the designer. Let’s take a look at Cooper again:

“The closer you get to the representation model of the user’s mental model, the easier it is to figure out how to use and understand the application.”

Well said! For a designer, this might mean spending more time billing users and less time digging apis. This may mean that early designs spend more time studying user psychology than fiddling with words.

The user’s mental model is our guiding light, although it may be wrong. If we don’t make an effort to understand the model, it’s hard to know if our work has been successful. Design is mainly a kind of empathy.

For example: Animation is a great tool to practice user empathy. It is a user interface pattern that adjusts the user’s mental model and the product’s performance model. Everyone knows that the notification menu at the top of IOS9 is not a roll-up device underneath. But the user will have a mental model that displays a new temporary state from the top.

Image borrowed from IKEA

Cooper helped me see the particular part of the presentation model that the designer can only control. We can’t control its implementation model, because a good engineer uses an abstract model in the code base to make it easy to maintain and secure. We cannot control the mental model of our users because it is shaped by their culture and many other unknowable factors.

As designers, we control the life and death of the entire presentation layer. Design is the process of presenting software to users as they want it to be, and then making users marvel at it.