Our goal was to design a visual representation of the data that was as accurate and efficient for patient diagnosis as possible,” says lead author Michelle Borkin, “What we found is that the prettiest, most popular visualization is not always the most effective.

Credit: Michelle Borkin

Traditional visualisation builds a 3D model of the arteries: but a relational 2D model proved more helpful. The circumference of each artery and their proportionate lengths are outlines, as well as the branching points. The result is a network diagram.

Typical scientific colour schemes for data are of the rainbow variety. The Harvard researchers showed that using black to red instead improved the quality of diagnoses for heart disease.

With the new visualization, an arterial system that would previously have been reconstructed in 3-D (left) is instead deconstructed and shown with each branch separated from the main vessel. Arteries are then represented as 2-D branches (bottom right) whose dimensions are proportional to the circumference and length of the corresponding artery. Branching points and relationships between branches are also displayed.

Full article on PhysOrg.com here

10 –  Action for Happiness   – keys to happier living:
With the handy mneumonic “GREAT DREAM”: We have Giving, Relating, Exercising, Appreciating, Trying Out; Direction, Resilience, Emotion, Acceptance, Meaning. Image below. Read more about these here.

5 – New Economics Foundation – ways to well-being
Check out this report on evidence-based approaches to well-being by the  New Economics Foundation published in 2008. There’a wealth of evidence-based reports on that site. They have distilled a huge amount of research into the following:
Connect, Be active, Take notice, Keep Learning, Give

3 – A summary of the Dharma
Or maybe the summary of all the teachings of the Buddhas might be easier to remember:
Commit not a single unwholesome action,
Cultivate a wealth of virtue,
To tame this mind of ours,
This is the teaching of all the buddhas.

1 – The Golden Rule
As Karen Armstrong explains in her TED talk, the emotion of compassion is the vital central point of all the great terditions:
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

<1 – Richard Wiseman’s 59 seconds
If you’d rather have a time-based approach check out the book 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, which seeks to expose self-help myths by presenting scientifically proven techniques to help you in less than a minute.

It’s a great disservice to list these without detailing each in better depth. I hope to expand on this in future entries.

Are lists and bullet points helpful at all do you think? What other lists are there out there? Schlep your ideas into a comment below.

Watch the video on Pop!Tech’s site here.
Read the article here.
(Thanks for a nice photo Kris!)

2010 theme: Technology in the City. Seminar held at the Radisson.

Ireland’s wracked by frustration at its inept government this week but after a day with the professionals of the National Disability Authority, I have more faith in the public servants than the bumbling leadership. Donal Rice and Barbara Schmidt-Belz summed it up: ‘Bad design excludes’ they say and quote Victor Papanek that ‘Good design applies to all people’.

Universal Design, or Design for Accessibility is the theme of the annual seminar at the Radisson, Dublin, which includes a 24hour Design Challenge. Julia Cassim, of the Helen Hamlyn Centre (RCA) gave an excellent quick fire overview of the area. There is a perception that designing for the disabled restricts creativity and simply involves the making of special gadgets and aids.

She counters saying that ‘Disability can be a poweful creative resource in the design innovation process’ and that ‘by understanding the extreme, you can innovate for the mainstream’. Bring down the barriers between designer and the end-user. Move from designing for an unknown User to working directly with a Creative Partner. It’s a different relationship and is what the co-design process is all about.

José Angel Martinez (Technosite) is working on a project comparing e-accessability across Europe, and Non-EU (US, Canada, Australia) states. He spoke of how the term ‘disability’ isn’t helpful and is excluding, especially in the commercial realm used to marketing terminology where ‘Needs and Preferences’ is better understood. Making ATMs more accessible under challenging sunlight, language or cognitive conditions means better units for everyone, not just typically ‘disabled’ users.

Partnering with people of different accessibility needs, the designers sees the world through new eyes.

We’ve all grappled with trying to get money with an un-viewable screen, in a foreign language, maybe even when suffering a vicious headache or be under pressure in howling rain. La Caixa in Barcelona will be rolling out a large number of new accessible ATMs with an impressive array of features that are good for all, including a mirror to see who’s behind you, a surface to place your bag or wallet on, a basic screen and one with more information, various kinds of lights for visibility and safety. Download a presentation about it here.

Taking the bird’s eye view of the day, Universal Design is the hard headed reality of active compassion in design. It’s not a big deal, it’s simply considering everyone. It’s not a drag, it’s being practical and taking inspiration from new sources. You have to listen and you have to consider different sources of feedback. It makes commercial sense when embedded into the process. Of course, the way we work has to change, I’m only beginning to absorb this reality and can see that we will have to consider how to do that. (Another post to follow).

Distilling the ideas from the day and other speakers, here’s my take-away offering:

A Universal Design Manifesto

1. Forget ‘disability’ and work for the ‘needs and preferences’ of everyone.
2. Consider users at the beginning of each project. Design adaptations after the fact are expensive and marginalising.
3. ‘Understand the extreme, innovate for the mainstream’.
4. Collaborate: Designing for a ‘user’ is good but working personally with a ‘Creative Partner’ is best.

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I found this fascinating article in The Observer today about Sargy Mann; “The Best Blind Painter in Peckham”. Unlike the amazing John Bramblitt of Texas, who paints by touch and only began after losing his vision, Sargy lived his years painting from perfect vision up to 36 years old  and all the way along the slow loss of sight over twenty years later.

He taught at Camberwell College of Art and was very conscious of the process and ways of seeing, very aware of how sight is actively created in the mind. Watch the film his son Peter made, which has a recording of Sargy before and after painting his first fully-blind canvas. It really shows his courage and also how particular his visual imagination has been developed. He seems to be reconstructing and both remembering and creating a scene all at once . Colour is central, despite the fact he doesn’t know if it’s ‘right’ or not. That’s ok.

Amusingly, Semir Zeki, a professor of “neuroaesthetics” in University College of London has been chasing the painter for years trying to get some MRI scans done… to track down the colour perceiving parts of his brain.

All great artists, Zeki believes, are instinctive neuroscientists; they have an innate understanding of how the brain “sees” the world, and they are fated by this knowledge to constantly try to find a correspondent visual language. Zeki pioneered, as long ago as the 1970s, the accepted understanding of the particular way in which the brain projects its concepts of colour on to the world almost from birth. For Zeki, seeing is never a passive process. When we look at a painting, as his sensitive MRI scanning proves, different bits of information are immediately separated and sent to discrete anatomical corners of our brains for processing. Our brains respond to this compartmentalised information at slightly different rates; colour is processed before form, for example, and form before motion. Having been taken apart, as it were, a painting that we love is never simply put back together again in our heads; rather it “exists” dynamically in the interplay between responses of different parts of the brain. That combination of responses can create a puzzling, powerful and lasting engagement with the image, an emotional response.

If someone is blind from birth, how do they experience the first impressions of a sensory experience? According to the scientist, we process colour first, but does this get substituted by another sense(s)?

The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That’s because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.