Adaptive Path Blog

Can you imagine an alternate reality? We talk about alternate reality games, but what if an alternate reality exists for others on a day to day basis. Take a second and imagine what it would be like if you couldn’t’ think in the abstract, but instead had a brain that thought by referencing tons of concrete images. Like if we said “think of a church steeple”, and you thought of lots of examples from around the world of church steeples — instead of just a general church steeple. At UX Week this year, Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University, talked about her experience having Autism and designing for the livestock industry. She shared how important her abnormal focus on detail, ability to think in pictures, both common to Autism, enable her design for livestock in a way that ‘normal’ people can’t. Professor Grandin’s talk opened our mind to how different peoples’ brains work differently and that this alternate reality is not so uncommon for people in the design industry.

Temple Grandin PART 1 of 2 | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Temple Grandin PART 2 of 2 | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 10:34 am and is filed under Conference Commentary, Prototyping, Videos, Visualizations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.