a generation of question-askers

I bought my mom an iPad recently. Last week, we went to dinner to celebrate her 50th birthday. We were sitting at Ecco in Midtown on a gorgeous night, and I was asking her how she was liking the new iPad. She remarked to me that she hasn't sat down at her computer in at least 4 or 5 days, but she's still afraid to take it with her anywhere because she "might break it."

Great conversation, gorgeous night at Ecco in Midtown Atlanta.

My mom is sort of afraid of technology. I find it frustrating to teach her how to use new pieces of technology. She grew up in a time and a place that didn't encourage learning by doing. I grew up in a culture that supported playing, exploring, and trying things out without asking permission. Our paradigms of how we approach something are totally different.

When you think about it, Generation Y is a bunch of question-askers. We aren't afraid of asking questions, because we've always had the tools to find the answers. When it came to computers and the internet, we very rarely asked our parents how to do something, because they knew as much about the technology as we did. As a result, we were allowed to explore, to learn, to break things if that's what it took. We had a much higher tolerance for questioning, answering, and failing in our early lives, because it didn't take time to try again.

I wish I could get Shan to write a guest post about success, failure, and startups. Michael Fairbanks said last weekend that to understand what you really should be chasing, "fail frequently, fail fast, fail originally" - Gen Y is in the perfect place to do that. To take risks. It's sort of exciting, given our backgrounds and upbringings, to think about the next 30 years of innovation in technology. To think about the next 30 years of thinking in human-centered design.

The iPad is a great device for Mom. Once she overcomes that initial barrier, that fear, it encourages her to play, to touch, to try. What's the worst that could happen, I asked her - that you break it and we have to get a new one? It's a low investment to learn to ask good questions and seek good answers.

buying stuff with the irrational brain

I just bought a new laptop. This is no small feat, because I've been thinking about the purchase for at least a year now (I bought a new desktop in June instead). There's been a lot of internal (and external) debate about features and benefits and functionality. About Arrandale processors and how many gigs of RAM one needs. About portability.

Sawra approves of the new laptop (feel free to use with credit)

I just finished reading Jonah Lehrer's second book, How We Decide. In it, Lehrer makes an interesting point about purchasing decisions - that when we try and give our prefrontal cortices - our rational centers - too many variables to consider, our brains get overwhelmed and they give up. Our emotional brains have strong reactions to things, and when we're asked to make complicated decisions (like, buying laptops), we really should listen to what our amygdalas are telling us.

Tim Brown once said, "As a designer I ply my craft in the turbulent waters between the complex things we create and the human beings they are intended to serve." Our rational brains are really good at analyzing the complexity of objects that we have, but they are poor predictors of how usable they're going to be in our lives. That's a good challenge for designers to keep in mind - to help people bridge the gap between functionality and usability. Function is rational. Usability is emotional.

A month ago, during Snowpocalypse-turned-Icepocalypse in Atlanta, I impulse-bought the laptop that I should have bought nine months ago. In the month that I've had it, it's barely left my side - from Breckenridge to El Paso to Baltimore and back.

And you know what? It's the best laptop I've ever owned.

the internet is full

Flying from ATL to SFO tonight, and was going to post earlier about use case, airports, and long flights, but as GoGo informed me, "the internet is full."

Seriously, though, kudos to Google for sponsoring free wifi through the Holidays.

See you on the West Coast!