reaching the outliers

I took a class at UVSC called Interactive Design, and the text was this book written by an ex-Microsoft employee about programmers vs. designers. One of the main points was that programmers think like programmers and therefore frustrate people who don't think the same way. The author worked as a consultant and demonstrated the fix. When designing an interactive product, he wouldn't focus on the people who would automatically understand, he focused on the people who would have the hardest time.

For example, when designing a movie selection system for an airplane, he created four (4) characters he wanted to reach. One character was an old man, who gets on the airplane, and suddenly has a choice of what movie to watch. The author designed the system to be easy to understand by this man, and that's how he was so successful.

Back to teaching, one of my biggest focuses at the moment is the same thing. I'm not worried about reaching the students who are already interested, I'm worried about reaching those that don't seem to get it, and feel like they never will.

As far as reflecting on the readings, I like how it somewhat objectively presents ideas and doesn't seem to say that one or another is IT, but it just seems to say, hey, here's something you can try. But at the same time it feels like a lot of these (at least the examples) are for elementary kids.