Week 1

My background is quite diverse and so are the disciplines I am imbued with. In regards to the latter, I am primarily entwined with Design and knowledges revolving around its spectrum, that walk into the spheres of Human-Computer Interaction, Art, Computer Science and many more, that originally report back to what the Design Process Entails, in fact, User Centered Design Process, one that is primarily driven by humans. If we were to adhere to humans as a form of animals, who share many traits and commonalities with animals that range and cover spectral of emotions, then in such case anthropomorphism in a way becomes a driving force of design. As what's most important in the design streams I was taught, is the fulfillment of human needs, directly and indrectly expressed, measured objectively and subjectively, quantified and interpreted via a variety of ways.

In many cases, the results have to be interpreted and as humans who we are interpret them, we apply knowledges acquired beforehand, at times also resorting to 'hunches', something that humans have a feeling about but can't yet express exactly what is telling them and why, those hunches being one form of driving and justifying a design. One that is not necessarily accurate but can tell something as they originate from somewhere. If these hunches are treated as instincts, then without a doubt, instincts themselves are being shared between humans and animals and could be driven down to just simply relying to a set of senses, ones that we operated on, commonly-established set of five: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. These at times intersect with one another, for instance smell and taste, at times they will also become 'sharper', if for some reason some senses do not work well or at all, with documented instances of at least hearing becoming more precise once sight is decreased or lost altogether. Now, with animals, these senses can often be much stronger or weaker, whether in terms of hearing, this being able to detect a wider set of frequencies, or eyes being positioned more apart from one another, providing greater angle of view, like for eagles and letting them only see a certain set of colours, ideal for detecting prey. All senses, sharpened up throughout the years, becoming what they are, due to evolution and what one could possibly call - natural selection.

Knowing all this helps a designer to create better solutions. For once, by the use of metaphors that can involve animals, their tendencies and features of their sensory output. As in the paper, one could say a lot of Anthropodenial could be happening, as designers can take certain actions taken by animals literally, in a false manner when one shown behaviour may indicate a specific action that's being paralleled to what humans know but in fact mean something entirely different, known to people who deal with, especially one specific set of animals professionally. That doesn't mean that the design will be ultimately flawed if it's being ultimately designed for humans and the products designers get involved in are always being susceptible to change and iterations but showcasing specific phenomena is just something that designers ultimately just have to consider in order to strengthen and justify their designs and, design by metaphor, is from what I know, one of the strongest techniques to justify a design. If nature nurtured specific species and perfected them to be good at something, like eagles with their wide-angle and specific colour-spectrum vision enabling them to hunt down their prey, then perhaps humans could benefit, from, let's say, having a set of binoculars that cover wide angles and thermal-vision, which one could argue could be considered as one way, parallel to how specific animals see the world, see it whatever's useful to them and contributing to their own survival.