Linkpile

• Consumers And Self-designed Products: Study: “Consumers enjoy intentionally competing against professionals” in designing stuff.
• Tale of successful non-designer product development: Non-pro inventor “wanted a neat and simple way to transport deviled eggs to get-togethers,” and got her product idea turned into a product, “subsequently featured on QVC.” Okay, but a deviled egg transporter?
• Spinning Lego minifig anatomy GIF reveals all: Enjoyable.
• Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why: This is interesting! “From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in R&D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007—the fewest since 1983—and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.”
• Doctors cling to white coats: “It’s as much sociology as medicine. I’m the doctor. I have status. I have the uniform. That makes me official.”
• A Manifesto for Slow Communication: “In the past two decades, we have witnessed one of the greatest breakdowns of the barrier between our work and per­sonal lives since the notion of leisure time emerged in Victorian Britain as a result of the Industrial Age. It has put us under great physical and mental strain, altering our brain chemistry and daily needs. It has isolated us from the people with whom we live, siphoning us away from real-world places where we gather. It has encouraged flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise. It has made it more difficult to read slowly and enjoy it, hastening the already declining rates of literacy. It has made it harder to listen and mean it, to be idle and not fidget.”

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