Food For Thought

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Comment by bill daul on March 13, 2009 at 2:20am

Check this folio out...I typed the whole thing in 10 or so years ago:

http://human-landscaping.com/innovate/innovation-folio.html

http://human-landscaping.com/innovate/innovation-credits.html

Comment by bill daul on February 6, 2009 at 2:07am

By PAM BELLUCK



Trying to improve your performance at work or write that novel? Maybe it’s
time to consider the color of your walls or your computer screen.

If a new study is any guide, the color red can make people’s work more
accurate, and blue can make people more creative.

In the study, published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science,
researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with 600
people to determine whether cognitive performance varied when people saw red
or blue. Participants performed tasks with words or images displayed against
red, blue or neutral backgrounds on computer screens.

Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like
remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did
better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a
brick or creating toys from shapes.

“If you’re talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like
proofreading skills, then a red color should be used,” said Juliet Zhu, an
assistant professor of marketing at the business school at the University of
British Columbia, who conducted the study with Ravi Mehta, a doctoral
student.

But for “a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new
solution to fight child obesity or teenage smoking,” Dr. Zhu said, “then you
should get people into a blue room.”

The question of whether color can color performance or emotions has
fascinated scientists, not to mention advertisers, sports teams and
restaurateurs.

In a study on Olympic uniforms, anthropologists at Durham University in
England found that evenly matched athletes in the 2004 Games who wore red in
boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling defeated
those wearing blue 60 percent of the time. The researchers suggested that
red, for athletes as for animals, subconsciously symbolizes dominance.

Effects that were perhaps similarly primal were revealed in a 2008 study led
by Andrew Elliot of the University of Rochester. Men considered women shown
in photographs with red backgrounds or wearing red shirts more attractive
than women with other colors, although not necessarily more likeable or
intelligent.

Then there was the cocktail party study, in which a group of interior
designers, architects and corporate color scientists built model rooms
decorated as bars in red, blue or yellow. They found that more people chose
the yellow and red rooms, but that partygoers in the blue room stayed
longer. Red and yellow guests were more social and active. And while red
guests reported feeling hungrier and thirstier than others, yellow guests
ate twice as much.

Experts say colors may affect cognitive performance because of the moods
they engender.

“When you feel that the situation you are in is problematic,” said Norbert
Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, “you are more
likely to pay attention to detail, which helps you with processing tasks but
interferes with creative types of things.”

By contrast, Dr. Schwarz said, “people in a happy mood are more creative and
less analytic.”

Many people link red to problematic things, like emergencies or X’s on
failing tests, experts say. Such “associations to red — stop, fire, alarm,
warning — can be activated without a person’s awareness, and then influence
what they are thinking about or doing,” said John A. Bargh, a psychology
professor at Yale University. “Blue seems a weaker effect than red, but blue
skies, blue water are calm and positive, and so that effect makes sense
too.”

Still, Dr. Schwarz cautioned, color effects may be unreliable or
inconsequential. “In some contexts red is a dangerous thing, and in some
contexts red is a nice thing,” he said. “If you’re walking across a frozen
river, blue is a dangerous thing.”

Indeed, Dr. Elliot of the University of Rochester said blue’s positive
emotional associations were considered less consistent than red’s negative
ones.

It might also matter whether the color dominates someone’s view, as on a
computer screen, or is only part of what is seen. Dr. Elliot said that in
the Science study, brightness or intensity of color — not just the color
itself — might have had an effect.

Some previous cognitive studies found no effect from color, although some
used mostly pastels or less distinctive tasks. One found that students
taking tests did better on blue paper than on red, but Dr. Schwarz said the
study used depressing blue and upbeat red.

The Science study’s conclusion that red makes people more cautious and
detail-oriented coincides with Dr. Elliot’s finding that people shown red
test covers before I.Q. tests did worse than those shown green or neutral
colors. And on a different test, people with red covers also chose easier
questions. I.Q. tests require more problem-solving than Dr. Zhu’s memory and
proofreading questions.

When Dr. Zhu’s subjects were asked what red or blue made them think of, most
said that red represented caution, danger or mistakes, and that blue
symbolized peace and openness. Subjects were quicker to unscramble anagrams
of “avoidance related” words like “danger” when the anagrams were on red
backgrounds, and quicker with anagrams of positive, “approach related” words
like “adventure” when they were on blue backgrounds.

The study also tested responses to advertising, finding that advertisements
listing product details or emphasizing “avoidance” actions like cavity
prevention held greater appeal on red backgrounds, while ones using creative
designs or emphasizing positive actions like “tooth whitening” held more
appeal on blue.

When the participants were asked if they believed red or blue would improve
performance, most said blue for both detail-oriented and creative tasks.
Maybe, Dr. Zhu said, that is because more people prefer blue.

The study did not involve different cultures, like China, where red
symbolizes prosperity and luck. And it said nothing about mixing red and
blue to make purple.

For what it’s worth, many newsroom walls at The New York Times are bright
tomato-soup red. The newspaper’s facilities department says there are no
blue rooms in the place.



February 6, 2009
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06color.html

Comment by Gary Shamshoian on February 5, 2009 at 5:27pm

One of the most thought provoking items I have seen recently is the Constructal Theory (www.constructal.org). This is a fairly new engineering concept that identifies common parameters of natural energy flow systems so we can mimic them in our built environment. Leonardo Da Vinci implemented these ideas to stimulate his innovations (I saw these concepts in his writings, but without the equations). I believe that biomimicry (copying nature's design techniques) will bring us 100 years of engineering innovation, and constructal theory provides equations for the first few decades. Trees, blood veins, river deltas, lightning, and lava flows share similar structures, and this theory provides a quantitative framework to apply inherent lessons that nature shows us constantly. We should expect to see more inventions that look like lighting rather than straight lines or seams that we are used to. There are expected applications to political, business, and social structures in addition to mechanical devices also.