...the best meetings happened by accident, in the hallway or parking lot

Jonah Lehrer writes at The New Yorker about how architecture can contribute to problem-solving. A set of people who always agree, or (in a brainstorming session) are restricted from disagreeing, will be less likely to address a problem from new points of view. 

There's a personal angle to this story as well. Always read the same journals? Always visit the same websites? Always listen to the same radio stations? Rely on software that predicts what you'll want based on what you've done before? Those are all good tools for digging ruts for yourself.

via SwissMiss

via Konigi

Sample InVision comment. Comments are made in context.

...the high-res portion of our visual field is only 1% at the center of our entire visual field

Kristina Mausser interviews Jeff Johnson, author of Designing with the Mind in Mind. 

Regarding the narrow focus of visual attention: I've seen users miss notification that popped up on their screens during usability testing. Their attention was focused on a different area of the screen. Of their sub-3-inch mobile phone screens, that is. 

Kindle & iPad are marketing devices

Here's the 1919 catalog from Mesta Machine Company, which made things like that.

 y, SimplifyIt is well to have two brushes of different width and shape.