'Things' and what they say

I've got this fascination for 'things'. Not just any old 'thing', but objects which say something about a culture and, in turn, about national identity. Although I have lived in the UK for some time, I still stumble upon 'things' that appear foreign, if not jarring to me. For example, anything to do with souvenirs or memorabilia about the Royal Family. The events of this year have meant an increase in new objects linked to the wedding of Kate and William. It wasn't only the tourists who rushed out to purchase mugs with pre-wedding photographs of the couple smiling, and afterwards images of that now famous kiss.

Garden gnomes are also a particular British oddity. Like with the Royal Family, gnomes share in a history of fairy tales. They are small human-like creatures which live underground and share a striking similarity to the Disney characters as protrayed in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Gnomes took up residence in the gardens of British homes as lawn ornaments after World War II, first in terracotta clay then, in the 1960s, in plastic. Nowadays you can also buy unfinished gnomes and paint them yourself leading to an inevitable use of gaudy colours and even in a greater sense of surrealism.

None of these things seem odd at all to the British natives, but what of the American fairy tales expressed in objects?

When a place goes away

Sometimes a beloved place is lost (destroyed), and it was such a good place that it even though it wasn't good enough to remain being used, people will memorialize it. This place was a part of the community for several years, and was removed in favor of a parking lot, then remembered with a plaque.

User intervention

A credit card swipe terminal with user modification. The clerk explained to me that people kept choosing the wrong screen button. Something about credit versus enter. The user fix covers up the confusing button.

A related story, at an iSchool discussion last year, a PhD student was complaining about how his users kept making the same mistakes with his interface. I sheepishly suggested that maybe the problem was with the design. He hadn't considered that...