Comment on Nate's post.
With technology making its way into every aspect of our lives, it is important to consider how we design for those areas. For many people, religion is a large and important part of their lives. Many people hang religious images in their households to remind them of the principles and rules of their religion. Susan P. Wyche, Kelly E. Caine, Benjamin K. Davison, Shwetak N. Patel,
Michael Arteaga, and Rebecca E. Grinter did a study on integrating religious images into applications that have a religious purpose.
The group experimented using a mobile application that showed Muslims when it was time to pray. They incorporated a lot of imagery that is important in Islamic culture: Nature, Light, Mosques, the color green. A user study showed that the Muslim users of this program found that the imagery helped them to be more focused on the important aspects of their religion.
Being religious my self, I know that Christian symbols sometimes help me focus my life more. I would like to see ways that sacred imagery could be used in applications for other religions as well. Of course it would be very important to research imagery of which ever religion you are designing for. This could also be applied to secular applications. One could research what symbols evoke certain thoughts in the user.
What kinds of applications are these integrated into? Are they images like that sun dial that kind of show the status of the sun, or are they pop-ups like "it's X time of day, pray to Mecca"?
ReplyDeleteHaha sweet, now us Catholics can carry around e-prayer cards instead of stuffing our wallets with little pictures of saints
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