Therefore, one might be more inclined to find alcoholic beverages as a keen way to quench one’s thirst, after all - one’s horse was disinclined to drink from the same vessel as a whiskey might come. One got it from indoor plumbing if one was rich, that was drawn directly from a water system, or if poor, from a rain barrel, trough, canal, river, or some other body of water. The water quality of the 1880’s was…how shall I say, less than what one might expect good quality of water would be by our modern standards.
So much so that he developed an application of such an extreme nature in its complexity as to convert the nonconvertible. Something that would cure, in Cogswell’s view, the single greatest and vilest evil the nation had ever known: the consumption of alcohol by drinking water.Ĭogswell was, I think it is fair to view him as, a vehement crusader of a prohibitionist. Something that would improve the health and productivity of all human kind. Would solve more problems than the telegraph. The truth is, this was supposed to be THE application of the 1880’s.
And between the stork on top, the words on it, the two odd fish, the grates underneath and why one would need steps to go inside of it, quite stymies the brain. It’s a feature of the city that, honestly, unless you happen upon it on purpose, little know what on earth it was all about. No tour goes by it, except in passing to go someplace else. Henry Cogswell, a dentist, is chiseled into the thing). It is a monument, in the strictest terms that it is a monument to an idea, rather than to a person (even though the designer, Dr.
There was a monument of sorts, built in 1882 and given to the city of Washington, D.C. It began, whilst I was a Segway tour guide in Washington, D.C. The Temperance Fountain: Monument to Useless Research & Worthless Designįor me, my fascination with UXR&D began in earnest long after film school, after being homeless, after mongering fish, after bouncing. Rather, they should look elsewhere for guidance very much realizing the adage from organic-chemistry-meets-Zen-Buddhism: Everything is connected to everything else. As I understand my practice of it, in the hopes that one curious about the subject may well read this and realize that in fact, one must not study UXR&D directly. Thus, what follows is a mindfulness about the connections between these disciplines & philosophies that I perceive tie in most closely with UX Research & Design. But I wanted to write this, if only for me, to see if I could speak about the foundations of how I found myself in the field, and maybe to even teach a class on it for this particular university.
I didn’t go to school to learn how to do UXR&D, rather I went to school to be a Human Factors Psychologist and ended up double majoring in History as well. I recently came across a job to teach others what I know of UXR&D formally (they want us to teach now, can you believe it?) and it got me thinking about the roots of how I came to be in the field. Rather, one must become from another place - similar to that of a butterfly, in a crayon sense whereas once you were a caterpillar, through growth and metamorphic change, one becomes something else entirely & absolutely.
I have learned in my life and in my study that no one is, just IS, in a professional sense. There wasn’t anything (just about) that I wasn’t inclined to do or try at least once…more if I happened to be good at it. Quite honestly, I was one of those people that didn’t know what in hell he wanted to do with his life until quite late in age (not that anyone cannot accomplish something in the bell curve as it were, at any age). I am going to use these four sciences to demonstrate the points accordingly. Everything I ever needed to know to have a basis in UX (specifically, in my stock & trade UX Research & Design, hereafter UXR&D for short) I learned in four main disciplines, by & large: History, Archaeology, Film School, and studying Human Factors & Ergonomics in college.