From the course: Universal Principles of Design
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Supernormal stimuli
- Hi, I’m William Lidwell. and this is “Universal Principles of Design.” In this movie, “Supernormal Stimuli: “Designing with instincts in mind.” Niko Tinbergen, the legendary ethologist and nobel laureate spent his career trying to figure out what made animals tick. What was behind their various behaviors? In one of his many animal experiments he studied food begging behaviors in herring gull chicks. What makes the chicks get excited, chirp, and peck at their mother’s beak to get food? And how do they know how to do that from birth? Tinbergen began this experiment by getting some gull chicks and feeding them with a partial model of a mama gull. A realistic white head complete with a yellow bill, and a red dot on it. It worked. The chicks didn’t seem affected, and behaved as if they were being fed by a real mama gull. He then tried the experiment with a realistic model of just the bird’s bill; a yellow stick with a red dot, no head at all. Again the chicks didn’t seem to mind and…
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