Modernity and mess - Psychologists explore paradoxical relationship between our clutter and innovation

What can messiness and untidiness tell researchers about how to create innovative designs of tomorrow? This is one of the paradoxes that will be explored at a free public lecture on 23 March at the University of Leicester

Professor Mark Lansdale, Head of the School of Psychology, delivers his inaugural lecture The Applied Psychology of Elegance and Disorder at 5.30pm in Lecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building.

He said: “The lecture isn't about fashion or anarchy! It is about the idea that, both in the real world and in the laboratory, human behaviour can look 'messy'. But if we look carefully, some of this mess is not what it seems: often it represents a sophisticated response to difficulties we experience in getting things done with the tools at hand.

“As a result, if we don't take careful account of this possibility when we design new systems, it is easy to get things spectacularly wrong - as I demonstrate. This is true whether we are talking about offices, computers, buildings or the organisation of nurse's work patterns.

“One aspect of this talk, then, is about the apparent paradox that by looking at messy or untidy systems of today, psychologists can say something useful and interesting about innovative designs of tomorrow.”

Professor Lansdale is known for research on how office workers use their messy desks as a memory aid, and its implications for the design of future systems.

The other aspect of his talk is to bring these insights into the laboratory to study human memory: “Looking at some recent research we have carried out into forgetting, I show how excessive 'tidiness' in theorising about memory can be a mistake.

“Furthermore, rather more inelegant models based upon what people actually do in experiments provide solutions to some very interesting gaps in our understanding and raise interesting possibilities for future research and how we use our memory in everyday tasks!”

The researchers at Leicester are also working on the next generation of picture databases based upon EPSRC-funded research into eye tracking and visual memory

Picture databases are worth millions to the economy and in specific areas such as the NHS will have a significant impact upon the process of diagnosis (for eg looking up patients presenting with very similar patterns of pathology

Professor Lansdale’s research on messy offices, office information systems and database design is topical in the IT world. The work on forgetting is particularly relevant to ageing and memory research.

With civil engineers and architects, he is involved in a multi-disciplinary project on the design of research buildings for 21st Century Universities; funded by HEFCE.

• Lecture by Professor Mark Lansdale, The Applied Psychology of Elegance and Disorder, takes place at 5.30pm, Tuesday 23 March, in Lecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building, University of Leicester.