Mar. 01 2010

Enhanced Salsa

But aside from making me really hungry, the video also made me think of how certain media is presented to allow for an experience, to make the technology behind it disappear. That oh-so-smooth transition from “video on a video hosting website” to “Salsa Show!” was clutch to making me view this as more than a 40-second clip about a vegetable I really couldn’t care less about and something I wanted to click away from. Movie theaters are certainly designed to be invisible, and I think physical books are as well, providing only the turn of a page as the sole interruption between the written word and the reader’s imagination. Even then, that interruption is the mark of a good book: a “page-turner.” With the boom of electronic reading devices, it’s important to keep this feature in mind; which device will allow you to have an experience with a book, to make you want that salsa and nothing else, and then give it to you?

my sister is a better blogger than i am.

Feb. 24 2010

Letterheady: Interesting Letterhead Designs

superamit:

This is a blog deserving of your love, biz+design fans.

tasty.

Feb. 15 2010

The design philosophy of the AK-47 (via dgray_xplane)

Don’t design for a perfect world, because the world isn’t perfect. Design simple things that are rugged, reliable, simple and easy to use; things that work even when conditions are chaotic; things that work even when they are mostly broken.

Feb. 09 2010

hybrowse.com

jakelodwick:

What have you been up to, Jake?

…

I build a generalized platform for these buttons and called it Kwisi, short for “Know When I See It”, and started testing on some friends’ sites (like the Photojojo Store). The name referred to the idea that sometimes you don’t know exactly what you want — you just have to look around and see what catches your eye. When you do a Google Search, for example, you have some word in mind, and you’re attempting to go directly to it. But what if you’re just in the mood to shop? What if you want to see something new, something innovative, or strange, or obscure, or foreign? Traditional web search isn’t that helpful. So I thought I would install this platform on other sites, who would change their whole webstore around to accommodate me.

…

My philosophy here is that search engines are 20-year-old technology and we need new ways of navigating the endless data that is piling up every day. To that end, I have committed to Hybrowse as a four-month project. I will continue working full-time on it until May 1st (at the very least). This is not a startup company, it is my attempt to make life more manageable for anyone who feels overwhelmed with data. If you feel that is a noble goal then please play with the site and let me know how I can improve it. Very few things are “locked in” and it’s very easy to make changes, so if you have any opinions, please send them to me at jake@hybrowse.com. I want to know your thoughts; it’s hard for me to see the site very clearly anymore, by myself.

But before I go, I will make this more interesting and supply some new ammunition for anyone who thinks I am crazy. The crazy thing is this. By May 1st I will have 1,000 services on Hybrowse. Yes, that’s 998 more than I have right now (Netflix and Etsy). I consider this goal “impossible” and will, by any rational calculation, fail hilariously, but I don’t care — I need an audacious goal that gets my adrenaline pumping, and 100 doesn’t do it. 1000 sites. I’m like a local car salesman on tv. “THESE GOALS ARE INSANE!!!”

I genuinely think the site would be profoundly useful if it had 1,000 services. Picture it. You land on the home page and use the same “overlapping tags” mechanism to discover, say, Swedish housewares stores, then pick one, then browse their overpriced euroshit. Or you sort through Match.com profiles and try to find ones that don’t look like monsters. I don’t know how it will work. But I’m going to do it and I want your suggestions … and this is going to be a very busy couple months and I have to go now, because I suddenly realized I have a lot of effing work to do.

jake@hybrowse.com

(ps: Peter Vidani did the site’s visual design)

this is great, jake.  i really hope you reach your goal b/c the approach is absolutely necessary.  1,000 is a smart number too.

Jan. 21 2010

is it just me or do you find this UI a bit presumptive?  this is what loads when the page loads.  before i’ve even done anything.

now, i’m a fan of this show but what if i wasn’t?  if this was the very first episode i’ve ever watched before - would my very first action be endorsing it on my network?  i’m not a UI or design pro by any means.  i just pay attention to stuff like this and it felt a little presumptive.  instead of watching the video and maybe sharing it with my friends, i took a screen shot and wrote this post instead.  i bet CH didn’t really consider that as a use case but oh well.

on the flip side, youtube is minimizing.  finally.

Jan. 20 2010

The Zen Humidifier uses no electricity: Instead, water is drawn up through the wood and evaporated into the air. According to the designers — the Japanese firm Okada — this process evaporates water six times faster than if you left in in a glass.

amazing (via swissmiss | Zen Humidifier).

Nov. 12 2009

Business Model Generation

“Businesspeople don’t just need to understand designers better; they need to become designers.”
Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management

Nov. 08 2009

I believe in science and art, and the promise and potential of design to bring them together to change the world.

In our intellectual institutions, and our society in general, science and art live mostly separate lives- developing separate worldviews, distinct methods, specialist language, and segregated communities of thought and practice.

But the more I work as a designer- a practice that demands the constant negotiation of the boundaries and intersections of these two worlds, where every creative relies on a scientific base- the more deeply committed I am to the foundation of science.

The historic scientific project has built a common language of human knowledge that allows any scientist working anywhere to challenge and revise and add to our shared resource. It was open source before that idea was named. And it is on this human foundation of knowledge that we solve the challenges we face as a global society.

It is science that has opened up the electromagnetic spectrum so that we can explore the universe in all its complexity. It is science that has allowed us the wonders of communication so that you can read my words, and we can connect across borders and cultures and time zones. And that has built the tools to overcome diseases like smallpox and SARS, and soon polio and others. And that has also built the pathway out of the dark night of ignorance, mythology, and superstition, allowing us to replace imaginary stories with hard-won empirical knowledge.

But my commitment to scientific knowledge in no way diminishes my belief in the mystery and power of the arts.

It is art that sings to us and opens our hearts to one another. It is art that gives meaning to things that would otherwise go unnoticed. And that connects us to our past. And that laughs at our hubris and limitations, while speaking to us of the darkness we cannot say out loud.

In the end, it is art that allows us to understand, express, and share science. While science works to order the matter of the world, art orders the meaning of the world.

In my practice of design these two worlds of meaning and matter, of aesthetics and scientific knowledge, of quality and quantity, of mystery and certainty, of intuition and expertise, come together to create new possibilities for shaping our world.

As a designer, everything I do draws on the arts and the aesthetic dimensions of cultural life, and also rests on the foundation of the scientific project. Everything I do summons up the mystery of beauty and the history of form, but demands the technical base of knowledge for its success. Nothing we make can succeed that does not draw on our technical expertise and the science of material and energy and process. Nothing we make is relevant if it doesn’t “work”. But nothing we make is relevant if it is not cultural, and beautiful in some dimension.

Buckminster Fuller once wrote, “When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

Without the dimension that we call art- color and texture, form and material, juxtaposition and composition, humor and metaphor- the full potential is somehow unrealized. No matter how efficient or effective, no matter how “smart,” without language of art, the things we make are limited in meaning and potential. It is art that connects to our life, to human needs and emotions- and that allows us to build a bridge to new possibilities.

At no time in human history has the potential for designing solutions that contribute to the benefit of humankind been greater than it is today. Because of the glowing knowledge in both science and the arts, our possibilities will be even greater tomorrow.

Design Is The Art of Science by Bruce Mau in a great new book, Glimmer. I think this is so fundementally important for all of us to understand and put into practice in our work. (via wearethedigitalkids)

bruce is the man.  i have a book that isn’t readily available elsewhere.  his firm designed and created it for mdc partners.  in other words, why do i pay so much attention to “design?”

because it matters.

Oct. 26 2009

jackcheng:

“Time is a material.”

Matt Jones of Berg’s presentation, “All the time in the world” is a springboard into so many interesting avenues regarding time, space and design. Seen here is Michel Gondry’s lo-fi “making of” video for the Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar video.

this can be some pretty heavy stuff if you let it be.  matt is one of the guys who works on dopplr.  at the heart of all this:  as humans, we create context.  signals, data, physical things, non-physical things.  items that define our existence and and help us function.  ”time” is one of those things.  pulling from the (great) presentation, at some point in the 17th century, we separated “time” from our existence with the belief that we weren’t connected.  it existed on a wholly seperate plane almost dictating existence.  when, arguably, it’s the opposite.  how do we keep track of “time?”

a clock.  a clock that a human created.  hopefully, this analogy rings true.

furthermore, matt from february of this year:

I’m still convinced that hereish-and-soonish/thereish-and-thenish are the grain we need to be exploring rather than just connecting a network of the pulsing ‘blue-dot’.

accuracy is a tenant of context.  you need something to be mathematically accurate (longitude & latitude) in order to build on top of it but so what if i’m on a street corner somewhere?  what am i doing?  what have i done?  will i be back?  what have i done there in the past?  will it be happening again?

it happens in the sub-conscious, but we (humans) learn from our interactions with each other.  learned behavior.  if i’m hanging out with friends, i might expect to do it again in a location and want to include others and at the same time - i’ll tailor what we do based on what we’ve done.

think of networks as vehicles (maybe platforms).  am i twittering?  no.  i’m giving you context.

Jun. 29 2009

Toward a theory of information relativity

People will also believe that they understand something when they don’t really understand it. Have you ever left a meeting where everyone seemed to be in agreement, yet their later actions made it clear that they didn’t agree after all? It’s common to see nodding heads in a room when people don’t agree – they think they agree but in reality they don’t. This is because when an explanation is sufficiently vague, people are free to believe what they want to believe. Politicians often use this rhetorical principle to great effect. Words like “freedom, justice and fairness” mean different things to different people. Vague explanations are common in business, and they can give the illusion of agreement. But they don’t get results.