Mark Powell – Mexico XXI
Interview with photographer Mark Powell about his latest body of work.
Walking Papers
Contribute to Open Street Map by marking map features on paper and scanning them in.
Data.gov
The data.gov site has finally launched, an exciting initiative that would have been unimaginable in the opaque Bush era. Right now the available datasets and somewhat limited but the site claims that it will be expanded over time and includes the ability to suggest other datasets. Formats for data include XML, CSV, KML, and Shapefiles.
Wu-Tang Design Remix Project
If Wu-Tang Clan was on Bluenote. Thanks to Chris Neely for the link.
Field
An environment for writing code to rapidly and experimentally assemble and explore algorithmic systems. It is visual, it is hybrid, it is code-based.
Emotional Cartography
A collection of essays from artists, designers, psychogeographers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists. Free PDF download of the full book.
Data as Seductive Material, Matt Jones of Dopplr
"As designers it's imperative that we learn to investigate data as a material in a critical and designerly way -- was we would with physical materials."
HealthNews Blogs - Nicki - A Touch Screen Phone for Those Who Can’t See the Screen
This device determines what he is trying to access relative to its position on the screen. For instance, the first place Mr. Raman touches on the screen is considered to be a five by the dialer. The dialer then calculates what number Mr. Raman is dialing relative to the five.
Streams, affordances, Facebook, and rounding errors - Laughing Meme
Discussion of how the Facebook redesign changes the social contract with their users around completeness of activity streams. "Don’t let your design make promises you can’t keep."
BBC NEWS | Technology | The Tech Lab: Bruce Schneier
What was once ephemeral is now permanent. Data is the pollution of the information age.
Design and the Construction by Carl DiSalvo [PDF]
Carl DiSalvo's article from the latest issue of Design Issues is available as a free download. I miss having full access to all these articles like I did when I was at CMU, but of all the choices in this issue, Carl's would be my first read anyway.
Chicago Reader | The Slow Listening Movement
Former Reader contributor Michaelangelo Matos proposes an antidote for MP3 fatigue; the NVDRS Tape brings digital music into the age of the cassette tape. By Miles Raymer
Forum Nokia - Instructions for RDA usage
Remote device access (RDA) is service which enables access to live Nokia hosted devices over the Internet for testing purposes. You can upload your own applications and take screen captures.
Twitter Search Results on Google
Greasemonkey script to integrate Twitter searches into Google results.
Archisuits
Archisuit consists of an edition of four leisure jogging suits made for specific architectural structures in Los Angeles. The suits include the negative space of the structures and allow a wearer to fit into, or onto, structures designed to deny them.
The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » Information Wants to Be Expensive
Great reminder that information wants to be free, but also expensive. Also a good reminder that a memorable quote needs its full context to be fully understood.
IDEO Labs » Rear-Projection TV Turned into a Multi-touch Display
Dave gives us the details of his latest multitouch project. I've played with it a bit and can vouch for it being really responsive and very cool. I can't wait to build some applications to run on it.
PhoneFinger | Wonder Warp Software
A new version of PhoneFinger is out that lets you select different fingers and adjust their size. It also has a minimalist circle option instead of the finger. Originally designed for iPhone development this is really useful for any sort of touchscreen prototyping.
Feltron Eight Annual Report
A wonderful example of personal informatics, these fold out posters are the yearly output of Nicholas Felton's meticulously recorded life.
Ford's Green Plan to Drive Sales - BusinessWeek
Photo of dashboard concept by Smart Design based on insights by IDEO.
Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction
Good writing tips to return to later. I'm feeling the itch to start writing more.
Spot.us
Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories.
How to install AVG without LinkScanner
Instructions to install AVG free without the annoying Google link scanner.
Processing 1.0 is here!
After all these years Processing has finally made it out of beta, gaining a shiny new icon, color scheme, and splash screen amongst other things. Congratulations to Ben Fry and everyone else involved.
Processing monsters
Examples of simple interactive monters built with Processing, inclding source code. Via Golan Levin's blog.
Epic Burger on Flickr
Cody Hudson comments on the obvious rip-off of his style by Epic Burger.
Obama Grabs Headlines
Newspaper covers from around the world on November 5th.
Install PHP Apache MySQL on Windows : WampServer
Seriously easy way to get a mirror of your server environment on a Windows machine for local development and testing. All configuration is taken care of with a auto-installer and you can swap between different PHP, MySQL, and Apache versions whenever you want. Impressive and incredibly useful.
Jonathan Harris collects stories | Video on TED.com
In this video, near the end, Jonathan Harris gives a glimpse of a new project where he collects stories from people in Butan. He asks them their wish, writes it on a balloon they hold, photographs their hands and asks them to make a silly face. The result is incredibly touching, skip to around 11:30 in the video.
Increased Accuracy for Location in the Browser
Google Gears adds wifi-based positioning. This makes location-enabled web applications for laptops much more viable; remember laptops are mobile devices too.
Design Observer: The Inventor of the Cowboy Shirt
A look at the history of the snap-button cowboy shirt, including an interview with the inventor, Jack A. Weil.
Kidrobot in Chicago
Looks like Rotofugi will have some compeition in the heart of Wicker Park.
Telescopic Text - Joe Davis 2008
Forget hypertext, hello telescopic text.
Leah Evans Textiles
Amazing maps made of fabric. I saw her work at the Bucktown Arts Festival last weekend.
Sheraton hotels now have Microsoft Surface tables in the lobby
Yesterday I got a chance to play with a Surface table at an AT&T store in Atlanta. The interaction was smooth and using both hands to select and resize was really intuitive. Today I learned that Sheraton hotels are putting Surface tables in their hotels, including a location in Chicago.
Amazon Universal Wish List Button
You can now add items to your Amazon wishlist from any store on the internet. There is no attempted upsell or links to the product at Amazon, just a useful way to aggregate together all your lists. Probably the the best designed bookmarklet I've used.
Shop Penelope's
My favorite clothing store now has a full online shop. I live less than a block away, but this is great news for those of you who don't.
Cook County Tax Hike In Effect
Sales tax in Chicago is now the highest of any city in the country, 10.25% starting July 1st. I think this is a breaking point where it's worth going out of your way to buy certain items online or out-of-state.
Peddy Cash - Chicago's Ruling Class [PDF]
Article in Vapors Magazine about the Chicago Moped Army gang. Photos of Warbux and an interview with Pat and Curt, also has a brief talk with Nigel about Murder Club.
Two faces of Interaction Design
Jonas Lowgren analyzes two historical approaches to interaction design: as a design discipline and as an extension of HCI. The term is increasingly collapsed into HCI, so this teasing apart is a useful distinction.
Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe
The Whitney Museum has an upcoming exhibition devoted to Buckminster Fuller, running from June 26 to September 21, 2008. Looks like I'll be planning another NYC museum trip this summer.
Human Tetris
Part of the Game Over project by artist Guillaume Reymond. Other performances include Pole Position, Space Invaders, and Pong. So enjoyable.
The Birth Clock
Smash the glass, and the clock will start to work, leaving you with the broken object as a reminder of your dramatic decision.
Jesse Graves stencils with mud -- Social Design Notes
It washes off and is a lot less toxic than spraypaint.
MUTO
Animated graffiti from Buenos Aires and Baden. Seriously blowing my mind.
Illinois as an owl
Great illustration of an owl in the shape of Illinois.
All of Inflation’s Little Parts - The New York Times
Interactive info-graphic showing inflation over the last year for various items.
CTA to add 18 routes to Bus Tracker system -- chicagotribune.com
Awesome. The Ashland and Damen buses are going to be trackable in a couple of weeks.
Nokia's Dream Phones - BusinessWeek
People in Mumbai, Rio and other megacities were asked to draw and explain their dream phone. They ended up being embedded in water bottles, detecting pollution levels, and creating peace.
Podcasts for IxDA Interaction 08
Video and audio podcasts for this conference are now online. It'll be great to check in on the ones I wasn't able to attend.
Situated Technologies
An exhibition critically exploring the evolving relationship between ubiquitous/pervasive computing and urban architecture.
CTA Bus Tracker
The Chicago Transit Authority now has realtime bus location tracking. Pick a stop and it will tell you what buses are coming and when. Not all the routes yet but this is really exciting.
hulu: Arrested Development
The entire TV series legally watchable online.
Skybus
Just found out about this airline from a billboard today. Checked out the website this afternoon and was interested, this evening the site is replaced with an announcement that they're closing ATA style.
The check was in the mail
I just found out that the economic stimulus checks are going to be mailed, not tacked on to 2007 tax returns. Given the quality of USPS in Chicago I won't be counting on being stimulated.
Sticky Poster
The design of this street poster reveals itself through polluted air sticking to it.
writing | ben fry
A much needed addition to the internet, Ben Fry now has a blog.
Twitter / buckyfuller
Buckminster Fuller has a Twitter account.
Design and the Elastic Mind - MoMA
Interesting structure to detail the latest exhibition at MOMA.
Longplayer
Longplayer is a 1000 year long piece of music which started to play on the 1st January 2000 and will continue to play, without repetition, until the 31st December 2999.
Form Inspires Function
Jeff Howard's take on the various ways that form leads to function in both design and use. I love the Asimov quote he references that the best moment of invention is not "eureka" but "that's funny..."
R.I.P.: Owning Music (1880-2008)
Christopher Fahey speculates that the ownership of recorded music will someday be seen as a weird historical anomaly.
Truth Be Told
Brief piece on Ed Burns, the former Baltimore City police officer and current writer for The Wire. He brings his experiences directly to the script, even employing ex-dealers he put in jail as actors on the show.
Niche Envy - The MIT Press
Looks like an interesting look at the side effects of ultra-targeted advertising and "marketing discrimination".
Richard Buchanan Keynote - Emergence 2007
Transcript and audio of Buchanan's closing keynote at last year's CMU Service Design conference.
USPS 2008 stamp collection includes Eames
Best stamps since Buckminster Fuller.
FeedDemon is now free!
My favorite desktop RSS reader is now free, and so is the online NewsGator account it synchronizes with. FeedDemon has the best tools I've found for managing lots complexity and not overwhelming you with incoming information. Highly recommended.
Kongō Gumi - Extreme business longevity
This construction company was the world's oldest continuously-operating company at 1,428 years of continuous business when they liquidated in January 2006. Imagine planning for that kind of longevity.
In Prison, Toddlers Serve Time With Mom - New York Times
"And even though the prison is full of women capable of violence, the children usually walk safely among them, as if protected by an invisible shield. It is as though they tap the collective maternal instinct of the 1,680 women locked up here."
DUX 2007 Session 1
I know that these notes are quite old at this point, and everyone else has already given their opinion on the conference. Better late than never though, and writing this helps me clarify my thoughts and revisit my experiences.
Putting together a coherent conference the topic of “designing for user experience” is a wide reaching challenge, made wider still by the theme this year to explore “changing roles & shifting landscapes” within the field. Accordingly, at DUX 2007 I met designers and researchers with varied backgrounds and responsibilities, a number of product managers, computer scientists, linguists, writers, dancers, academics of all stripes, and even proprietors of a yoga center. This was my first time as this bi-yearly event, conveniently held this time in downtown Chicago. My review of the proceedings is incomplete due to the varied level of attention I gave to particular presenters in my notes. Regardless, I hope that these remarks on the conference act not only as clarification and record keeping for my own experience but also encourage non-attendees to investigate the work presented.
Session 1: A Very Big Picture
The opening session felt like a grab bag, a place to put presentations that didn’t fit cleanly elsewhere except to illustrate the diversity of the conference, which was actually an okay way to begin. Moderator Pamela Mead, Zannel, began by discussing the theme of shifting landscapes, bringing up mobile platforms, social networks, user participation, and the complexity/necessity of managing different virtual selves in varying contexts. This opening presentation was on target with the conference theme, which unfortunately didn’t ring true for many others.
Peter Merholz, Adaptive Path, followed with a presentation entitled “Designing for Unbounded Experience.” He begin by decrying the word “innovation”, challenging all upcoming presenters to avoid using the term and say what they really mean instead. It was a point brought up again and again throughout the conference as presenters tried and (usually) failed to answer that challenge. He told a story about client work at Adaptive Path for a financial services firm (which I had heard before at a previous talk or podcast somewhere) that illustrated his point that design needs to address larger system and organizational issues to have true impact, not just a particular silo like designing a website. He argued that for design to have impact it must not be pigeonholed, that we should be designing for unbounded experience that address all touchpoints. Clearly this is something that many companies, and many in the audience, are already striving for — though it requires a high-level of engagement with a client or management group to accomplish. It seems like this is a particularly relevant line of thinking for Adaptive Path as they transition from their roots in web-based user experience and aspire to more holistic offerings.
Elizabeth Goodman, UC Berkley and Intel Research, followed with a project called “AnyPhone: Mobile Applications for Everyone.” The idea behind the AnyPhone project was to design mobile applications that can run on ANY mobile phone no matter how old — meaning no Java, SMS, Bluetooth, or even color screens. The technology they settled on was DTMF tones, which are simply the sounds you hear when you dial a touch-tone phone. An example application they prototyped involved a public screen with visual representations of each person’s mobile phone. People could call in to interact with the screen, and were identified by caller id. Commands were issued via key press to control their icon, and since feedback was happening visually people didn’t have to listen for audio messages or hold the handset to their ear; the phone was used as a remote control. Interaction could also go the other way, where a person could call in with a question and when their icon was selected the system could call them back. The prototypes demonstrated a way to engage an unknown public without excluding the less technologically enabled. The take-away was that creative use of old, but still operational technology is sometimes the best choice to create accessible and universal solutions.
Marc Pifarre and Oscar Tomico, University of Engineering and Architecture La Salle, Barcelona and University of Technology, Eindhoven, presented their work on “Bi-Polar Laddering,” which I found a bit hard to understand due to accents and mumbling. The process they were describing had heavy psychological underpinnings, but I found it similar the simplistic method “5 Why?” which involves asking “why?” five times to get to the underlying reasons behind a person’s behavior. It’s possible that their technique was more nuanced, and it was certainly more quantitatively and theoretically driven, but I didn’t find it different enough to warrant future investigation.
BJ Fogg, Stanford University, was not physical present to present his paper entitled “The Elements of Simplicity,” but appeared via pre-recorded video instead. I’m familiar with Fogg’s work on Persuasive Technology, but hadn’t read anything in his recent topic of study. The tone of the video presentation was kind of condescending; I guess it was a failed attempt at humor to go along with the video composition and editing styles of Ze Frank he was using. Maybe it was to counter notions of the “boring academic” or other such nonsense but it was off-putting. Fogg laid out a framework for Simplicity, noting that it is the resulting perception of an experience more than a particular attribute of a product, a useful point and one well taken. He then listed the features of simplicity: time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, and routine. How simple something is relates to how scarce any of these resources are at a particular time. Honestly, I feel as if this is intuitive to designers and something we manage the trade offs of for every project we do. Does it help us to have a theory and framework to talk about it? Yes. Do I want it explained to me in a goofy and aggrandizing way? No, not really. For a less critical viewpoint on this talk look here.
Mick Wallis, Alice Bayliss, Sita Popat, Joslin McKinney, John Bryden and Matthew Godden, University of Leeds, presented “SpiderCrab and the Emergent Object: Designing for the 21st Century”. I started out skeptical of how relevant this work by performance artists could be to my own. The SpiderCrab is a work in progress, a robotic dancing partner that acts as a kind of Turing test for dancing with the goal of detecting intimate body expression and responding with appropriate changes in robotic movement. The key directive, based on a EU research question, was “How can we design robots that are socially acceptable to people?” I’m honestly not that interested in robotics and began to wonder if this was more appropriate at HRI than DUX but near the end as they were explaining their critical and theoretical foundation I made a note to give it another chance, to read the paper and dig into the thinking that couldn’t be conveyed in a short presentation. I’ve yet to do that, but based on other presentations by the same presenters I’m hopeful that when I do I’ll be presently surprised.
The final presentation of the session, and the day, was David Pescovitz, Boing Boing, Institute for the Future, MAKE, with a talk on “Sensory Transformation: How We’ll Sip from the Information Firehose.” His talk was a bit like reading his blog or magazine as he showed us example after example of interesting technologies and projects. He described his work as future forecasting, which he defined as developing “plausible, internally consistent views of what may happen.” To develop this sort of foresight he looks for patterns of “weak signals” — small but significant events often found in the sorts of technology or art project examples he was showing. Most of the projects mentioned I had seen before in some form, but this entertaining presentation drove home the oft-repeated William Gibson quote that “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
That ended the presentations for the first day of DUX. I hope to do similar write-ups for the following two days. There are photos on Flickr (none by me unfortunately) and hopefully the full proceedings will soon be hosted by the AIGA as they were in 2005.
# December 27, 2007 04:20 PM
Chicago’s 91 Hoods « strange maps
Cool type-based map of Chicago neighborhoods.
Mark Coleran Visual Designer
Showreel of a a visual designer who does future interfaces for movies.
Kalamazoo Calendar Project 2008
I contributed to this in 2005, I'm really glad to see it's still happening and getting better every year.
The Designers Accord
The Designers Accord is a call to arms for the creative community around environmental stewardship.
New Interaction Partners: perspectives on the pervasive media world for pets
Presentation by Nicolas Nova on human/pet interaction systems, related to work I did last year for a robot in cat shelters. My favorite example: a cat toy you can twitter with.
The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment
Jonathan Harris, who brought us the We Feel Fine and Universe visualizations, tells the story of a whale hunt through intensively cataloged photographs with numerous non-linear ways to explore.
Aquarium phone booth
Exactly what the title would imply. Beautiful.
Antisocial networking
Thoughtful sentiments from Adam Greenfield: "technically-mediated social networking at any level beyond very simple, local applications is fundamentally, and probably persistently, a bad idea"
ParkMagic Chicago
Program currently running as pilot in Chicago where you buy a parking meter that is kept in your car and refilled via mobile phone. No mess with quarters and you can refill remotely.
Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents
Free download by Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard -- How is our experience of the city and the choices we make in it affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics, and other “situated” technologies?
Edit your photos! On Flickr! « Flickr Blog
Flickr now has photo editing via a super slick integration with Picnik. This finally makes Flickr a viable online replacement to programs like Picassa or iPhoto.
Edit Google Maps
You can now fix Google Maps when it shows an address as slightly off from reality. The original location and history list of changes are stored like a geographic wikipedia.
YouTube - Don't Give Up on Vista Ad
I hate banner ads, but this is an interesting and funny use of multi-ad interaction.
Synchronised shaking connects gadgets securely - New Scientist Tech
Synchronized shaking of small mobile devices as a way to pair them for data sharing. Very secure due to the accuracy of accelerometers. Video shows prototype and thwarting of a copy-cat shaker.
Nau
This Cool Hunting video looks at Nau, the high performance + fashion + sustainability retailer. Their stores are hybrids of physical and online, with tags that tell an item's sustainability story when swiped.
The Outsourced Brain - New York Times
"Now, you may wonder if in the process of outsourcing my thinking I am losing my individuality. Not so. My preferences are more narrow and individualistic than ever. It’s merely my autonomy that I’m losing."
Japan's melody roads play music as you drive
Drive the right speed and the road will play a tune. I love Japan.
Festival of Maps Chicago
Citywide festival on the themes of exploration, discovery, and mapping.
The Public Square: An Atlas of the Next Chicago Region
Maps designed to spark debate and discussion about the Chicago region.
The Morning News - The Laptop Club
Laptops drawn by children as part of a child created "laptop club." It's really interesting, and a little disturbing, to see what buttons they draw and how they think of technology.
Paste Magazine
Music magazine offering a "pay what you want" subscription. 11 issues with 11 CDs for as low as $1, depending on how cheap you are.
House Industries - Neutraface No. 2
One of my favorite fonts has been redesigned.
Postal Service Says Killing Small Periodicals Is a "Win-Win"
A recent change in the postal rate could end up forcing smaller publications out of business.
dylan vitone : photographer
Panoramas from Pittsburgh and South Boston.
VectorMagic
Online raster to vector auto-tracer, just upload a bitmap image and it will vectorize it. They claim to be better than the Live Trace feature found in Adobe tools.
Eye-Fi: Add Wi-Fi to Any Camera (with SD)
This SD storage card has built in WIFI. Photos are automatically transferred to your computer whenever it's in range.
Toys manufacture in China
Photos from inside of a Chinese toy factory. We need to become more connected to how our products are made and the individual lives involved in the process. Images like these are a start.
Dreamhost celebrates 10 years of hosting
They aren't the absolute most reliable but Dreamhost is a good place to get a lots of storage for cheap. Check out their birthday special if you need one-click installs, Ruby on Rails, or a place for online backups.
Eternally Yours: Time in Design ...
The full version of this book (and many others) is online and viewable for free on Google Books. I hadn't checked into GBooks for a while; there are a lot of impressive new features.
Everyday Engineering
New book by Andrew Burroughs from IDEO's Chicago office.
Remote Control iTunes with Your iPhone
No hacks required! This app installs on your Mac/PC and serves up a web application for your iPhone, creating a remote control for iTunes through through mobile Safari. Seamless interface and nearly perfect when paired with a DynDNS account.
Photoshop gets a new logo
I love the Adobe CS3 icon system but this new PS logo makes no sense.
Reactee - Cause a Reaction (shirts that text back)
Need a new way to passively provide information about yourself in public? This company sells t-shirts printed with an SMS code that people can use to retrieve a custom message from you -- update as often as you like.
Shaky Jake dies Sunday at the age of 82
The Ann Arbor News brings us the bad news that famed street musician Shaky Jake died last weekend. I have some of his music in MP3 form and will try to get it online soon as a memorial.
San Francisco to Offer Care for Uninsured Adults - New York Times
More and more cities and are acting on their own to solve problems that the federal government is unwilling or unable to manage. One pitfall to going it alone is that SF's free health care coverage is only available in the city, not when traveling.
IDEO in GOOD magazine
For GOOD Magazine's Design Solutions issue IDEO took a photograph of an everyday street scene and annotated it with opportunities for design.
The Return of Photoshop Tennis
Coudal Partners is bringing back Photoshop Tennis, the smashingly nerdy design competition popularized in the late 90's. There's not much info now, but check this link on September 14th, 2007.
The Elbe Philmarmonic
I love when old buildings are adapted for a new use and this Herzog + de Meuron design for a cocoa bean warehouse in Hamburg it a stunner. The accompanying website highlights the history of the building and shows off its clean graphic identity.
iRobot Verro Pool Cleaning Robot
I never thought the Roomba was really necessary but I can get behind these new pool cleaning robots doing the dirty work. Just drop it in and go.
The Road to Clarity - New York Times
How often does a typeface get a long feature in the NYTimes magazine? The honor goes to Clearview, the new highway font vying to replace the long-standing Highway Gothic.
Selling Indulgences
Critical article by George Monbiot on carbon offsets which he refers to as buying complacency and political apathy. He believes that they're an environmental wergild that falsely satisfies our wrongdoings without a real fix.
IDEA Awards 2007
The winners have been announced for the 2007 Business Week/IDSA awards, now called the International (formally Industrial) Design Excellence Awards.
People Powered
Chicago-based group creates pilot programs that integrate art, environmentalism, and communities to promote discussion about how these practices may intersect.
YouTube - "Throw a Kit" by Hollywood Holt
Perhaps the first moped themed rap video, featuring Peddy Cash of the Moped Army and partially shot at Warbux Mopeds in Chicago. Music for moped nerds complete with shoutouts to performance parts.
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