Noise Between Stations

Victor

  • Oprah for president

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    1 min read

    Michael nominates Oprah for president. Hey, if Arnold can do it, Oprah certainly can.

  • Textpattern auto CSS?

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    1 min read

    I’ve been thinking about ways to edit CSS from a content management system, and fascinated by Dean’s description of Automatic CSS mode in Textpattern… Automatic CSS mode, style sheet editing is taken to a sophisticated new level, using an editing interface and organizational method intended to make CSS parameters more readable and logical. Any existing…

  • Projection TV

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    3 min read

    We came back from vacation on Monday and when my wife pressed the power button on the TV remote all that happened was click, click, click… I’ll check in with my local repair shop tomorrow, but I thought it was a good time to figure out the brave new world of televisions. My current set…

  • Side Chair No. 14

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    1 min read

    I’m getting over my prejudice of chair-happy designers (why must every designer do a chair?). Niels Diffrient, designer of Humanscale’s Freedom and the new Liberty, describes the chair, in the new Metropolis, as ‘a psychological challenge: all architects and designers of note have chosen the chair as their ultimate note. it’s gotten to be hallowed…

  • Dillon critical of navigation

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    1 min read

    Andrew Dillon, in his report on the fifth annual IA Summit, gives me props but is critical of the idea of navigation…. …I really enjoyed, again, a session on navigation by Victor Lombardi, which probably appealed to my academic sensibilities more than some of the other sessions. I have been a strong critic of the…

  • Customer Loyalty and Experience Design in eBusiness

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    1 min read

    Karl Long posted his new DMI article, Customer Loyalty and Experience Design in eBusiness: ‘I’ve tried to take the approach of connecting experience design to a business imperative, in this case customer loyalty…. This means some issues need to be addressed by the design early on before you start trying to collect more information or…

  • Biometric approaches the chasm

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    1 min read

    The fingerprint biometric device for $49 was inevitable, I’m just surprised it arrived this soon (should we thank the demand generated by the Dept. of Homeland Security for the accelated development?). I predict within two years someone will build this into a laptop, sitting beside the trackpad. Update: Josh points out that fingerprint biometrics are…

  • InfoDesign interview

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    1 min read

    Peter J. Bogaards was kind enough to chat with me for the InfoDesign Profile series. One question I didn’t have an answer for was, Who is your role model? It’d be great to have one, but it feels like the world is changing too fast for anyone else to consistenty interpret the world in a…

  • Rashmi on shape and memory

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    1 min read

    Rashmi riffs on my presentation of information shape recognition, relating it to implicit and explicit memory. Her analysis is only speculation but seems spot-on based on what I’ve read. Implicit and explicit memory might play similar roles as local and global schemata, respectively, that Andew Dillon describes in his work on information shape.

  • Beers and Carbs

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    1 min read

    The beer wars are cracking me up, as product design meets marketing, awkwardly. Bud light, feeling out-marketed in a category they already designed for, runs ads that remind us ‘All light beers are low in carbs.’ Miller Light responds, ‘That’s right, so choose on taste.’ Here’s the beer carb chart if you’re curious. Interesting that…

  • Example of weird info shape

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    1 min read

    A few months ago I presented Incorporating Navigation Research into a Design Method (.pdf) at the IA Summit, which included an overview of using familiar information shapes. Afterwords Thom Haller approached me with this wonderful Chinese menu, a deviation from some Chinese menus I presented. He just said, ‘Look at this one. Try to figure…

  • Massive Change

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    1 min read

    What is Massive Change? It’s Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries trying to wrap their arms around the whole thing. Engineered as an international discursive project, Massive Change: The Future of Design Culture, will map the new capacity, power and promise of design. We will explore paradigm-shifting events, ideas, and people, investigating the…

  • Stimulating mental models

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    1 min read

    Yesterday my wife received a call from John Kerry, the American presidential candidate. She was pretty excited, but realized fairly quickly that it was a recording. When she was done listening, she tried to delete the message. ‘No honey,‘ I said, ‘it’s a phone call.‘ ‘Which number do I use to delete again?‘ ‘Honey, it’s…

  • MIT Sloan discovers design

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    1 min read

    The Evolution of the Design-Inspired Enterprise (abstract free, article not free) in MIT Sloan’s Management Review is another article in the avalanche of recent business publications discovering design… …companies such as Master Lock, Procter & Gamble, BMW and Cambridge SoundWorks have employed design research — including the use of multidisciplinary teams and a variety of…

  • Narrow vs. board perspectives on business

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    1 min read

    Steve Diller, who is collaborating with Nathan Shedroff on a book about Designing Meaningful Experiences, raises the issue of how writing for business differs from writing for academia (and, IMO, designers)… Most people I know who manage businesses complain about the simplistic nature of much of what’s available. At the heart of the “typical” business…