Author: Victor

It’s odd how bad business people are at running meetings. I work with some of the premiere organizations in the world in many industries and you rarely ever see an agenda, goals for what needs to be decided, or even a leader to keep everything organized. It’s just streams of chaos, folks interrupting each other, and feelings of unsatisfaction. I would actually think this is very beautiful if we never needed to accomplish anything, but of course we do.

I asked “what’s the most beautiful thing you’ve experienced today?” and etoile responded

probably the most beautiful thing today was someone saying hi to me
unexpectedly who hasn’t been talking to me in person. instant
messenger, sure, but in person……
it’s a strange side effect of the ‘communication revolution’…
communication is not just words, voiceless text. those subtle pauses,
inflection, whispers, all replaced by ellipses, parenthetical smiles and
frowns, font size. the telephone was bad enough, reducing the complexity
of human communication to disembodied voices….

anyway the main thing is the eyes. i just can’t feel right talking
without eyes to talk to.
eyes, eyes, eyes. oh, i miss them.

but this friend who said hi… can’t look me in the eyes anymore. they
search the room for a place to rest when i am present. but she actually
acknowledged me today. that was beautiful, even if it’s the closest
thing i could get to a real human connection…today.

and I responded: “hi Zanzibar, that’s a fascinating response. I had an experience recently where I was camping with people from work, away from any communication that wasn’t face to face. It was enlightening, and we were actually very critical of the limitations of email, IM, etc. afterwords, which is saying a lot for a new media company.”

And I just remembered what one of the Outward Bound instructors said, “We listen with our eyes as well as our ears.” It sounded corny as hell then, and does now too, but when someone doesn’t listen with their eyes you know something’s up.”

Would you take branding advice from a company called DareStep?

I was starting to soften my position on Nike today. With the Lance Armstrong sponsership I really wanted to like Nike again, because Armstrong’s achievements get me all chocked up.

I haven’t bought any of Nike’s stuff since they were busted, twice, a few years ago for horrible labor conditions and salaries. But I figured if they cleaned up their act there should be a statute of limitations on my disdain.

They’re bragging about oversight from PWC and Ernst and Young, but it was the latter that busted them the second time for carcinogens in their factories. There’s nothing at either of their sites about Nike and the labor situation, and Nike doesn’t make the reports available. Furthermore, their description of the PWC process reveals that PWC is merely measuring conditions against Nike’s code book, not the United Nation’s standards.

Nike brags on it’s site that you can apply for a position at PWC to monitor the factories. To apply, you have to send an essay to a priest at St. Johns. One of the criteria is to speak the local language of the country the factory is in. This last one seems ridiculous, you don’t need to speak Vietnamese to measure the carcinogens in the air, time the working day, or measure the wages of workers.

When attacked, Nike responds that they participate in President Clinton’s industry partnership to improve this situation. Here’s a reasurring statement: “Nike is constantly evaluating compensation packages to ensure
workers are being paid fairly. In fact, as a member of President Clinton’s Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), Nike will be
reviewing a wage survey conducted by the Department of Labor, undertaken at the request of the members of the AIP.” Reviewing a survey, that sounds like a real action item.

I think to counter this situation they’d have to act from the top and encourage a mentality of good will towards workers throughout the company. This article from just last year in The Nation revealed the wrong attitude from Nike’s top management:

On January 11 Joseph Ha, a Nike vice president, sent what he thought was a confidential letter to Cu Thi Hau, Vietnam’s
highest-ranking labor official. In it, Ha blasted a number of human rights and labor groups that have been working to improve
labor conditions in Nike’s overseas factories and expressed admiration for Vietnam’s authoritarian system. “A few U.S. human
rights groups, as well as a Vietnamese refugee who is engaged in human rights activities, are not friends of Vietnam,” wrote Ha
to the Vietnamese official.

It’s encouraging to see Colleges taking action to back up what they teach. After all, would taking a deal from Reebok be all that bad?

I can’t in good conscience buy their stuff, it sounds like they still haven’t figured out what’s really important in life.

I just washed my new VW Beetle for the first time yesterday. All those curves feel really good sliding a soaping sponge over. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculously materialistic or perverted, but it is a much different sensation of always moving in an arc rather than the boring flat surfaces of other cars.

New York bloomed on Friday. The temperature rose into the 80’s, and people came out in their shorts, skirts, and t-shirts. The parks were filled, and there was that feeling of spontaneous interaction moving from the offices, museums, and bookstores to the streets.

I recently answered an email that explained an oft-arising issue regarding design patterns…

RE>so just
what is the difference between a pattern and a guideline? The big windows [from A Timeless Way of Building – vl ]
pattern sounds like guidence.

Patterns do provide guidance, but they’re not guidelines, they’re much more. Watching how people do something, you’ll notice actions they repeat again and again. These are patterns. If we document this pattern, noting the context, the problem, examples, illustrations, and a solution (which is more specific than a guideline), then you end up with a design pattern.

Here’s a guideline from useit.com:

“Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. ”

Whereas a pattern will result in a solution that corresponds with actual repeated human actions. Here’s an example from Common Ground:

“Solution: Change the affordance of the thing as the pointer moves over it. ”

Hope that’s more clear.

John Thakara put his design challenge of pervasive computing online – an awesome talk from CHI 2000 that pretty much floored everyone, challenging us all examine what people really want and what is really the best thing to create before we start designing.

ABC Back on Time Warner Cable — for Now. It’s really sad that subscribers would get “irate” about such a loss, really very sad.

The absurdity of the Elian Gonzolas situation really needed someone to make fun of it.

Interval Research Shutting Down. Sad, they contributed some interesting research with a lot of potential.

I shouldn’t be too surprised though. I heard a talk from a woman at CHI 2000 who left Interval to continue her research in haptic interfaces at a Canadian university (even though her research could have resulted in some paradigm-shifting cable remote controls). But Paul Allen is back in growth mode, and needs more money to buy more companies.

Just posted a new paper:

Introduction to Pattern Languages for Technology Interaction Design A “Razorfish Report,” intended to be a brief introduction to the topic for information architects and interface designers.

(download a Microsoft Word file)

Comments welcome.

At least we’re getting some variety in the weather this weekend,

or

Like 42 different names for snow…

We have some people here at work that are both incredibly intelligent and big gamers. I think I finally found a place they hang out: Gamasutra. I’m particularly interested in their take on Artificial Intelligence.

Just had a brilliant idea to start a group weblog for the information architects here at work. As we grow bigger and more geographically and organizationally distributed it becomes harder to exchange those little bits of information that make our jobs easier, higher quality, and more fun.