Author: Victor

Swiss Army Knives or Utensils? That was one of the threads running through the seminars at AC4D’s Living Surfaces Conference. Swiss army knives combine many functions (e.g. mobile phone, games, calculator, web browser…) and utensils specialize on one (calculator). Someone pointed out that we don’t eat at home with a Swiss Army knife, and instead keep many utensils for this singular purpose. But we also don’t want to carry 19 different electronic devices around in order to stay connected. So the answer is, I think, it depends. The Swiss Army knife is so popular because that particular combination of functions is useful and the design makes it easy to use.

Erik Spiekermann on information design and other goodies from MetaDesign.

Re-reading the below post about Bill Hill causes me to think of several examples of new media that express soul and spirit, but then I think, “Are those art or design?” I think of art as pure expression, whereas design is intended for use by others. Trying to create something functional that appeals to our nobler qualities sets the bar a little higher.

Nettkirken. I think that’s Norwegian for “Net Church” (most of the site is not in English and I don’t speak Norwegian).

I thought of this site this weekend while listening to Bill Hill of MetaDesign San Francisco. He spoke about our lack of design that appeals to the soul and the spirit. He mapped new media design onto a hierarchy that corresponds with human experience: the physical (logos, identity), biology (interaction such as 1st generation web sites, CD-ROMs), and mind (personalized sites like Amazon).

The next levels are soul and spirit, for which there are no great examples yet. “Why not partner with Deepak Chopra?” asks Hill. He decends upon a mostly superficial and ego and money-driven industry like a ray of sunlight.

It’s amazing all the things that go on in our world without us knowing about them, like this software for staking utility posts. I just assumed someone went out there with a really long tape measure and a drilling rig :-)

Found via Kestrel’s Nest

Nissan’s recent losses and huge layoffs has sorta woken them up to the importance of good design. They’ve created a sexy Maxima and are advertising the hell out of it. Sadly, I wonder if they equate sexiness with design (the majority of their cars lack that same appeal and lack the advertising attention). Other manufacturers like BMW know design can be visceral and practical at the same time even without being blatently sexy.

This also makes me shake my head at Xerox. If they only gave us what we want (copies and printers that don’t jam) they’d be so much more successful. When a company’s tagline doesn’t explain what products they sell (“The Document Management Company”) then no one will buy them.

Our need to expose ourselves comes out through tatoos, piercing, and the daytime talk shows, says Jamer Hunt of the University of the Arts. It also comes out through weblogs.

I saw Abraham Lincoln today in Lincoln Park in Chicago. The statue is bigger than life and mounted on an eight foot high pedestal. He’s staring down with his face shrouded in darkness. It was difficult at first to look at him, I felt almost ashamed of who I am. Lincoln said to me, “You don’t know what it’s like to struggle, to fight, to live your values and then to die for them.”

The fashion industry is no fun! I’ve finally distilled my beef with it into that statement. Whether shopping, buying, wearing, or experiencing clothes, they impart no sense of joy or humor. You may perceive these qualities, but they’re not inherent in the industry or the products, Joe Boxer being the one mass market exception that comes to mind.

Recently MIT staged a wearable technology fashion show during Internet World in New York City. It had all the trappings of a usual stuffy, uptight fashion show but with electronics draped on the stone-faced models. It’s too bad they need to inject themselves into that scene in order to validate their designs.

evhead and pb confirm that I can have multiple blogs that are smooshed together via server-side includes into one happy home page. The end goal is the ability to update any section of this page (navigation in addition to the scrolling list of ideas you’re reading now) using the oh-so-tasty Blogger. Handy when you don’t have active FTP access from work, not that I’m updating this from work.

Warning: 0 is not a MySQL result index in /webspace1/web3158/public_html/library.php3 on line 808

I saw the above trying to read an article on the New Statesmen site, looks like their PHP/MySQL combo bit the dust. Sometimes I wonder if putting a database beind a web site is like trying to fit a supermarket in your kitchen cabinets.

I’ll probably be mostly blogless for the next few days while I attend ac4d’s Living Surfaces conference in Chicago. I’m so psyched to see S. Joy Mountford speak again. Her talk with Brenda Laurel circa 1993 at NYU blew my mind and was the original influence on my information design career (along with Tog on Interface which after losing I’m happy to buy again).

I read Building Dynamic HTML GUIs recently and was disappointed. I bought it for the three chapters on information design, but those are mostly of survey of existing works, including an overly fundamental introduction to the field. The intention was great, but so much time is spent talking about command lines and ancient user interface history that it never progresses to material we really need. This may be a useful approach for an HTML book, or even an introductory JavaScript book, but I think someone diving into DHTML is more knowledgable and should be treated as such.

It’s a shame, because designers and programmers need to have a better understanding of 1) what’s possible with DHTML, 2) what the performance tradeoffs are (e.g. moving layers suck up processor cycles, loading hidden layers sucks bandwidth…), and 3) all the usual usability concerns that must be re-addressed now that stuff is flying around the screen and what not.

Funny, I go for days barely updating this blog and wonder where I ever had the time, and then there’s weeks like now where I find something relevant in everything I see.

Since time stamps accompany each of these posts, let’s hope my manager considers blogging a productive creative outlet.

eaton thinks my blog “…has a nice mix of design, opinion, and personality.” I’m blushing.