Noise Between Stations – Page 54

Noise Between Stations

Oprah for president

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

6/26/2004
Textpattern auto CSS?

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 style sheet can be â€˜pouredâ€™ into the editing interface and modified indefinitely.

Any Textpattern users out there? Does the Auto CSS mode UI look the same as this, or different? My email address is over there in the nav bar.

6/25/2004
Projection TV

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 is a hand-me-down from my father, so I haven’t actually bought one in over 20 years (a 13″ Emerson to use with my Commodore 64. [sigh]).

In short, it seems like good old fashioned CRTs still look good and provide the most bang for the buck. The ‘flat’ CRTs aren’t as flat as LCDs or Plasmas but are much thinner than our father’s sets. LCDs and Plasmas look great but aren’t that big yet and are molto expensive. Rear projection sets are giant, affordable, and look crappy.

Then there’s front projection, like in a movie theater. My friend Leah had talked about using a projector as a TV years ago, and now the price has come down to where they are being marketed (and sometimes tweaked) for home theater. It’d be nice to ditch the big box, and have gorgeous, huge video projected on the wall (with the project 11 feet away from the wall, the screen will be 65 inches diagonal minimum). Drawbacks seem to be 1) connecting the projector — which is close to your sitting position — to the audio gear which is across the room, and 2) putting a screen on the wall.

ProjectorCentral is an excellent resource. Their recommended list makes shopping easier and their projection calculator is perfectly executed.

On the bargain side (< $1000), Infocus seems to have the lead with performance in their X1 and X2. Here's a thorough X1 review. The X2 seems to be the successor, increasing the brightness for the same price. Here’s a story — not entirely complimentary — of someone who upgraded. Apparently Infocus subtracted some features to sell a premium version of the X2 labeled the 4805 for $200 more.

Also interesting is this Dell vs. Toshiba shootout in which the Dell wins, but they mention the Infocus might be a better option for movie use and the Dell better with more computer use. The comments section there is very astute, but this one is more emotionally charged. The Epson Powerlite 10 is similar, as is the BenQ 6100 which, with the current $100 rebate from Amazon, would be my first choice.

6/25/2004
Side Chair No. 14

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 ground.‘ We spend an enormous amount of time sitting, and so the chair has universal appeal.

A wonderful example of innovation-via-chair is Thonet’s No. 14 which was made with only six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws and two nuts. It addressed an exploding need for cafe-style side chairs and used highly available (in Europe) Beechwood. In 1859 it bridged the gap between craftwork and industrial production with a beautiful product.

6/24/2004
Dillon critical of navigation

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 whole idea of navigation as a driving force for design, but there is no doubting the allure of the concept for IAs â€“ it was standing room only at this session as Victor gave a detailed overview of the various strands of research that have emerged in this area and how best IAs might use the findings.

I’m not sure if he means navigation as in navigation bars (which Dillon has specifically questioned IA’s obsession with) or the larger practice of navigating through digital information, or something else. I’ll be sure to follow up.

6/24/2004
Customer Loyalty and Experience Design in eBusiness

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 value, like usability and trust.‘

A great example of an article we need more of, from someone who groks design and can connect it with business issues.

6/24/2004
Biometric approaches the chasm

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 already included in the $650 HP iPAQ Pocket PC h5550, probably aimed at corporate customers. At this price point, inclusion on a consumer laptop will be probably happen sooner than two years.

6/23/2004
InfoDesign interview

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 way I strive for.

6/23/2004
Rashmi on shape and memory

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.

6/22/2004
Beers and Carbs

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 the beer designed to be low in carbs — Michelob Ultra — is described as watery. I guess Michelob discovered water is low in carbs.

Like the author, if I’m in the mood for a beer I’ll drink a beer, even a Guinness that has twice the carbs of anything else. If I want something lighter, my Summer choice is gin and tonic (0 carbs) and in the Winter it’s red wine (lower in carbs than light beer).

6/22/2004
Example of weird info shape

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 out how much is a bowl of noodle soup costs.‘ You can see the logic in their modular approach, but when it takes 60 seconds to determine the price of noodle soup then something ain’t right.

6/10/2004
Massive Change

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 capacities and ethical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, warfare, health, living, energy, markets, materials, the image, information, and software.

6/10/2004
Stimulating mental models

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 not a message, it’s a phone call.‘

‘What do you mean? I’m listening to a recording.‘

Fascinating. To her, listening to a recording (plus the reaction to the notoriety of the caller) was equal to listening to voice mail, a natural response. She was thrust into the mental model of listening to a voice mail by the characteristics, the stimuli, of the call.

Examining the stimuli that activate certain mental models would be a nice complement to Indi Young’s mental model thingy. So we not only react to what people already understand but also stimulate them into using information in a certain way.

6/10/2004
MIT Sloan discovers design

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 â€” including the use of multidisciplinary teams and a variety of ethnographic and psychophysiological techniques â€” to build organizationwide identification with the customersâ€™ needs and aspirations, keeping everyoneâ€™s eyes on the same prize.

6/9/2004
Narrow vs. board perspectives on business

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 book appears to be an assumption that ideas are, essentially, opportunistically-applied tools, rather than frameworks for broadening one’s perspective on the world. Academia, in contrast, focuses on the broadening of perspective, but frequently at the expense of usefulness.

He’ll be writing more on the Cheskin blog, which incidentally has a cool photoblog.

6/9/2004