Divergent thinking, website optimization, and (the) Supreme Being
For those still subscribed to this blog, you might be interested in the latest items on my website:
- A presentation and collection of resourcse on creative problem-solving and divergent thinking
- A related discussion on divergent thinking, as well as a whitepaper on website optimization for learners
- Thoughts on the flexibility of religious beliefs, which led to a short but interesting discussion in the comments
If you’d like to keep receiving updates, please subscribe at the new site.
Special announcement: this blog is moving
Good news! I’m about to launch my website, Instead of the Box (IotB). As I build it up over the next few months, the site will be the place for my writing, portfolio, future design projects, and other experimentation with web and interaction design.
I’m starting up a new blog, where I’m going to write about design and design theory, user experience, education, and philosophy, and perhaps enter new areas as well. I’m going to continue some of the themes I wrote about in DIDaily, but I’m going to focus on my original thinking and writing rather than links to other websites. If you prefer the format of DIDaily, though, there will still be a little of that here and there—I’ll seek a balance.
If you’d like, you can subscribe to IotB via RSS or email. If you’re already subscribed to this one, I don’t have the ability to transfer your subscription over to the new site, so please subscribe manually.
On a side note, I’m sorry to say that the “designdaily” email address associated with this blog has been defunct since March, and I didn’t realize it until recently. If you emailed me and I didn’t reply, I apologize. The “designdaily” address is now operational again, while you can also refer to the new site for my primary contact information.
I hope you enjoy what’s to come at IotB. Regardless of whether or not you follow the new site, thank you for being my reader for the past few months!
The films of Charles and Ray Eames
Michael Neault wrote a wonderful piece on the films of Charles and Ray Eames, a prolific pair of designers who made a profound impact on design during the 20th century. Noting that the Eames’ films receive less attention than their work in industrial design, architecture, photography, and other areas, Neault discusses the unique artistry of their films, the role of the films within the history of design, and the meaning of the films in terms of the Eames’ philosophy of design.
Carl DiSalvo recently commented on the Eames’ films, looking at the films as “meditations on objects.” Along with that, he posted the film “Lounge Chair Assembly” (1956).
Another film available online is this advertisement for the Polaroid SX-70, the landmark instant camera. The film is a beautiful example of the Eames’ style. Also worth noting is the way the film reflects a systems view of the camera, moving between user and manufacturer, presenting the camera as a technological object, as a useful object, and as a meaningful part of a user’s life.
More from Interaction10
Picking up on yesterday’s topic, here are a few more highlights from Interaction10, the recent conference on interaction design. Talks at the conference presented an interesting mix of theoretical and practical insights into design (and not just interaction design).
Yesterday, I pointed to summaries of the talks from the first day of the conference. Johnny Holland Magazine also published summaries from the second and third days (their server was down last time I checked, so here are Google’s cached versions of the articles from day 2 and day 3).
On day 2, Ezio Manzini discussed the role of digital platforms in the economies and communities of the future. Christropher Fahey gave an even more fascinating (and perhaps bold) presentation about the humanization of technology, which implies that technology will become more human-like without replacing or replicating humans; in addition to the overview in the above article, take a look at his slides. From day 3, Dan Hill’s talk is interesting because he brings the subject of urban design into the context of interaction design—similar concepts applied to very different time frames.
Since I wrote yesterday’s post, I also found the slides from Nathan Shedroff’s talk about the forms and roles of meaning in experiences and designed experiences. The slides can be downloaded from Shedroff’s website.
I highly recommend Nicolas Nova’s reflections on the conference. He pieced together many of the theoretical elements of the talks and made an interesting comparison of the design models that appeared throughout the conference.
Sarah Mitchell traced a few of the core themes from the talks and posted photos of her notes.
Finally, Dave Malouf, interaction design professor at SCAD, wrote a compelling (if cryptic) piece about the importance of social responsibility and even activism in interaction design.
Lessons from the Interaction10 conference
Around three weeks ago, the Interaction Design Association held its annual conference, Interaction10. I finally got around to reading some of the attendees’ recaps and notes from the conference. I’ll post a couple highlights today, and more tomorrow.
Johnny Holland Magazine published daily synopses of the conference sessions. Two notable talks were those given by Nicolas Nova and Jon Kolko, both towards the end of the article: “Live at Interaction’10: day 1.”
To go along with that, Nova’s slides can be viewed here; I think the compelling title speaks for itself: “Design and Designed Failures: From Observing Failures to Provoking Them.”
Jon Kolko followed up on the conference in Design Mind: “An Emerging Divide: Some Thoughts from the IxDA 2010 Conference.”
Theatre machine redux
It’s time for architecture to do things again, not just represent things.
Back in November, I wrote about the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, a 12-story, reconfigurable building, and I posted a TED talk with its architect, Joshua Prince-Ramus. Prince-Ramus recently gave another talk in which he discussed the same project in more detail. He makes it clear that the theatre, though fancy, was designed purely to meet the functional and artistic needs of the theatre company. The talk addresses the same issue that appears in graphic design and industrial design: the problematic view that the purpose of design is simply to make things pretty.
Michael Bierut’s wisdom and advice about clients
For your weekend viewing, Michael Bierut from Pentagram (the same Pentagram that did the What Type Are You? quiz and the same Bierut I linked to in the blog’s first week), recently gave a talk at CreativeMornings. Bierut talked about clients: how clients affect your work and your happiness, good clients and bad clients, and lots of advice about choosing and dealing with clients.
The traffic guru; UIs that lie
The Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman had surprising insights into the effects of warning signs, traffic lights, and other elements of traffic safety infrastructure. His most famous idea, which hasn’t made it into American traffic engineering but has been influential in Europe, was that removing most of that infrastructure could make streets safer. By redesigning aspects of a certain town to make it seem more “villagelike,” he was able to change drivers’ perception of the environment and encourage them to drive more slowly and carefully without the influence of signs and other interventions. This article by Tom Vanderbilt explains more about Monderman’s approach and how the traffic insfrastructure affects individuals’ behavior in unexpected ways: “The Traffic Guru.”
This is a remarkable phenomenon. It shows that the framework for the usage of the system, which is, in this case, a traffic system, informs the way people use the system—but not through constraints, not through direct communication, and not through affordances. Users’ perception of the environment changes how they think they ought to drive, even though the surrounding town might have nothing to do with their intention to travel to a destination.
David Lindes writes about a similar pattern in a completely different environment. In the process of redesigning an application for a certain business process, he set out to learn about the clients’ workflow and found out that it was excessively complicated. This reflected a problem with the client’s old application. It wasn’t just that the old program was a bad match for the process, but that the program’s complicated workflow had actually changed the way the client understood the process. Even though the original business process was not to be driven by software, “user interfaces are one of the principal sources from which a person learns about his or her work.” The implication for our own design process is huge. “UIs that lie & the users who believe them.”
Editing as curation; what’s happening with DIDaily
Liz Danzico wrote a cool article for Interactions looking at editing as a form of curation. As the amount of information that individuals regularly process has increased, the role of editing has spread increasingly toward individuals and consumers; we edit and curate for ourselves as we deal with large amounts of email and RSS feeds, and for others in the context of blogging and Twitter.
The Art of Editing: The New Old Skills for a Curated Life
Her article resonates with me as a blogger who (currently) focuses on filtering lots of content and sharing articles based on a certain editorial intent: to follow a theme and to provide value that goes both beyond and deeper than the daily buzz that you’d hear about even if you didn’t read my blog. That’s one reason why I intend not even to mention the iPad here. (Oops.) Of course, I’m not an editor in the strictest sense; I do inject my opinion into the blog once in a while.
I’ve discovered that curation is a difficult job: I’ve accumulated a massive collection of RSS subscriptions since I started reading this stuff eight months ago. I filter through one to two hundred posts per weekday—I certainly don’t read all of them—but in order to synthesize something each day, I have to read many of them closely, pick only the right items, and put them together with a fitting context and motive.
Unfortunately, I can’t do this every single day. Especially during school, when homework commands most of my waking hours throughout all seven days of the week, I have to forego this practice on many days (which explains the missed days over the past two weeks). As you know, I’m working on getting a system running at InsteadoftheBox.com. (I missed my deadline, but it’s coming soon.) I’ve decided that, although I plan to keep doing the same sort of thing indefinitely, I’m going to drop the “daily” part of this blog when I move over to the new site, at least for while I’m in school.
Meanwhile, some great stuff will be coming your way over the next couple weeks. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and if you have something interesting for me to post, send it over!
David Airey on letterpress; Decision-Based Design
In a post about letterpress (an early printing technique used from the time of Gutenberg up to the beginning of the 20th century), graphic designer David Airey shared a video about Hatch Show Print: a 130-year old letterpress shop which has preserved the old printing techniques as well as the associated design styles for many decades: Hatch Show Print
On a completely unrelated topic, Dan Brown republished a 2005 article in which he describes an unusual approach to software design. Instead of using functional specifications, information architecture, or user personas as the main drivers of the design process, Brown focused on the large and complex set of decisions that users must make while using the software; he treated the software as a system built primarily to support the users’ decision-making: “Decision-Based Design.”
Two months of paper prototyping
Microsoft Office Labs recently released a new add-in: Ribbon Hero is a game that can improve your skills with Microsoft Office. In this interview, software engineer Jonas Helin discusses the development process for Ribbon Hero. His team spent two months designing with paper prototypes before writing a single line of code.
(Found via Steve Portigal and Lost Garden.)
What type[face] are you?
As expected, not as much time for reading this week. I did, however, enjoy the entertaining “What type are you?” quiz from the design firm Pentagram. No, it’s not a Facebook quiz—it’s a clever, interactive, four-question quiz presented almost like a digital therapy session. In order to start, the password is “character”. Fitting, because the quiz itself has character; the counselor fidgets while he waits for you to answer each question. See what happens when you make him wait for a while.
Escher-inspired typeface; the design of boarding passes
These links have already been around most of the big design blogs, but they’re still pretty cool.
A font inspired partly by the “visual conceit in the work of the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher:” Priori Acute
Tyler Thompson challenges the lazy, low-quality visual design of airline boarding passes; the project has turned into a small movement over the past several weeks: Boarding Pass/FAIL
Steve Krug on the least you can do about usability
This week I’m going into intense-code-writing-focus mode. It is my self-imposed requirement that, regardless of how complete they are, my website and blog are uploaded and running by Saturday; I better make sure they’re functional and presentable by then.
So, this blog will receive less attention this week. Soon after I get my site running, this blog will move over there, either in its current format or in some new format.
Meanwhile, here’s a talk from the Business of Software 2008 conference by Steve Krug, the author of the essential web usability book Don’t Make Me Think. The talk, as well as the book, is a must-see for anyone who does web or software work, but designers in other areas will learn a lot from what Krug has to say about how users approach and interact with the medium: Steve Krug on the least you can do about usability
TED talks for the weekend
Three not-so-recent TED talks for your weekend viewing:
Don Norman on 3 ways good design makes you happy
Ghost in the Pixel: Uday Gajendar’s blog
Only one link for today, because it’s such a good one.
Recently, I linked to a piece by Uday Gajendar about designing for panic. That post, although great on its own, wasn’t a good representation of his blog as a whole. Often, he writes incredibly deep, insightful analyses of design theory and philosophy. He discusses challenging issues (with challenging responses), such as the definition of interaction, how a product conveys meaning, and the role of integrity in design. In this post, he reflects on some of the lessons he learned while he was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon, which include a few approaches to understanding design that are completely unconventional and different from what we read in most other places. Follow the links within the post to read some of his other writing, which is equally challenging and insightful. It’s well worth spending two or three hours reading his old posts.
Recommended blogs: Pasta&Vinegar and 52 Weeks of UX
I was going to post another link from Nicolas Nova’s blog, but then I realized that I’d like to share just about everything he writes, so instead I’m going to recommend that you read his blog in general. From the description of his blog: “I study people’s practices as well as usage of technologies and turn them into insights, ideas, prototypes or recommendations to inform design and foresight. This blog is a selection of the material that I collect, especially in fields such as mobility, urban environments, digital entertainment and new interfaces.” Pasta&Vinegar: mind/tech bazar from outer space.
Another promising blog, which just began last week, will present weekly entries on user experience: 52 Weeks of UX: A discourse on the process of designing for real people.
The future of industrial design; Decisions by Design
Brian Ling posted a cool presentation about the future of industrial design. He outlines the 11 design strategies which he believes will become the most prominent and important over the next decade. Also see a comment from yours truly on the same page. (And, you could actually win an HP laptop by posting a comment, so join the discussion!) I think this is a fascinating topic; the trends he discusses are not just about products themselves, but about the way social, cultural, technological, economic, and environmental forces change over time and influence design. “11 Design Strategies of the Next Decade.”
In another video from The 99 Percent, Ji Lee talks about a personal experiment from 2002 in which he printed stickers of speech bubbles and placed them onto public advertisements in New York. “The masses responded and the project went viral;” people wrote all kinds of jokes and satirical comments onto the speech bubbles, and others eventually imitated the project by creating their own speech bubbles. “Ji Lee: The Transformative Power of Personal Projects.”
Continuing on yesterday’s theme of design thinking, Colin Raney and Ryan Jacoby, business designers at IDEO, recently published an article in Rotman Magazine about using design thinking in the process of decision-making in business. As I see it, the concept of design thinking doesn’t involve anything new with regard to the design process itself, but it’s new in that it’s an abstraction of the problem-solving processed used by designers. Along the same lines of what Roger Martin, Tim Brown, and others have been writing recently, this article provides a good overview of design thinking and how it can be applied in new contexts. “Decisions by Design: Stop Deciding, Start Designing.”
Business strategy, design strategy, and competition robots
A couple cool products were posted on Core77 this week:
- A concept for a cell phone that could run on soda instead of a battery: “Eco-Friendly Nokia Phone by Daizi Zheng.”
- An umbrella with blunt (rather than pointed) tips that make the umbrella both safer and stronger. It seems like such an obvious solution—I think most of us have been poked by an umbrella at least once, and umbrellas do tend to tear at the tips—and most umbrella designs are incredibly short-sighted. “Greig Brebner’s better umbrella, ella, ella.”
Roger Martin, the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and one of the popular advocates of the “design thinking” movement, wrote a short piece at the Harvard Business Review explaining that, in a good business strategy, “where-to-play and how-to-win choices fit together and reinforce one another.” This is a basic but often-missed principle of business strategy, but its relevance is not limited to business. A solution that is both innovative and effective must implement a carefully chosen method (how to win), while the method must be developed in concert with equally careful choices in users, culture, and physical environment, as well as the problem itself (where to play). “Why Most CEOs Are Bad at Strategy.”
The where-to-play and how-to-play questions are especially important in the design of competition robots—and speaking of which, this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) season began on Saturday with the release of the rules for the game “Breakaway.” High school teams participating in the program each have six and a half intense weeks to analyze the game and then design, build, program, and test a 120-pound robot that will play this game. Among FRC’s many challenges in engineering, problem-solving, and teamwork, the robot design process is interesting because teams must develop the same two elements of their game strategy. At first glance, the game rules seem to tell you “where to play,” leaving teams to decide “how to win.” The best teams, however, will design a strategy that aims for mutual reinforcement between their robot’s functions and operation (how) and considerations of which field structures to interact with, which area of the field to play on, and how to interact with other robots (where).
Watch the three-minute animation describing the game itself and check out the FRC home page for more information.
Ritual in innovation; the story of the ribbon
Bruce Nussbaum wrote some interesting thoughts on the role of ritual in technology and innovation. “I was once nearly thrown out of a brainstorming session at IDEO and it marked me for life.” His brief post: “The Ritualization of Creation—The Role of Ritual In Innovation.”
For your weekend viewing, here’s an interesting presentation from 2008: Jensen Harris, a user interface designer at Microsoft, talks about the process of developing the ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007. Back when Microsoft began developing the next version of Office in 2003, their team found that, while Office was fairly complete in its range of features, the user interface was insufficient for the software’s complexity: “The user interface was failing our users.” Harris and his team set out to reimagine, redesign, and evaluate the interface.
In the presentation, from the MIX conference in 2008, Harris describes the design process for the ribbon, including some of the team’s iterations, prototypes, and mistakes. Video, audio, and slides from the presentation are available on his blog. Although the video is a bit long, and even though “Microsoft” connotes “boring” for some, watch at least the first 4 minutes to get a taste; it contains valuable insights and design lessons.
Here’s the blog post: The Story of the Ribbon
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