Last swim

A quiet morning on Cape Cod. A pond hidden in the National Seashore. Hard to leave this place for another year.

All of Me

Q: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
A: A drummer.

We like to put people into boxes–roles that are defined by simple rules. Like: a musician is someone who makes “complete” music: melody and harmony and rhythm. If a person doesn’t make melody or harmony, how can he be a musician?

Designers? We like to say that we are problem solvers, but the larger culture thinks that we make things beautiful. Read the rest of this entry »

What can you see?

We are often frustrated by journalists who write about our specialties. The things that seem obvious or important to us as specialists are often missing from the coverage of topics we care deeply about. Ever read a review of your favorite movie, or your favorite band? Mostly, it’s not a good experience.

Bike Hugger posted recently about the poor coverage on DesignBoom and other design blogs of the Victor Bike concept by Christophe Robillard. (You can read my comment here.)

I think about this problem frequently, because it is often the case that my own work is invisible to non-specialists. I design the behavior of systems. How can you see that? How can I show it? It’s a problem I haven’t solved, and one that hurts my bottom line: just take a look at my portfolio. Do you think it does a good job of communicating the work I do? Other types of designers can showcase gorgeous hero shots of sexy product designs. But me? Ecology models, behavior models, wireframes. Not so sexy. Or even so comprehensible.

Traditionally trained designers say that you can’t be a designer if you can’t draw, because visual communication is so important to our field. Well that cuts two ways. On the one hand, that training can develop an unbalanced expertise: a training that promotes visual literacy beyond all else. When that happens, you get conversations like the one at DesignBoom regarding the victor bike: so focused on the visual as to be completely inane. On the other hand, it ignores the work done by designers that work in difficult-to-visualize media. Work done by specialists like me can remain invisible because it is so unconducive to visual representation.

Or maybe I just need to work on my drawing skills

Walking home after the rain

More iPad observations: little kids

Wooden labyrinth puzzle

I played a game with my niece and nephew this weekend. Actually, we played a lot of games. Isaac, 4, made things disappear by throwing them over his head. And Hazel collected green acorns in her front yard and gave them to me. I tried to teach her to whistle using an acorn cap, but she didn’t have the dexterity in her little hands to do it.

Later, we went inside and I took out my iPad to keep the kids entertained before dinner. We tried a lot of video games, they were either too hard for them, or the rules were too far out. One great pleasure of video games is the way they introduce us to experience beyond what is possible in our physical dimensions. But this pleasure is lost on those who are still discovering the real wonders of the physics of our world. When even the basic rules are up for grabs and you can make things disappear simply by throwing them out of sight, why turn to Tetris for magic?
Read the rest of this entry »

Small towns, blue highways, and google maps

I spent the weekend driving between small towns in upstate New York, Vermont, and Connecticut–navigating the whole time with Google Maps and my iPhone. In the past, I would have used printed maps, and would have opted for the interstates. But Google Maps directed me down small roads all weekend. It was wonderful to slow down a little bit and see the country beyond the strip mall and the rest stop. And I couldn’t help wondering as I drove how many other drivers were there through similar gmap recommendations, and if gmaps is changing the patterns of use on America’s highways.

Omnigraffle for iPad, or I really wanted to like you

I’m a fan of Omnigraffle for Macintosh, so I’m sad to report that the iPad version is so poor.

A palette from OmniGraffle for Mac

Omnigraffle for Mac has always been a clunky but useful product. It’s optimized for arranging pre-made shapes (called stencils) relative to one another. This makes it easy to create basic drawings, and makes the product very useful in certain phases of the design process. Flowcharts and wireframes (schematic user interface drawings) are this app’s sweet spot.

But Omnigraffle for Mac has always had a weaknessin its interaction model. Although most of the basic work in the application can be done by direct manipulation, you very quickly find yourself working in a chaotic blizzard of palettes–secondary windows that allow you to set the properties of a selected object. To be fair, this is a problem that a lot of drawing programs share, but some manage it better than others. And many have refined palettes to the point where the major problems (window pollution and mode shifting) are reduced or eliminated. Omnigraffle palettes are old-school by comparison.

Omnigraffle for the iPad though takes this basic structural problem and simply ports it to iPad. There’s a problem though: no palettes on the iPad. The result? Palette interactions are now handled as “popovers,” essentially modal pop-up property windows. Some of us remember the days before palettes were invented, and we remember our pleasure in first using them because they were so much better than modal pop-up property windows! But now we’ve taken a giant leap backwards!

Omnigraffle for iPad should be so much better. It would be lovely to be able to take my graffle drawings with me on my iPad. But to make the app successful, Omni is going to need to radically rethink the interaction model, kill all of those popovers, and aggressively replace them with interactions based on two-handed multi-touch direct manipulation.

On First Reading the Geologist’s Report On the Condition of the Bluff

The ice age made this.
Though something was here before.
Read the rest of this entry »

First swim

First swim, originally uploaded by jseiden.

Summer started today for me with a cold swim in Cape Cod bay. The
winter storms hit hard this year: you can see the remains of the storm
fencing at the foot of the bluffs.

The day was a jewel of sun, water, sky and air.

Summer storm

Summer storm, originally uploaded by jseiden.

The first thunderstorm of the season came through the other night,
cooling off the 90 degree day and knocking down trees.