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 »
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.
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.
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 »
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 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.
I got an email this afternoon from 20×200, a wonderful site that sells art at consumer prices. Today’s featured artist is Jorge Columbo, who creates images using a painting app called Brushes that runs on his iPhone. And although the images feel traditional, there is something appealingly new about them. Aspects of photoshop and fingerpainting shine though in combination to offer some new angle on the streetscape.
I’ve also been collecting my thoughts on the iPad, and was struck by a comment by Columbo in this morning’s promotional email:
I do not have an iPad yet, but will surely get one. I have drawn on one already, and loved a larger screen. (I’m tired of mixing phone calls in with my art supplies). One day we’ll be able to draw on touch screens the size of a door. Compare the early iPods—2001: heavy, grey screen, no pictures, etc.—with current ones. Doesn’t it make you feel like this one iPad is ONLY the beginning? The basic thing for me remains: no visible tool. Finger creates art, period… The other key point is portability: a regular digital studio is now in your pocket. It’s not so much a toppling of status quo, more like a broadening of alternatives—shooting a movie in black-and-white film now doesn’t mean the same it meant a century ago—back then it was the single option; now it’s a choice among many.
Art, like science, progresses. Forms evolve. Form are there to serve the culture…
Sheilds doesn’t make the technological argument (that new forms are made possible by new technologies) but he doesn’t have to. The forces of change are multivariate.
Service = brand. Policy = brand. Experience = brand.
This should be obvious by now, but apparently someone forgot to tell American Airlines. At least, that’s my feeling now that I’ve returned from a vacation week in Hawaii. I made the round-trip on American Airlines, and I hope I never have to fly AA again.
At a functional level, AA delivered on most of the basic promises of air travel: they got me to Hawaii safely and on time. They didn’t lose my luggage. The flight attendents were polite, friendly, and competent. And yet, I will never fly with them again.
One wonderful effect of the iPad release is that it has made multi-touch computing mainstream. If you want to argue that the iPhone accomplished this, fine. But the iPad unleashes a world of possibility due simply to the size of the multi-touch screen. We now have a platform that allows two-handed multi-touch interactions. The possibilities are thrilling.
It never occured to me to wonder if a city could have a goal.
And yet in retrospect, it seems the obvious first question to consider if one were to approach the design of urban environments. It should have been obvious to me anyway, given that my background in interaction design is grounded in a method called goal-directed design, a method that seeks to first to identify the goals of any artifact or system to be designed. And yet it was an eye-opener to me to read this piece on Daily Good about the revitalization of Bogata, Colombia.
Enrique Peñalosa, the Mayor of Bogota, speaking on the subject of the urban revitalization projects that he’s undertaken during his term, is quoted as saying,
“If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time,” declares Peñalosa. “So with our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success. This might mean that all kids have access to sports facilities, libraries, parks, schools, nurseries.”
Extending that idea later in the piece, the analyst David Burwell of Project for Public Spaces describes Peñalosa’s perspective: “He views cities as being planned for a purpose—to create human well-being.”
