Archive for April, 2006

Designing sustainable products

A 5-part series of PBS reports on sustainable design:

Go see the other 4 episodes of the design E2 series on Youtube.

For those who work at Liquidnet:

They Sustainability Dictionary’s definition for Liquidity is interesting in that it kind of sums up why Liquidnet’s business model is actually “environmentally friendly” on an economic level. Just like companies that produce physical products and are environmentally aware, Liquidnet is the only financial company out there who is trying to environmentally conserve the economic landscape from a financial approach. Our design approach is also sustainable because GDD is all about deriving the simplest way a designer can help achieve everyone’s goals (the business’ and the users’). Knowing that makes work much more meaningful, not that it isnt’ already.

Telling stories – Gateway to Sweden

The most powerful tool for a designer is the ability to tell a story.

The  swedish portal site, I assume is government supported, impressed me because they use the same technique to tell visitors about their countries.

Instead of selling travel services or just putting up a bunch of pictures of sceneries, they tell stories about Swedish people. Reading the text makes me want to move to Sweden right this second!

Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design

paola 1 paola 2 paola3

At AIGA this year, I listened to Paola Antonelli’s talk on her curating work on the SAFE exhibit. I really like this book she put together, the layout reminds me of the way she curates – meaningful, intentional, very well thoughtout. New York needs more curators like her. Humble Masterpieces : Everyday Marvels of Design.

Design Collaboration Case Study

Case Study of the xbox 360 design collaboration effort

04.06_xbox_venn.gif

Excerp

How can collaboration and integration be achieved?
Putting brand architecture and industrial design in the same organization is key to success. “This may be challenging for some to swallow,” Coyner explains. “With Xbox, we had lots of conversations, summits, and good dialog back and forth. Trust and mutual respect are key to having it work. Do what you can do to eliminate territorialism.”

The Xbox team used several approaches to try to overcome traditional corporate structure and process.

  • Team rituals such as engaging cross-functional groups in creative exercises helped to change the rhythm of the process. “Your brain needs interval training just like your body to hit new levels,” Jager notes.
  • Whenever possible, the team presented together to senior management. Jager explains: “Be unified and aware even as the process develops at different rates. Learn and support each other. Elevate the meaning of your work from a project to a cause. When it’s a cause, people tend to psychologically dig deeper together–as opposed to a project, where you have others who can be less driven.”
  • Involve senior management in the process; bring them into the work environment. Present on your own turf, not in the boardroom. According to Hall, “The executive team was exposed first-hand to our collaborative riffing across both design and brand. The lines between client and agency, product and brand, had blurred and coalesced around a shared vision and visual language. It fundamentally changed the senior-management approval dynamic–instead of poking for holes, the execs asked how they could remove barriers for us and stay out of our way.”
  • Strive to break down barriers between functional groups and to achieve common understanding. For example, make sure the product-development organization truly understands corporate strategy objectives. The branding group needs to understand product technology so they don’t make promises that aren’t supported by the product. Kaneko recommends, “Focus on a shared definition of the customer or user so that you don’t have the individual players designing only for what makes sense in their lives.” Coyner suggests scheduling summits involving both product and branding as early as possible.
  • Space matters. As he did for Xbox, Coyner advocates securing spaces that are accessible to the team and whose environment fosters collaboration, instead of using the typical sterile corporate meeting room. He adds that having the team do things together helps to build trust and an ongoing relationship. Continuing dialog even after the product is shipped is critical.

Sustainable design – biodegradeable phone

biodegradeable phone

NEC uses corn and kenaf as biodegradeable plastic to make this phone ?

Books on sustainable design:

Green Design

In the bubble: Designing in a complex world

Visited Countries

IDC 2007

IDSC 07 logo

Interaction Design and Children conference has an amazing list of topics next year. It will be in Denmark this year from June 6 through 8 in 2007.

James Turrel’s Interview

 james turrel

Excerpt from article

I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some way gather it, or seem to hold it. So in that way it’s a little bit like Plato’s cave. We sit in the cave with our backs to reality, looking at the reflection of reality on the cave wall. As an analogy to how we perceive, and the imperfections of perception, I think this is very interesting. And there is the making of Plato’s cave literally-at New Grange in Ireland, or Abu Sembal where you don’t have a pointing sculpture like Stonehenge. Instead you have an architectural space that is arranged to accept an event in light on the horizon. When that event in light occurs on the horizon there is an event in light, inside that space.

This then became the camera obscura, which appeared in many European towns. They would have these, and eventually even created panoramas and dioramas. The “camera lucida” and the “camera obscura” were what artists used to actually make this Western painting space.

We made this eye that sees for us, like the camera, and this is very much a part of how we organized our culture. Of course it became this holder of truth. I mean in a court of law you take a photograph, and you can use it as evidence. James Turrell

But, if you think about it, there are many factors: first of all, where you point the camera, and whether you choose a lens that’s a telephoto, which flattens the space, and sees through the distance, or a wide angle that sees a much wider area than we see. Then there is the setting of the aperture. All may be in focus, or just a part with the rest out of focus. Do you choose to put in a film that represents light from the sun as white, tungsten light as white, or fluorescent light as white; or do you use color, or infrared? Then, of course, you get this photo that you can change in development, and crop. Then you can present this photo as “proof of reality,” when every step of the way you’ve created the reality.

This idea of how we create our reality through this, and in ways that we’re not necessarily aware of, is very important. It contributes to this prejudiced perception that we have. And though learning to represent three dimensions in two, has been a great help to our culture in planning and modeling and all that, there are some losses that are interesting.

There is that experiment where a window is made to appear in perspective, so it looks like a trapezoid, and then it’s put on a stick against a very flat background- evenly illuminated, and a few feet away- and then it’s rotated. We can’t tell whether it’s going back and forth, or whether it’s going fully around. Our guessing is less than fifty percent correct. But then, for this experiment, so-called primitive people, both in New Guinea and in Africa, were tested, and they were unable to see the illusion. They were only able to see what was actually happening. When it was spinning, they saw it as spinning, and when it was going back and forth, that’s what they saw.

So certain ways of organizing information can cause some loss. Learning is one path, one way, and we have learned one way, but this also creates a prejudiced perception that we’re not totally aware of.

Sex and Human Computer Interaction

sex and chi

Just when you think they won’t ever go there. They go there. Reading about sex in the traditional CHI conference paper format is a real turn-off. Nonetheless, I applaud the attempt to bring some fun to the ever so serious typic of HCI.