home | blog archives | contact me
Friday, December 28, 2001
The Guardian's list of the "Seven Wonders of the Internet" doesn't contain any surprises; think of seven big sites and you'll be right (Google, Amazon, eBay...). What's interesting to me is what these "wonders" all have in common: a dead simple conceptual model. Yahoo: find something in a big collection of categorized links. Google: find something specific by typing it. eBay: auctions. Blogger: ftp-less web publishing. Napster had a great conceptual model, too (though it's not on the list): think of a song then hear it.
The fourth issue of Loop is out. It's devoted to student interaction design work. It's a little dissapointing that even in the graduate-level examples, there's so much more emphasis on "styling" rather than "design." Few of the entries really tackle a problem and try to design a solution, some are even explicitly personal expressions; art, really. Interactive art's great, I love it, but is it really the role of design schools to teach it?
Unfortunately, most of these peices are huge Flash and Director pieces over 3 and 4 Megs; some are MacOS-only archive files or projectors. A three meg Flash file says to me that someone chose the wrong tool for the job, and that they didn't try too hard at the one of the basic rules of digital media production: smallest file size with acceptable file quality. None, as far as I could tell, incorporate databases or networking in any significant way, and most seem to explore current cliches of interactive media rather than any new ground. One is the result of an project that "specifically explored the potential uses of buttons and movie clips as vehicles for user-controlled interactivity." Buttons and movie clips in this context mean "Macromedia Flash's internal button and movie clip object types", which means that students based their ideas and work on the way Flash works. IMHO, that encourages wrong-way-round thinking, asking "what does this program do" before asking "what is the problem to be solved."
As usual, Phil Agre's articles are great reads. The latest, Institutional Analysis for Design, suggests an "institutional" approach to design, which he contrasts with "device-centered" (or "user-centered") design. What he's suggesting is in essence an ethnographic, contextual approach that most designers who consider themselves "user-centered" will probably agree with. The contribution here is to introduce the idea of the "institution" as an abstract system which defines rules of practice, behavioral norms, and individuals' relationships.
Tuesday, December 18, 2001
Here's the job I want at Ivrea.
Monday, December 17, 2001
Bad customer experience: I got a gift from my sister from Eddie Bauer.com. I live in Berlin, so I had to pay almost 80% of the cost of the gift when I received it, about $50 out of my pocket (it was 100DM, so it is actually more in terms of buying power). Ouch!
The EB website vaguely mentions "recipients are responsible for international tariffs and duties" but, hey, shouldn't they warn the buyer that the gift recipient might have to pay almost the full cost of the gift? Well, I thought so, but when I called Eddie Bauer, our conversation degenerated into them telling me I should take my anger out on the German government which had my $50, and me telling them "the lifetime value of my sister and me customers is way more than $25 each! That's got to be about your acquisition costs anyway! Come on, two customers satisfaction for $50!"
Well, it didn't work. Somebody's got my $50 and I want a credit.
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Hey, Golan Levin, that damn genius, contributed to a book called Generative Design., which also includes a section by the creator of Auto-Illustrator. This should be excellent.
Hee hee. Look what people interested in Segway also shop for.
Monday, December 10, 2001
Great examples of IA docs (for real clients, with real data) deep within the Zaundhaus site. Scroll to the bottom of the page for links to the .pdfs.
The latest article at A List Apart is a really well-written essay about design as problem solving, and the difference between stylists and designers.
Although Linkdup.com is a design portal much like (the currently offline) k10k.net, anyone with an interest in well-done information architectures should have a look at it. It's designed around a variety of search options and features like bookmarking (called "locking"), and manages to pack a ton of information into a very readable interface. The use of modular design is exceptionally well-done. Each site can be presented as a small module, with just link, option-to-bookmark, send-this-link, and an icon indicating new, favorite, or recently updated. These small modules can be stacked as a list of links. There's also the "large" module, where the information in the small module is expanded with two tiny screen shots and often a short review. The neat thing is that the small and large modules can be mixed together in a list of search results.
Lots of nice little touches as well, like the placement of back and forward arrows exactly where you need them after each step (try locking a site by clicking on the little key and look for the small << to back up out of the confirmation). Rollover text (over the little "i" icons) is usually helpful, but never required to use the feature.
What's also interesting is that although there are categories (like Agencies: European), the interface tends to encourage searching and browsing other ways, by "newest" or "public's favorites" for example, and only uses those categories to help explain what a given site is all about; for a portal site showcasing primarily the newest and best of its subject, it's a strategy that works well.
Tuesday, December 04, 2001
AmazonScan from FuckedCompany.com. The lowest-ranked section (at the bottom) is pretty hilarious.
What a funny thing, stock certificates as gift ideas. Still, I'm tempted.
Now this is odd. Milla, a German agency. Quite unusual Flash.
Jakob's choices for Best Intranets of 2001 led me to the excellent Silverorange site and intranet demo, then on to Silverorange Creative Director Steven Garrity's page with lots of good stuff.
Monday, December 03, 2001
I downloaded Moodstats which is a new k10k project. It sure is loverly, fine in color and with that perfectly subtle tiny beveled edge all over that k10k loves. I like to look at it and click on it, and type and slide things and rollover and all that, but it seems like a little too much style over substance. As far as I can tell, there's only the one graph, which is really supposed to be the main point of the thing, not the entering of personal data stuff which takes up much more space in the app.
So that "IT" thing turned out to be real. It really does seem too fantastic to be true. I guess it will be years before we can have our own though.
Also too fantastic to be true: Heather and I were the only people but for a quite family of five in a huge movie theater yesterday for "Harry Potter." Potzdamer Platz may be ugly, but they sure got American-style multiplexes right.
