A useful record

February 9
Group recipies recently caught my interest as an fun site for finding and sharing recipies. Some of the more interesting characteristics include: The strong community focus. You can become find other ‘foodies’ with the same taste in food, see who’s been looking at your recipies, become friends, and create groups. Small details that support food-lovers - for example, the ability to suggest alterations to a given recipe, or the ability to add step-by-step photos for a given recipes Different methods of exploration, such as by browsing by ‘interesting’ or ‘beautiful’ food, or searching by flavour or ingredients Draw backs of the site include inconsistencies in the interaction design, as well as a browse by tag feature that shows hundreds of tags with few distinguishing trends or patterns emerging form the tag cloud. In a way, I enjoy the diversity of tags, but I also feel that well-known task like cooking a meal could benefit from some more structured categorization (e.g. vegetarian, quick, or healthy). …and now I’m getting hungry.

Group recipies recently caught my interest as an fun site for finding and sharing recipies. Some of the more interesting characteristics include:

  • The strong community focus. You can become find other ‘foodies’ with the same taste in food, see who’s been looking at your recipies, become friends, and create groups.
  • Small details that support food-lovers - for example, the ability to suggest alterations to a given recipe, or the ability to add step-by-step photos for a given recipes
  • Different methods of exploration, such as by browsing by ‘interesting’ or ‘beautiful’ food, or searching by flavour or ingredients

Draw backs of the site include inconsistencies in the interaction design, as well as a browse by tag feature that shows hundreds of tags with few distinguishing trends or patterns emerging form the tag cloud. In a way, I enjoy the diversity of tags, but I also feel that well-known task like cooking a meal could benefit from some more structured categorization (e.g. vegetarian, quick, or healthy).

…and now I’m getting hungry.

February 1
The true 21st century begins

An example of why Bruce Sterling is one of my favorite writers…

“The year to come is best approached as a learning opportunity. It offers a golden chance to bury our dead prejudices and learn how to properly feed the living. Once we stop shaking all over and scolding Americans, we will recognize the tremendous potential this new century offers the people of the world. The sun still shines, the grass still grows, we are still human. If we stopped pretending to be puppets of an invisible hand, we would not fret over the loss of the 20th century’s strings. We might see that life is sweet.”
January 23
Pledgebank is a site that touches on the very social nature of peoples actions and decisions in life. It allows people to make public pledges to do something, as long as other people do it with them. The site is multi-lingual, in that you can choose to view pledges by country. I was also satisfied to see pledges in other languages being displayed even when browsing the USA-based area of the site. A nice touch of globalization in an era where most sites make a clean split between languages and country content.

Pledgebank is a site that touches on the very social nature of peoples actions and decisions in life. It allows people to make public pledges to do something, as long as other people do it with them.

The site is multi-lingual, in that you can choose to view pledges by country. I was also satisfied to see pledges in other languages being displayed even when browsing the USA-based area of the site. A nice touch of globalization in an era where most sites make a clean split between languages and country content.

January 22
I’m always pleasantly suprised by sites that step beyond mere categorical definition of their content and create interfaces that relate to situations in the users life. Kijiji, for example, is a classified ad service here in Germany. The site includes a wonderful browse function based on ‘Lebensphasen’ - life phases. The menu items on the right are Birth, Wedding, Moving, Retirement, and Hard times. On the ‘Moving’ page above there is a list of things someone moving would be interested in, and the page is filled with pictures, facts, stories, and tidbits related to moving, and setting up a new home. In fact, much of the content on the page is advertising, and most of the links will take you to a regular classified listing. This simple and pleasant entry-point to the information is quite refreshing, however; especially when compared to the standard (read, overwhelming) listings of ads based on category.

I’m always pleasantly suprised by sites that step beyond mere categorical definition of their content and create interfaces that relate to situations in the users life.

Kijiji, for example, is a classified ad service here in Germany. The site includes a wonderful browse function based on ‘Lebensphasen’ - life phases. The menu items on the right are Birth, Wedding, Moving, Retirement, and Hard times. On the ‘Moving’ page above there is a list of things someone moving would be interested in, and the page is filled with pictures, facts, stories, and tidbits related to moving, and setting up a new home.

In fact, much of the content on the page is advertising, and most of the links will take you to a regular classified listing. This simple and pleasant entry-point to the information is quite refreshing, however; especially when compared to the standard (read, overwhelming) listings of ads based on category.

+
Coralie Bickford-Smith: An Interview with the Designer

An inspiring interview with book cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith.
+
Deconstructing Product Design

William Lidwell and Gerry Manacsa will be exploring the meaning of design in their upcoming book, and we can too…
January 12
“

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple.

But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

 George Bernard Shaw
+
10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

This article by Whitney Hess is a great ux primer for bosses or customers. She describes 10 things that user experience design is NOT; number 10 being ‘…a choice.’
January 8
Design Hates a Depression

Murray Moss replies to the recent article ‘Design Loves a Depression’ by Michael Cannell.

“This is not a celebratory moment for design. Design-related businesses, including my own, are suffering, and will most likely continue to face very difficult times in the coming year, at the very least. That said, I deeply resent the tone of comeuppance in Mr. Cannell’s article, his condescending, parochial-school-matronly, Calvinistic reproach of the design that flourished during what he refers to as the “economic boom.” (I would use the term Renaissance). None of us — gallerists, collectors, architects, interior designers, and especially journalists — who love and respect the designers and the industrialists who have grown design during the past fifteen years should be smugly waving our fingers at those unruly designers who dared to speak without raising their hands, who fluidly transverse the terrain between art and design and lead us — some of us, evidently, resisting all the way — to new possibilities, way beyond those imagined by their counterparts in the mid-20th century.”

Ouch.
+
Design Revolution or Social Revolution? Reflections from Saint-Etienne

Core77 ran a fascinating article on the Saint-Etienne International Design Biennial by Marcia Caines.

“The Biennial kicked off with a press conference with local authorities…delivering a very clear message: the city wants to apply design and ‘design thinking’ to local industries, schools, cultural initiatives and higher education, and create a ‘design state of mind’ capable of developing new models for economic development and sustainable growth.

…The three main questions that structured the Biennial’s curatorial work were:
- How can design help to develop our lifestyles?
- How to make design work with research and innovation?
- How can design now become a tool for economic development?

…In a society used to superlative advertising slogans, reality shows, ringtones, convenience food and low-cost flights, the challenge of addressing such complex problems through design is definitely going to be a long journey, but the event definitely provided a good start.

…The fear is that design will struggle to free its creative faculties from industry and therefore fail to perform in previously unexplored territories such as design as a social tool. If it’s true that designers are now the key intermediaries between science, policy and the public, this is indeed a very new and quite a big responsibility.”