Blackbeltjones/Work “The cosmos is a deeply dangerous thing to think about - into it, vacant minds expand” - Dr. Jonathan Miller

Constraints and creativity: text message poems


Matt Locke is part of the
project/competition team that have launched a text-message poetry
competition in The Guardian. In this introductory article, Andrew Wilson makes some lovely telling points about what the medium and it’s usage inspire…

“...text messages let us think about our reply, choose our words
carefully. They let us try to say something clever or cool, use written
words to strike a pose or have a calculated effect. Then the message
gets sent, the words bounce around in the ether, and at the other end
someone tries to work out what it means: do we really fancy them, or
are we just being friendly? That gap between what we think our words
mean, what we try to make them say, and what they say for themselves,
is poetry.”

and

“Text messages are short, so the subject has to be
tackled in a way that will fit into 160 characters. There isn’t space
to tell much of a story. A text message poem has to find one truthful
moment and describe it, whether it’s seeing the red moon during the
lunar eclipse – or not seeing it becaue it was cloudy; the way everyone
stands up at once during a football match; a child asleep in the back
of the car on the way home from a holiday. Ezra Pound called it the
luminous detail. Find it, show it and let it speak for itself.”

Guardian Unlimited: TxtmsgPoetry

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gulp.


Today I got my business bank account. Tomorrow is my last day on payroll. I’m self-employed.

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Summation of Doors6

Well… I thought Doors6 was patchy, but over time it’s
demonstrated itself to be the conference that keeps on giving. Andrew
Otwell has a great little presentation based on the proceedings, with
links and his own analysis here:

Doors 6 Presentation

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CarFreeHelsinki


Alistair (who led the
carfreelondon project) pointed out the current HP ads that are
featuring smart transport information systems not a million miles from
what we suggested back in ‘98

AdCritic.com Commercials: Hewlett-Packard – Snowballs Ad

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Follow-up to WiReD article on Paper


Picture of the bluetooth pen / smart paper system covered in the article… it’s chunky

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Swollen Thumbs

Despite a post-Christmas blip, the number of text messages sent is still on course to pass one billion by June this year.

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Paper


This from the new WiReD… like the way it frames the use of paper as a
medium that people understand that can be extended. Seen three separate
presentations/articles about 3g ‘smart pens’ in the last couple of
months… seems like a lot of people are converging on it.

“This is the most advanced digital
input screen ever developed,” he declares. “It has very high
resolution, perfect contrast, and costs a fraction of a cent to
produce. Any graphical interface can be printed on it, and you get
years of full-time education, paid for by the government, to learn how
to use it. It will not be beaten in our lifetime.”

He puts the paper in my hands. “And I can give it to
you, because I have hundreds more,” he offers, gesturing toward a stack
of blank paper on his desk. Fåhraeus isn’t handing me a sketch of the
input screen. The paper is the screen.

Wired 9.04: The Hot New Medium: Paper

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JC Herz on ‘The Sims’ and information architecture


The author of ‘Joystick Nation’ writing in The Standard, with things to
say about the context and the determinist, isolationary viewpoints in
which some information architecture and online business are designed;
and how looking at game systems like The Sims show a way forward for
experience designers.

“For the business community, The Sims’ lessons are
twofold. The first is that interaction design trumps graphics. The Sims
is less photorealistic than any computer game on the market, or any
broadband site on the Web – it’s not even fully 3D. Yet it succeeds
tremendously because it allows players with different agendas to
interact as consumers, producers, mavens and community leaders and to
reap rewards for all of these activities. The richness and complexity
of an online experience, like the richness and complexity of a city, is
created by the people who live there as they engage with the place and
each other.

The second lesson is that online businesses don’t just
exist, like buildings, in space. They exist, like cities, in human
context over time. The best ones are designed to grow more
interconnected, not just bigger, as the population evolves. They’re
always messy. They’re never finished. They harbor an almost palpable
sense of around-the-clock activity and a sense of place that owes as
much to collective experience as to snazzy signage. When you open your
window, there’s a there there.”

The Standard.com: Learning From The Sims

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godlikegeniusscottmccloud


Peter Merholz has posted the interview he did with Scott Mccloud at SXSW.

An Interview with Scott McCloud

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oh wow.


http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto/manifesto.html

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FT: More on 3G reality and interesting piece on consumer behaviour…

These from the excellent ‘Creative Business’ supplement that comes with the FT every tuesday – i had to email their helpdesk
to find this stuff which is nothing to do with their interface design,
but everything to do with their interaction/content strategy of deliberately reducing the mapping you can make between the print edition and website… arrrgh.

Firstly, a looming 3G handset crisis further
widens the gap between the realities of wireless and the expectation – a gap which wasn;t managed well last time (WAP…)

“Third generation mobile phones do exist. Oh yes, they
do. I met somebody yesterday who had heard of a colleague who had
actually handled one. This sort of throw-away line is becoming a sick
joke for most of Europe’s mobile phone operators. In Britain and
Germany alone, they have paid more than Pounds 50bn between them for
licences to offer mobile internet, full motion video and other glitzy
services – they hope from next year. That’s fine. But where are the
handsets? Realistically the chances of working phones being ready in
quantity next year are small. Many observers think it will be 2004,
2005 or even later before commercially attractive handsets are
generally available. ”

CREATIVE BUSINESS: Third generation mobile phones : Financial Times, Mar 13, 2001

and…


Some research shows that there may not be such a thing as an unquestioning early adopter of technology in the consumer market place… good news for user-centred interaction design…?

“Even early adopters are becoming suspicious of new
technologies and new formats,” says director of strategic solutions Sue
Unerman. “If you are selling technology, make the benefit clear.”

CREATIVE BUSINESS: New media : Financial Times, Mar 13, 2001

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I-mode is successful because it’s simple


The race to justify spend on 3G
licenses in Europe is leading the owners into an arms race of features,
content rights and technology spend… but they won’t get any return on
their investment unless they listen to what users want… like I-Mode
did…

“Since its launch in February 1999, the product has been
aimed not at sophisticates but at ordinary people who want “normal,
normal, Internet applications,” he stressed. Though casual observers of
i-mode activity in Japan might conclude that most people who use it are
teenagers, he said, in reality the majority of Japanese users are
adults. After a semi-slow beginning, when i-mode took six months to
land its first one million subscribers, his company now counts just
over 19 million subscribers, Natsuno said.”

Stepping back from the features and functionality mindset
to one of sensitive and contextual strategic design of 3G services is
going to happen – it’s whether the big players spending right now will
do it before or after they realise what consumers want…

The Minimalist Invasion of i-mode : HBSWK Pub. Date:26-Feb-01

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Consumer electronics gumbo

Economist article arguing the subtle convergence based around protocols and people’s lives that has spawned divergence in the consumer electronics industry.

Reminded me of a conversation last year with Phil Oye
on a New York subway about whether our gadgets would converge to a
digital penknife or diverge to single-use devices… The protocols and
purpose arguement was something I wish we’d discussed then…!

Gadget wars
Mar 8th 2001 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

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Architecture/Hypertecture?


Paul Bishop, of Metrius pointed me to this site covering digital expression of, and implications for, architecture.

a-matter – architecture and related. The online medium for architecture.

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More on “Wombling”


Phil,
Marese and myself had a great, animated discussion about ‘wombling’
last night in the pub following Advance For Design, which was themed
around Ethnography and Trend-Watching in design. Here’s phil’s
follow-up mail which he’s kindly let me publish. There’s a very
interesting link in his ramble which points to methods for ‘system
optimisation’ – which in a dry way, you could argue is ‘wombling’.

“Stream of consiousness about wombling…

So we’re talking about a phonomenon of socio-cultural wombling, rather than engineering wombling.

It’s about users deviating from the designers path in
radical and unforseeable ways, and those deviations having a benevolent
effect. Look at the pictures half way down this page: http://home.earthlink.net/~bhelfrich/quip/

The examples we’ve seen are all very simple.
Disappointingly simple, really. Each instance is just an example of a
simple misappropriation of a single tool.

For example, SMS didn’t have to be joined to any other
technology in order to make a new thing. It was simply adopted by an
unexpected market segment.

The Web is an example of a piece of engineering wombling
(combine existing Internet hardware with TCP/IP with standard
high-level protocol tactics with SGML with cheap computing power) and
socio-cultural wombling (it exploded into a zillion dollar “industry”).
Engineers did the more exotic wombling. Or did they?

For tech wombling:
– A profusion of cheap, general purpose components

[Add more]

For socio-cultural wombling:
– A simple, flexible product

[Add more]

To exploit SC-wombling a company must:
- understand
that wombling is a pwoerful, money making phenomenon and invest their
time and effort into encouraing it. This many include altering their
infrastructure and processes to allow the quick wombling response
mentioned below.
– “listen” for signs of wombling on their product
– respond quickly by “tweaking” their product in ways that encourage wombling
– reward womblers?

[Add more]”

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Snowcrashed


Yet more to add to the growing pile of evidence that suggests we are all living inside Neal Stephenson’s head.

Guardian | Delhi calling

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CarFreeNYC


Victor pointed this
out to me – a pressure group site raising awareness of traffic problems
around the central park area of Manhattan. Can’t seem to find any
design or policy solutions on the site though…

From my limited experience of Manhattan it would seem as an
urban form to be less susceptible to the kinds of
‘networked-neighbourhood’ patterns we were proposing to digitally
enable in CarFreeLondon

Any NewYorkers want to comment?

Transportation Alternatives NYC - Car-Free Central Park

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Car-free cities book


A superb little site to publicise J.H. Crawford’s book. Particularly
fascinating is the section on topologies for car-free cities where
ideal urban forms and patterns are put forward for encouraging reduced
car-use. Thanks to Yoz for pointing this out.

Carfree.com:
Carfree cities past, present, and future: solutions
to the problem of the urban automobile.

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YEAH!


http://www.badassmovieimages.com/movies/blackbeltjones/index.html

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“Can I have your last life, mister?”

Snaffled from Victor Lombardi

IBM/Ease of Use/I’d Rather Play Computer Games Than Do Real Work! (Wouldn’t You?): The Appeal and Usability of Games Interfaces

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