Monkey See, Monkey Do

we like to think that the world fits into nice categories: solid, liquid, gas. we think our ontologies are mostly complete. yet we still discover where they fall down. behold the non-newtonian “fluid” referred to as oobleck, basically cornstarch or potato starch and water at a ratio between 2:1 and 3:2.

some companies are trying to use other dilatant — flexible until agitated — materials to make flexible forms of body armor. examples already include skier protective suits warn in the 2006 winter olympic games and a brand of motorcycle gloves.

via gizmodo

here’s a great, thirty minute primer on ethnography — anthropologic research to understand a person’s viewpoint within their own frameworks of meaning — used for product design. this clip interviews students and professors at the IIT Institute of Design in Chicago, and shows a series of studies about jeans. within that it discusses method and philosophy of ethnography.

i’ve never done a person-on-the-street interview before, in part because i don’t like to bother people and also because i’ve generally done computer software work. but with the iphone maybe it’s time i start walking the streets?

this is hilarious, but maybe only to wikipedia editors.

the xkcd comic number 446 published on monday lampoons wikipedia’s occasional inclusion of “In popular culture” sections on articles. Those lists of pop culture references is controversial. some editors — myself included — think those sections are not encyclopedic and should be removed with few exceptions. some editors however think the wikipedia can go beyond the print-style encyclopedia format and include additional content. further, they argue, the “In popular culture” content is interesting to readers.

since yesterday, however, a flurry of dispute has ensued on the policy page about these popular culture sections and primarily on its discussion page, concerning whether to mention the comic on the article itself. since the comic is an example of popular culture, and it’s inclusion as a popular culture reference on the policy concerning popular culture references, the whole thing is quite meta and predicted by the comment on the comic itself. when you hold the mouse over the comic, a hover text reads:

Someday the ‘in popular culture’ section will have its own article with an ‘in popular culture’ section. It will reference this title-text [In Popular Culture] referencing it, and the blogosphere will implode.

in addition, someone created a wikipedia article specifically about the cartoon, which caused a vigorous dispute about deleting that new article, and once deleted a vigorous debate about the deletion decision itself began. all in the last two days basically.

aside from the odd, self-referential nature of this, i think it does depict how quickly a change and discussion can occur in the wikipedia community and also how debate occurs. take a look at the policy article’s talk page, and the two deletion discussions so far as a taste of that. the deletion discussion structure has a particular form and etiquette. you might want to read a little more about the policy and how that works if you’re curious.

what do you think about “In popular culture” sections? I’m curious what you think, especially if you disagree with my take on them.

steel balls on strings. it would be fun to visualize information with this, like the daily trends. and i wonder what it would be like to lie underneath it. the sculpture gets really interesting a minute into the video.

via neatorama

molly steenson gave an interesting talk earlier this year on strategic boredom in design. you can watch it here:

she mostly surveys here work done in the cybernetics community up until the late 1970’s, such as Cedric Price’s Generator as an example of “strategic boredom” and Gordon Pask’s Musicolour machine as an example of boredom as provocation. She also introduces a typology of boredom coined by sean desmond healy including:

• Situative boredom (waiting for someone, taking a train)
• Boredom of satiety (doing too much of the same thing, leading to banality)
• Existential boredom
• Creative boredom (being forced to do something new)

she sums her discussion as both concerning what it is like to not resist boredom but to explore it and to see “what happens when we let boredom approach us and when our objects get bored with us.”

i found this interesting as a designer, but particularly interesting since boredom is something we discuss often in shambhala buddhism as a specific inquiry during long meditation retreats and in trying to understand underlying emotional energy.

does usability design take an increasingly role and importance these days? i just received a short note from alan blackwell, promoting a workshop at the british human computer interaction (HCI) conference coming up this september. but i appreciated most how he summarized the overall trend in HCI:

Computing technology is now so pervasive that the study of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is almost the study of everyday life. A consensus has emerged in HCI that its historical concerns, such as usability and efficiency, are no longer sufficient scopes of inquiry. There have been turns to fun and enjoyment, emotional
design, experience design, culturally situated design, critical and reflective design, beauty and aesthetics, and technology for social action.

he goes on to promote the interchange of critical theory and HCI, the topic of his workshop.

i agree with his stated consensus, and i’m noticing as the projects i’m asked to help with incorporate increasingly social aspects. simpler concerns like measures of learnability and productivity are not enough to determine if those designs are good designs. as much we have to consider their impact on our emotional lives and how they enable or discourage healthy social lives.

one example that immediately pops to mind was the recent myspace-related suicide, when a neighbor used a fake profile to torment a young teenager resulting in her taking her own life. is that a usability issue? well the design of the system and how it relates to anonymity played a part in that tragedy. and it’s such a new medium, i don’t think we know enough yet about how those social spaces work or fail us. this is a point danah boyd has been making for as long as i’ve know her. for example, that kids blog and discuss things in public spaces without realizing the long term implications of that kind of behavior. we all don’t really know yet what the long term side effects will be from an increasingly public social space mixed with partial anonymity or the illusion of anonymity. so to alan’s list above i have to add ethics as an important area of inquiry.

has anyone switched to blu-ray? thoughts on the upgrade? better experience overall or just a marginal increase in quality?

i noticed that amazon is having a title sale and it made me wonder if i should finally upgrade. they also seem to have some special promotional discounts on games or similar items but those are specific to each day and you’d need to bookmark the page to really make use of it.

the thought of replacing my small dvd collection isn’t a big deal, i don’t have many favorites, but i’m not sure if it’s worth it if i’m just going to buy some completely digital version of these five or ten years down the road. waste to transition now you think?

so cool! i booked a hotel room for the weekend and during the online booking process i was given the option to offset my carbon impact of the trip. directly in the online shopping cart web page i could choose to pay a little extra that goes to a non-profit company who plants trees.

i’m assuming they use a gross average for the carbon estimate, but the amount is relatively small so i added it to my trip and now feel significantly better about the travel. simple, seamless, good emotional affect — how cool is that? cudos to the designers and the company for integrating that so well. is there something like that you could add to your online service? a few cents to offset the carbon cost of shipping packages? or manufacturing?

i tried out a new gardenburger at the local fast food joint. so rare when they support vegetarians like me that i also took the time to send the company an email. what they sent back was pure, corporate porn. i love love this adjective riddled language and hyperbole, like “bursting with wholesome … grains”.

Dear Davee,

Great to hear from you! Thank you so very much for generously taking the time to write in and share your experience with us. We are exceptionally grateful for your feedback and truly consider it a gift because it is vital for us to know how we’re doing and what we can improve on in order to better serve you.

I’m thrilled to hear that you are a fan of our new Oregon Harvest Burger! We love the Oregon Harvest Burger because it’s bursting with wholesome, organic vegetables and grains that offer big flavor and hearty nutrition. We are committed to providing our guests with high-quality vegetarian fare and are proud to serve this locally-made, dairy, egg and gluten free veggie burger.

Thank you so much, Davee, for sampling our new Oregon Harvest Burger and for offering your valuable feedback. We hope you will be around to try our new Spicy Anasazi Bean Burger in the near future and would absolutely love to hear what you think of it. Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be glad to serve you in any way I can. I hope you have a terrific day!

Warm regards,

[redacted]
Guest Communications Coordinator
The Holland, Inc. / Burgerville

i’m tempted to pen a corresponding reply, and i’m so excited to find out how they can “serve me in any way they can”! i hope they have a terrific day too!

the best part? the email came from an email address named “Trust Us”