Design Sojourn

Encounted this interesting website on some work done by cheeky people re-intepreting the graphically simple iPod ads. The interesting aspect is that they manage to reproduce just the essential silhouette of the image that you are able to a good idea of what that object/person is.

This is a really good object lesson on distilling an image down to the barest essentials in order to create an iconic design.

Cant afford designer lamps like the Arco? Now is a chance to own one! Well not really. Check out:

www.emulationkit.com

These clever fellows, extract the iconic nature of classic designs and put a new twist to it. There is no shame to be a design follower. Just take a look at Lexus following Mercs in their first few designs. Great stuff Emulation.

Yes ladies and gents the latest in rubber latex technology.

What is the world coming too? I supposed this is what product designers would define as the ultimate in product user experience and interface eh?

Looks pretty ergonomic too i must say.

Here is the link for all you dirty old men.

Originally found this at a Wired blog.

Arrgh! I am truly having a hard time trying to design this blog. After running a blog at xanga.com for a bit, I realize that at Blogspot I have to be a robot. I have to learn to read HTML code. But I not a robot, so I cant. What I don’t get is why can’t Blogspot create a site has a point and click system like Xanga? Then I realized, it’s about control and more specifically control of content.

At Xanga, its all point and click and html formatted, it’s pretty easy to beautify your blog and put up nice little pictures and stuff. You can also change colors of your title blocks and what naught. But what is the nett effect? You get a blog that has ad banners, and unwanted links all over the place. Of cause the premium (pay) section of xanga minuses all the nastiness, and you get extra space for pictures etc. But I like to compare apples to apples as blogspot is free.

Check out my Xanga site for more information on what I mean: http://www.xanga.com/Acornanvil

I think this leads to a much bigger scenario on the web and with internet access. There is a lot of talk about the “post PC era”. A utopia where we can connect to the internet without the PC "middle man". So when designing such direct to internet products, the question is:

“How much control do you give a user so that he gets the best experience possible when using your product?”

Do I want a TV that can connect to the internet, but the thing I can do is surf and read selected content? So simple that I can navigate from my remote control but this means I can’t even email or choose the websites that I want?

Do I want an internet radio that has a preset list of internet stations when at the end of the day I can hunt for much more on the computer?

Do I want a Nintendo DS that can provide me a gaming experience so streamlined that the only thing I can do is play the game and get out? I cant even “chat” nor interact with other players in anyway? (More on my Nintendo DS online experience next.)

The more streamlined a product is, the less control you have and the more control the product's maker has on you.

On a smaller local level, at blogspot I have an awful experience setting up and designing my site when compared to xanga.

But I realize I am a control freak and I’m sure as there are others as well.

This leads me to think this is really about the end user. “Who” really is your target market? In today’s Design and Innovation credos about ignoring user focus groups to design the next innovative products or focusing on targets markets makes us optimizers not innovators, I am finding more and more situations where understanding the target market and user still holds true.

I believe it’s the idea that is innovative, an idea that does not come out of a focus group or a target market study. But how this idea transform to a usable tangible experience, that’s where understanding your target consumer and how he/she will use this product that will make this idea/concept a success.

Nice little rant, but my problem still stands with blogspot, well I guess at the end of the day I need to find my way around the google way.

1) I hate digital media, cos I can’t touch it.
The RIAA's lawsuit on illegal p2p music sharing hit a poor old lady by the name of Patricia Santangelo. Naturally infuriated, she fights back, particularly because she has no idea what music sharing is or even an Mp3. She is not alone.
Check out: http://snafu.harvard.edu/wordpress/?p=20

What I found particular enlightening, is not the bully tactics, nor the mindless blanket lawsuits, but how she saw Mp3 or digital media for that matter. She summarized the biggest problem that I have been mulling in the last 2 years since digital made it big.

I quote:

"p2pnet: You’re reported to have said you’ve never used Kazaa and that, further, you didn’t even know what it was before the RIAA turned up on your door-step. It’s also been said the software belongs to a friend of your children’s and was installed without you, or anyone else in your family, knowing about it. Is that an accurate summary?

Santangelo: That’s correct. I had no idea what Kazaa was or what it was used for. I think of software as an actual disk that you hold in your hand so I’m not sure about that or how it was installed. The screen-name that was used for the Kazaa account did not belong to any of my children is what I said. I never said that one of my children did not know this person had a Kazaa account."

This is the crux of the problem of digital media. You can't touch it, thus you cannot feel its value. That’s why people have no respect for MP3 or DivX. Its has no value because it is intangible, you can’t touch it, eat it, smell it, sell it, or make you gain 2 kilos and most important of all you can easily loose it. (via a hard drive crash, accidental deletion). This is a good sign for me, as an Industrial Designer, this means humans will still need products in the future as they are the vessels of the intangible.

However we cannot ignore digital media, this is the way of the future. The focus now for any one of us to forge ahead we need to bridge this gap of making intangible digital media, tangible. This leads me to my next rant.

2) I hate digital media, cos I can’t manage it.

When you have something you can easily accumulate and hoard, it rapidity moves out of control. I think we can safely look at anyone's music, digital photos, and movies folder and you can see why. Almost every single product out there that has a relation to digital media, internet radio, pod casting has in some way a connection to a PC to manage this media. This cannot be. This means digital media systems will not stray far from the PC. Wireless helps but in the end, people still associate it as a extensions of a PC product. For consumer electronics manufacturers to implement digital media in our products we need to re-package how it is used and interacted with.

More later!

A big hello to friends from my Xanga blog!

Test test.