Eternal archive
One of my sister Micaela’s journal posts really got me thinking (my emphasis in bold):
It’s so sad that nowadays we have to screen our internet lives in fear that respectable, reputable people might be insulted or think less of us because of them. I don’t care if my college, my employer, or even my Grandma can see photos of me on Facebook or read my user info. I don’t care if one of my friends stumbles upon my Deviantart account or that old Inuyasha fan fiction I wrote in 7th grade. My internet history is very telling to who I am as a person and how I have grown, and if I need to screen that.. then there’s something wrong with the way I live my life.
I think she has an excellent point; anyone who posts in a LiveJournal, has a Facebook or MySpace page, or countless other sites is almost writing an autobiography of themselves. An eternal archive of their stories, achievements, pastimes, and projects. Just a few examples:
- The first website I ever made in January of 1999
- Back in the early days of Palm OS, my friend Alex and I used to write little PIM apps and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ type games. I guess they’re still floating around
- All of my angsty high school years in one compact LiveJournal
- Our old virtual UO/tabletop D&D group’s site
I’m feeling all nostalgic now…anyone else care to share some of their early internet works?
Simple Things
Matt’s talk of ‘over-designed’ products got me thinking about two questions:
- “What do I use every day that I take for granted?” (something that blends in to my life so much that I don’t realize I’m using it)
- “What do I use every day that would be vastly improved by removing features?” (things that frustrate me to no end every day)
As far as taking things for granted, the first thing that popped into my head was…
The Thermos
I love this thing. As far as I’m concerned, the vacuum flask is one of the greatest inventions of the early 20th century (Germany, 1904 in fact). This particular design manages to do so much with its minimalist construction. The cap is a cup, and the vacuum seal can be partially unscrewed to let you pour (its threaded grooves channel the liquid in to a stream so it doesn’t spill). Oh, and it maintains beverage temperatures. Yay science.
It wasn’t quite as hard to think of something that infuriates me on a daily basis. I’m sure you use one every day for some purpose or another…
The Remote Control
Ugh. I need to use three of them to turn my TV, sound, and cable box on respectively. What’s with all the buttons guys? I think I would be just fine with power, input switch, volume, and channel up/down controls. Maybe (just maybe!) a 5-way d-pad and a Menu button on the cable and TV remotes. I don’t think that anyone in the history of audio/video has pressed the index button on their remote.
What sorts of objects do you take for granted every day? Is there anything that drives you nuts?
Separating the Design from the Designer
I do a lot of prototyping at Tangoe. The nature of software development and interaction design in a complex field like telecommunications necessitates that I go through multiple iterations of a UI before it becomes finalized. There are times when I’ll be 12 iterations in to a particular prototype and someone will come up and imply that something shouldn’t be a certain way. When I first started, my usual reaction was to go on the defensive immediately. I’d attempt to explain why said current design was great, etc. As I worked, I realized that there was (and is) value to be had in such things: something about a mock up I designed wasn’t meeting the expectations of my viewer!
When you’re a designer (of anything, not just graphics), you invest your time, effort, and passion in to creating something, all the while understanding that it will be met with a mixed response from your audience. Some folks will love it, some will hate, and others will be indifferent. There’s an important lesson all designers must learn: realize that the design is not the designer. When someone critiques a mock up, an image, etc. that you made, remember that it’s not a personal attack (or, conversely, explicit praise for you). The feedback they are presenting is about the design, not about you.
Nowadays, I make a conscious effort to separate myself from a design. To use the cliched analogy about uncovering an elephant in a block of marble, you’re just freeing the elephant from the marble. Try to see things from many points of view, rather than just your own. Some of the best changes in my mock ups have come from stepping back and trying to walk in someone else’s shoes, be it a coworker’s or a user’s. I ask myself “What are they expecting that my current work isn’t providing?”
Just remember, the next time you’re working on a project and someone critiques some of your work, try to see it from their point of view. You might learn something that makes your work a little better.
Pumpkin Carving 2009
Katt, Scott, and I carved some pumpkins today for Halloween! Our cameras have crappy low-light performance (a Canon PowerShot SD1000 and a Casio EX-P700 respectively), but here they are:
I carved a Boo from the Mario series…
Katt did Zero from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas…
And Scott carved Mario!