iPhone Calculator vs brAun ET66

[ via Core77 ]

Affective Design “Research Toy” Prototype

 

Liza making a joyful expression?

I am working on an affective design project with Kshitiz Anand and Sean Connolly. Today we released our research toy to help decide which faces best convey the emotions we’ve decided to use. Please go there and play around with it for a while. It will help us immensely.

What is graphic design?

Design Observer has a nice – but slightly longwinded – piece explaining what graphic design is in lay terms. Some key points I like are the ubiquity of graphic design, “quietly good design”, and how the designer’s personal expression always comes through, even with the “pragmatic and problem solving” type.

However, I wish it mentioned the dearth of design outside of graphic design.

How to tell a story with book spines

Narrative offers a emotional, intriguing, and human dimension when incorporated in design. For the designer however, it’s not always easy to tell a story. We often have to rely on vaguely telling the story. Artist Nina Katchadourian has a nice example using book spines to do this.

Sorted Books

[ via Boing Boing ]

Difference Between Graphic Design and Interaction Design

Here’s a great slideshow illustrating the difference between graphic design and interaction design. With this blog, one of my goals is to articulate and refine my definitions of design, the sub-disciplines of design, and how other disciples (like art, science, politics, philosophy, and literature) relate to design. I think presentations like this will help me formulate these definitions.

[ Found via Monoscope ]

Schtock

I ran across Schtock yesterday, a site where this “amatuer designer”, showcases the images he has created from the images that cross his desk at his job. He works cataloging stock art. I’d like to take the time out to offer a couple thoughts I had in relation to this site.

The top navigation for the main part of the site – used to go back and forth between images, and show the stock images used in that piece – is very natural and unobtrusive. I find the “about this image” particularly modern and a great use of John Maeda’s SHE principle. But, I think there are some serious problems with this site that go beyond simple heuristics evaluation or discussion of usability.

Also, let me state that while the site creator self-refers as an amateur designer, the author is assuredly neither amateur nor a designer, but a fantastic artist.

First, the “about this site” link should not go to a blog. When clicking “about this site” I expect to go to a page whose main content is explaining the site. Yes, that content is on the blog, but in the upper-right, a place for tertiary content at best.

Second, the simple image navigation interface is nice, but unless there’s an implied sequence to images (and sometimes even if), a browse by thumbnail option should be provided. This is a fairly common mistake I find in sites. Simplicity-in-design is no excuse for adopting a simple solution.

Third, and this relates back to the blog, going to the blog gives the sensation of going to another web site. I tend not to look at the URL bar much, and I had to go back and forth between the blog and main portion of the site a coupe times to be sure belonged to the same site. Yes, the gray colors match (and it’s a serious-designerly gray), but there has to be more there for the blog and the site to really belong together.

All in all though, this images on Schtock are incredible, and the art belongs more in a museum than on my silly little blog.

Paul Rand on Design and Art

Here is a very nicely done video encapsulating Paul Rand’s views on art on design. I don’t necessarily agree with his linking the two so tightly. Aesthetics is important to both, obviously, and he is a master of aesthetics, but they are not the same.

I tend to differentiate design and art by their intent. Design is done in service to others to create a more desirable world or future. Art, on the other hand, is more about personal, emotional expression and capturing subjective perspectives of the world.

Regardless of how you may think of the two, enjoy the video.

[ Found via Monoscope ]

Anti-theft lunch bag

These anti-theft lunch bags are a clever solution to office robbery. It’s too bad they’re disposable. Also, I wonder what they look like in person.

[Found via LikeCOOL]

Blocks

Last year Phoebe Sengers came to speak in a colloquium hosted by my department and also came to talk to our class. I was so inspired by her talk on ambiguous computing that during the middle of lecture I started creating my own prototype to test with people. Its called Blocks. Basically, I like showing it to people and seeing how they react to it, a small web app that has no predefined goal.

Some of my favorites: writing your own name, trying to make all the blocks either black or white, and drawing pictures.