brightly colored food

For the science-minded out there…

If you don’t have the time or patience for the almost 1500 pages of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, you might want to check out the review from this week’s New Yorker. It’s a nice summary of his life’s work, most of which is reflected in the book. Even if you don’t agree with all of his theories, he was one of the best science writers around.

If you don’t have the time or patience for the almost 1200 pages of Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science, you should join me at CMU this Thursday at 4:30, where he’ll be speaking. I’m sure that there are few better places to hear it than at a school as nerdy as Carnegie Mellon.

Also, here’s an interview with Wolfram on Science Friday, an NPR show. Here’s a review of his book by Stephen Weinberg, and another by Ray Kurzweil.

One of the unexpected ways in which Pittsburgh excels is in its number of pinball machines. Pinball is a bit of a dying art - there aren’t any more machines in production and few repairmen to maintain the remaining ones, so it’s a nice surprise to find myself in a city with so many machines still working.

The other night I was playing Junk Yard at a nearby bowling alley while listening to this band called Z.O.W.I.E. play spy-rock from a nearby lane. Yes, they were playing on the lane. I was just getting started on my second ball when everything stopped, just like I’d tilted it. A bit confused, I wasn’t sure what I’d done. A few seconds later the machine roared back to life, announcing that it was time for Midnight Madness and sending me directly into multiball mode, where I quickly garnered a nice little replay.

I love it that the pinball machine designers put in such a nice serendipitous little touch. It was that little bit of sensitivity to my context - in this case, the time of day - that makes that experience so memorable.

When have you been surprised that something was aware of your current context and changing its behavior as a result of that knowledge?

Here’s another reading list to check out. It’s from Timo Arnall, a user experience designer “currently living somewhere between London, Helsinki and Oslo”. Of the list, he says, “The following books cover many disciplines, from Interaction and Visual Design to Filmmaking to Architecture, but all relate loosely to the various processes, ideologies, visions and practicalities of Experience Design.” Well put. It’s one of the better reading lists I’ve come across or been pointed to, and definitely worth checking out.

If I had to give a shout out to anyone on Timo’s list, it would be John Dewey. Through his writing, John and I have been spending a lot of quality time together. I’m working through sections of Art as Experience, Democracy and Education, and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. As experience designers, Dewey is important because he lays out the foundation of what makes an experience and what makes an experience meaningful. It’s difficult to get through at times, but rewarding one you piece it all together.

Are there any other reading lists worth mentioning?

One of the great things about grad school is that you’re given the opportunity to step back and explore the bigger things that influence our experiences and interactions in the world. In my Interface/Interaction Design class, we’re creating interfaces/devices for timekeeping. We’re in the early stages, so I’ve been thinking a lot about different aspects of time, looking around for inspiration and such. A favorite book of mine that’s been a great source is Einstein’s Dreams. If you haven’t read it, you must - it’s short, poetic, and sticks around in your mind for days.

What else might inspire some reflection on how we perceive time?

Logitech just came out with a new pen called the io personal digital pen that funtions as a normal pen, but also digitally captures your writing/drawing and allows you to do things like write an appointment down and have Outlook schedule it for you when you synch up. I’ve seen similar systems in the past that were either more expensive or involved more parts, but this looks pretty slick.

It’s interesting to see more products coming to market that blur the whole physical/digital barrier. While it’s definitely more on the digital side, I’m still oohing and aahing over the iPod I picked up last week. It’s wonderful experience carrying 10GB of music/documents/whatever in such a small, elegant package.

From a Wired News Article

Howard Rheingold has started a weblog to complement his forthcoming book “Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution”.

Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive.

Last week I got to hear Gijs Bakker from Droog Design speak as part of an arts festival on campus. Droog is a sort of design collective based in The Netherlands. If you read ID, Metropolis, or any of those furniture-porn catalogs like DWR, you’ve seen their stuff. Gijs didn’t say anything particularly notable, but I enjoyed his tour through their product catalog.

One of my favorites was a tulip bulb encased in a small box of pressed cow manure, which serves as fertilizer. It gives the Dutch a means for exporting manure (the EU is picky about that stuff) bit by bit in the luggage of tourists. I bet they’re still patting themselves on the back for that one. I also liked the chest of drawers. As you can see, their stuff isn’t always putting a high-priority on function, but it can still be quite compelling.

You can check out some more of Droog’s products here.

I enjoyed reading this interview with Will Wright, the guy behind all the Sims games. It deals with philosophy of game design, mining the rich data gathered on “The Sims”, modeling complex systems, and more. Quite good.

from Black Belt Jones

Here’s a nice overview of some of the main user interface differences between apps for Windows and OS X. It’s well-written, and it’s a nice overview if you don’t want to read all of the Apple HI Guidelines. What’s especially interesting is the emphasis on how a good interface promotes the brand of the product and the company behind the product - I wouldn’t expect to see that in a document like this.