April 2008
21 posts
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Upgrade
Tonight, I’m saying goodbye to an old friend and welcoming a new member of the family. I purchased a new Mac Pro to replace my 4.5 year old Power Mac G5. While I’m excited about the new toy, I always feel a bit sentimental when I retire an old Mac. It served me well. Apple has done a truly amazing job on their process for moving to a new machine. I was prompted to connect the two machines with a...
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Sent from my iPhone
Thus reads the default signature in Mail on the iPhone. Thus far, I have not made the effort to change it, nor have many others I know. Are we declaring bragging rights? Is it due to a desire to be recognized as a member of the club, much as early PT Cruiser owners made congratutory honks and waves at each other? Or is it an excuse—a plea to forgive typos, sentence fragments, and brevity?
More...
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In the Details: Volume Control
Another feature of my new Mazda5 that I really like is the automatic volume adjustment. The volume increases as the car speeds up and decreases as it slows down. The increment at which it increases and decreases can be set. Like the rain-sensing windshield wipers, this is a case in which automation makes perfect sense. It has made me quite aware of the frequency by which I manually adjust the...
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Synchrosurprised
Back in November, I wrote about Microsoft’s new Sync system, which is currently available in Ford vehicles. I was impressed when a reviewer reported that the speech recognition actually worked well. Some of the people I’ve been working with the past two weeks flew up from Charleston, SC and got a rental car—a Ford equipped with Sync. I rode with them to lunch, and as we were returning, they...
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“Never tell me the odds.”
Han Solo, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
How many times have I heard a respected celebrity claim that the only reason they did the things they did was because they didn’t realize at the outset how difficult they would be? And yet, they were successful. We don’t hear about the failures.
My training as a designer—the skills, processes, techniques, tools, and talent—gives me the...
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Roulette Vendor
There’s an elaborate vending machine in the building at which I’m working this week. Rather than dropping cans or bottles down through a slot, the machine employs a motorized arm. The arm first travels along a horizontal track to the column in which the desired bottle resides, and then another motor moves the “hand” vertically up the arm to the correct row. It grabs the bottle and carries it back...
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Hit with the Ugly Sticker
I was riding to lunch with a co-worker the other day and noticed that he had one of those paper floor mats that mechanics use while your car is in the shop. He had continued using it for, well, I don’t know exactly how long. I found it humorous that he was using an unattractive paper mat to protect the coordinated, carpeted floor mat that was there to protect the carpet. This is the same...
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Sorry Safari
Now that the iPhone SDK has been released and third-party apps are on the way, nobody is claiming that web apps are the future of phone software. I had an experience the other night that gives a good argument against them.
I was writing a blog entry in my hotel room, which means I was typing into Tumblr’s site using Safari on my iPhone. Now, I don’t know the intracacies of the...
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Talking sMac
I love my Mac… which makes me all the more sensitive to its faults. I often commend Apple for their attention to detail. Now I have a question.
As smart as OS X is, why is it that if I am watching a video for several minutes, my screensaver comes on? Sure, I specified a period of inactivity after which it should start, but why is playing a video considered to be an inactive state?
Why...
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DesignAyear
It was exactly one year ago today that I began this little blog. I’m happy to report that I’m getting what I wanted out of it, although it is taking more of my time than I anticipated. Although I claim to be writing as a method of furthering my own critical thinking, I must admit some satisfaction in the knowledge that DesignAday has gathered a small following. According to Google...
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Blog of the Week: Adaptive Path
I typically attempt to bring something new to the blogosphere on DesignAday, rather than simply pointing out posts on other blogs. I am, however, often inspired by the blogs I read. Yesterday’s post was inspired by Adaptive Path, and that’s far from the first time. I think there are two specific attributes that make Adaptive Path’s blog stand out from the crowd. First, it’s the blog of one of the...
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It’s Not Easy Being Green
Rachel Hinman made a very useful post to the Adaptive Path blog about a CHI presentation by Elaine Huang titled “Where do mobile phones go to die?”. A few months back, after cracking the screen on my Palm Treo and buying iPhones for my wife and me, I donated two old Motorola phones for victims of domestic violence—they were collecting them at my church. I’m still holding onto the Treo, however, as...
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Narrative II
Building on the Time Series, Tufte gives examples of a few distinct types of narrative visualizations. The illustrative example of the life cycle of a Japanese beetle, which shows not only the development of the beetle over time, but it’s relational activities and location, inspired one of my students to visualize a skateboarding move. Andrew’s visualization of a Backside Kickflip represents time...
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Grate Expectations
I’d never consider myself to be a great movie buff—I don’t see all that many movies. However, I do get really excited about a small number of movies, which elicit strange behaviors such as attending midnight premieres. These tend to be in the genres of fantasy and science fiction, including the likes of Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. For such movies, I not only enjoy the films themselves,...
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In the Details: Cruise Control
Seeing as how the new Mazda5 is my wife’s car, this weekend was the first time I had driven it for any significant distance—a couple hundred miles. It was therefore the first chance I’ve had to check out many of its features. I’ve always found it to be a bit odd that in all of my previous cars, there is a dash indicator to tell you that the cruise control is turned on, but none to tell you that it...
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Blog of the Week: I Love Typography
As an Interaction Designer who spends most of my time limited to the fonts that come standard with Windows XP (Let’s see, should I use Arial or Verdana today?), I relish the opportunity to play with type. I just don’t get mean. As a result, my typography chops probably aren’t what they should be. I was recently turned onto John D Boardley’s blog, I Love Typography, which does a good job of...
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Designer’s Toolbelt: xScope
I recently became aware of a great little utility from The Iconfactory called xScope. It’s comprised of seven tools that can be toggled on or off at any time, and which display overtop of all other windows and applications. Dimensions - This is my favorite. Anytime the mouse stops moving for a second, red lines extend from it in four directions measuring the distance to the next edge on the...
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A Promising Vision
Autodesk has posted a video showing the results of research into green building design through a process known as Building Information Modeling. Among other things, the scenario showcases a large, multi-touch display in a collaborative team session. The depicted user interface is very dynamic. While I expect it is completely mocked up, I’m curious as to how much detailed design has been...
