Author: Timo

Branding with badges

Many of the early ideas were fairly conceptual: Not a place or a thing, but an idea tied to the use of Foursquare itself (“10 check-ins”) or the kind of real-world social behavior the service was attempting to leverage (checking into the same place three times in one week, or checking in with two people of the opposite sex). The round shape and circular border directly referenced Boy Scouts merit badges. Beyond that, Sheibley says the relevant design context wasn’t logos, it was the familiar instructional iconography meant to signal ideas without words: “How do you communicate to people in an airport, who don’t speak the same language, where the bathroom is?”

Summify – Rob Walker: On Slate: Branding with badges

Midnight Run

My favourite movie of all time.

A film with one compelling relationship at its center might not survive the bombardments of the action formula its script demands, and that’s another reason “Midnight Run” is so special. There are at least half a dozen relationships throughout the film surrounding Grodin and De Niro that ring true in their entirety. A phone call between an angry mob boss and his bumbling enforcer, for example, could very easily be made into a transitional scene devoid of intrinsic value, but this film does something different on those occasions: it utilizes shards of moments as points of insight and endows them with authenticity largely nonessential to the plot.

Via Overlooked Movie Monday: Midnight Run » Scene-Stealers.

Stealthie!

Nice work from Richard Hogg: Hi I’m Stealthie!

Connecting the digital world with print

A rare piece of writing from Durrell Bishop:

What if there was a generic tool to link the digital and the physical worlds? A way to touch an object, to select and see its digital augmentation? It would just send a message via your chosen device: laptop, mobile, home wifi et al. The equivalent of a digital finger. Passive objects would act as physical buttons to the digital world. All that these objects would require is that we perceive their purpose, and see how to act on them. We would need to have an accessible tool to make our selection, and carry out the link between the two worlds.

Read the whole thing: Connecting the digital world with print.

Science Fiction Film as Design Scenario Exercise for Psychological Habitability

“They deliver potentially fundamental insights (Schneider, 2005) into the interaction between humans and the constructed environment surrounding them, including the mundance aspects of everyday routine (Carroll, 2000), even the potential subversion of the system or setting through its agents (Blythe & Wright, 2006). The user is advanced into a character or specific persona placed in fictional but feasible settings (Nielsen, 2002). The representation of scenarios through prototypes, use of storyboards, video, rapid prototyping tools and stories, annotated sketches, cartoons, photographs, role-playing or live dramatization (Suri & Marsh, 2000), allows the vision conveyed through the scenario to be opened up to critique (Carroll, 2000).”

“Design, here, does not assume the traditional role of problem-solving, but acts as a critical agent in the enquiry about real human needs and values by evoking reflection (Carroll, 1995) and stimulating debate amongst designers, industry and the public (Dunne & Raby, 2001). This critical strand in design, termed speculative design, critical design or design fiction, has emerged as a field in its own right and is establishing itself with the main markers of a new discipline, such as seminal publications (Dunne, 2005; Antonelli, 2008), exhibitions and conferences.”

Science Fiction Film as Design Scenario Exercise for Psychological Habitability: Production Designs 1955-2009

A phone to save us from our screens?

Microsoft has two new ads, anticipating their upcoming Windows Phone 7 launch. The first is an almost post-apocalyptic vision of humanity stuck with their heads in their mobile devices:

Here’s David Webster, chief strategy officer in Microsoft’s central marketing group, explaining their anti-screen strategy:

“Our sentiment was that if we could have an insight to drive the campaign that flipped the category on its head, then all the dollars that other people are spending glorifying becoming lost in your screen or melding with your phone are actually making our point for us.”

The problem of glowing rectangles is a subject close to my heart, and Matt Jones has been bothered by the increase in mobile glowing attention-wells.

I think Microsoft & Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s advertising strategy stands out in a world full of slick floaty media. The only problem is that without any strategy towards tangible interaction, I’m not sure the ’tiles’ interaction concept is strong enough to actually take people’s attention out of the glass.

The Longest Photographic Exposures

The Longest Photographic Exposures in History.

Olars: physical toy inspired by karl sims evolved creatures

A lovely piece of work by Lars M. Vedeler and Ola Vågsholm from the Tangible Interactions course at The Oslo School of Architecture & Design:

Olars is an electronic interactive toy inspired by Karl Sims’ evolved virtual creatures. Having thousands of varieties in movement and behaviour by attaching different geometrical limbs, modifying the angle of these, twisting the body itself, and by adjusting the deflection of the motorised joints, results in both familiar and strange motion patterns.

Olars on Vimeo

Graphical data fiction

Sumedecina and Graphical data fiction.

Chronocyclegraph of bricklaying

By Frank Gilbreth (1912)

Via lecture 4: traces at light matters.