“…good design, such as that of a perfect logo, feels like haiku: made of reductions.”

» Textism » Single Serving » Just Five

[Attention conservation notice: long self-induldgent post composed late at night while tired discussing things I don’t know enough about. The usual then.]

Matt Webb’s at it again. Read about his experiments with conversational interfaces.

I think he’s spot-on with his points about the failings of Activebuddy, and the avoidance of trying to build a better penknife. I have a couple of complementary ideas around this area – but keep having doubts to the mainstream application of conversational interfaces.

These are tempered however when I think of the resurgence of popularity of what amounts to the command-line interface, especially amongst younger people, due to SMS and instant messenging.

Talked about this before. Dare me to think. Dare me play with language, symbols, understanding. Actually I’ll invent my own thanks. Stop mediating my experiences – I’d rather have them myself and then share them with peers, not watch them played back to me by you.I like it in here. Let’s play. Maybe it’s a revolution in the making.

The next passage where the is from Neal Stephenson’s “In the beginning was the command-line” – it’s very hard to quote out of context, so maybe better to go and read the whole thing here. It’s incredibly rewarding and aside from the interesting dissection of operating systems and culture, the points he makes on geopolitical and cultural issues are pretty thought-provoking too, right now.

“Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, except that it’s been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it’s the other way round.

The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we’ve evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.

Morlocks, who have the energy and intelligence to comprehend details, go out and master complex subjects and produce Disney-like Sensorial Interfaces so that Eloi can get the gist without having to strain their minds or endure boredom. Those Morlocks will go to India and tediously explore a hundred ruins, then come home and built sanitary bug-free versions: highlight films, as it were. This costs a lot, because Morlocks insist on good coffee and first-class airline tickets, but that’s no problem because Eloi like to be dazzled and will gladly pay for it all.”

Take a look at http://www.de-construct.com/ (careful – It’s Flash-only and it spawns a browser window that fills your whole screen) It got a great debate on the LondonUsability email group started, with the majority of correspondents slating the interface, and a vocal few defending it for trying something different.

I was one of those who gave a qualified defence, as IMHO, the site does try the right thing at the wrong time… >ahem< wrongly… Using a command-line as a primary interface to a marketing site seems a little daft, and the experience of using it can be frustrating, as the feedback mechanism operates on a controlled list of questions you can ask based upon the first let you type. Kind of like the worst exesses of predictive text features on cell-phones (something I don’t have time to write about, but is definately closely-knit with this thread of throught)

However, a small bouquet with all the brickbats to them for TRYING it. Does anyone know of more considered applications of this sort of way-new command-line-interface anywhere? If not, then why not. Information scientists and Info-science-focussed-IAs (!) with their knowledge of creating controlled vocabularies could really contribute to a new generation of easy and fun to use command-line interfaces…

Vive le retro-revolution!

Two week redesign. Three user-tests in two weeks. Two days design between each test. Conference with team at end of everyday – producer, coders, developers, library scientists – everyone.

I’m the designer. I’m going crazy and loosing sleep already. I have another week to go.

It was my idea. Shoot me if I suggest it again.

Which I may.

‘Cos it’s kind of fun.

Two free PDF downloads available from the Headmap collective.

Keywords:

• Psychogeography
• Ubiquitous computing
• Location-aware devices
• Digital/physical blur
• Chaosmagick & Technology

» Headmap.com: “…download and print headmap books in PDF format”

As described on BBC Radio 4‘s normal staid and highbrow Today program as the spectacle of “living robots sucking each other’s brains”, the Magna centre in South Yorkshire is staging an experiment in emergent, evolutionary behaviour in a simple robot ‘ecosystem’.

“The autonomous robots at CRUM (Creative Robotics Unit at Magna) have been designed live together in their own environment and operate without human intervention. The robot colony is divided into two distinct species: Predator & Prey.

To maintain their energy levels ie to stay alive – the Prey ‘graze’ under brilliant white light trees which they must first seek out using their solar sensors. Their batteries charge by positioning their solar panels in exactly the correct place. The Predators, on the other hand, need to hunt down the grazing prey to maintain their energy levels. The Predators have to capture the prey, immobilise them, and then extract their battery power with an energy-sucking fang that is stuck deep into the middle of the Prey.”

The Predators must feed to survive and they are constantly scanning their surroundings for unsuspecting Prey, while the Prey, constantly looking for their next energy boost must dodge the hungry Predators. The two are locked into a perpetual cat-and-mouse game to stay alive.”

» Magna: New from Easter 2002, Living Robot shows!

Hugh Pearman gets to try out the now-hopefully-fixed millennium bridge, and muses on the British approach to iterative design…

“We departed, happy in the knowledge that we had participated in a great British tradition. That’s the tradition that dictates that you’ve got to have a good idea, get it wrong first time out, then cook up an ingenious, Heath Robinson solution.”

» Gabion: Wobbly no more: testing Foster’s Millennium Bridge.

Javascript ASCII fractal dreams courtesy of The Kleber Conspiracy

And the sticklers, those who swim tirelessly against the riptide of Reductio Ad Absurdum… Like Jeff Raskin.

“As a curmudgeon, I am delighted to point out that the popular term, Information Design, is a misnomer. Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the representations of information. This is inherent in the nature of information, and it is important for designers to keep the concepts of information and meaning distinct.”

» TaskZ.com | ViewPointz by Jef Raskin
[Via the IAslash]

A stellar line-up talk ’emergence’ on the ‘studio360’ radio show, as reported by Dan ‘le homme’ Hill.

Hmm. He probably wasn’t the best guy to shed illuminating insights on what the most compelling 3g killer apps would be…

“We have single mode handsets with browsers and we are loading content. You can walk through the streets and call up the weather and download images,”

Seriously though, if they are as far ahead in terms of network roll-out as Candy states in the interview, 3g companies have to start setting expectations with the market of what it benefit it would actually bring to the populace, over and above talking and messenging, which they can already do perfectly well to their satisfaction.

The kinds of dumb commercials they run at the moment, where existing media paradigms are shoehorned into a mobile context dont cut it [watching a horror movie on a postage size screen on a bus? Dear me... Having said that, I’ve been known to watch DivX Buffy episodes on my vaio on a train…]

They have better, genuinely useful and valuable things to offer. They need to build understanding and demand. The competitior landscape is not what it was, so why not lose the paranoia and share some of the more seductive services they’ve all been working on in order to whet our appetite rather than trot out the same old tired cliches?

» FT.com | CREATIVE BUSINESS: Can Hutchison make pigs fly ?