I’m going to be writing a lot more about Dopplr’s design over at blog.dopplr.com.
Today I wrote about the colour-coding we use for cities and places, and the use of copywriting as a key component of the user-interface.
Dare to be Digital at The London Games Festival
The Dare to be Digital event that I raved about back in August is going to be showcased at the London Games Festival, with the games available for free download if you take your laptop along to the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane.
My favourites – ClimbActic (Teaser Trailer above) and H20 will be on show, and you can also download them from the Dare to be Digital website, if you register.
Ticket for Intersections07
I’m not able to make Intersections07 in Newcastle next week, and need to sell my ticket.
I couldn’t find any cancellation policy or waiting-list information on the website – not exactly exemplary service design, Intersections-people…
It’s sold out, so any takers? Mail matt [at] blackbeltjones.com
[UPDATE] Someone from the Design Council got in touch and offered to refund the ticket in order to give it to someone on their waiting list. Sorted!
McNuggets
I've just folded under peer-pressure and started watching The Wire. I think this is where I decided I was "in all the way".
This particular clip also speaks directly to my current predicament…
Key 23
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That happened
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Went to the second (my first) This Happened event on Tuesday 2nd October at Rich Mix, in East London.
They filled a much bigger venue than the first one (a room above the Griffin pub) with both London’s interaction/product design crossover-crowd, and some visiting luminaries as a result of the FOWA halo-effect.
Great talks included Karsten ‘Toxi‘ Schmidt on the epic data-guzzling interactive table that Moving Brands built for London College of Fashion, and Crispin Jones on crackling form taking us through the evolution of his ‘Tengu’ toy.
What I walked away from the event from though was the possible connection between the last three talks.
Not sure if this was deliberate on the part of the curators, but Dee Halligan’s talk on developing The Science of Spying exhibition (something I’ve had an insider view of through Foe’s work on that, and probably the best overview of it online is by Regine) connected with Rory Hamilton‘s presentation of the service design interventions Live|Work staged in The Baltic gallery, and Massimo Banzi‘s guided tour of the Arduino sketching-in-hardware revolution dovetailed nicely to me.
That is – centred around Rory’s lovely tales of getting the staff of the Baltic to re-engineer their environment (the ‘service safari’ he took them on was wonderful – especially the way he hacked a special cover full of guidance and prompts for disposable cameras to take with them) and the service they provide through rapid prototyping (I really loved his phrase: “Creating service-envy”), and thinking about Science Of’s need to create many interactive installations in one environment – wouldn’t there be a great application there of ‘sketching in hardware’ in rapidly developing fun and playful things for public spaces, that visitors could perhaps even participate in, for Arduino?
This happened / Should happen
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My Cass Arts hack as a response to the risible “art is my hustle” stuff:
More and more I’m getting the feeling it’s time to pick a side.
The Big Draw
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Iain wrote about ‘Courses I’d love to do’, and one of them was:
“Doodling for success – regardless of how good your drawing skills everyone can doodle, learn how to harness your inner doodler to illustrate any idea that might be lurking in your brain so that people immediately get your point.”
Wandering home from Spitalfields this evening I found this banner… looks like just the sort of thing he’s looking for… It’s part of the wonderfully-named “Campaign for Drawing” which runs for the month of October.
Looking forward to joining in if I can…
An idle thought for making work for idle hands
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After reading Jane’s post about using time people spend fiddling with Facebook for solving problems with other (gaming) networks, I wondered whether there were other things you could do with all those idle hands.
What about Folding@home or Mechanical Turk tasks, as shown rather sketchily above.
Back in May, referring to Sony’s announcment that the folding@home client would be installed on the PS3, Alice wrote about “Games that do good”
“Are there games or game mechanics that could be used to fund-raise or awareness-raise?”
My quick mock up is not all that enticing or interesting, though touches like sparklines, league-tables and scoring could rapidly turn such things into more of a playful and engaging activity, turning all those idle hands to good causes.
Know of anything like this going on?
Petafloptimism 