OrgOrgChart – the evolution of a company’s structure over time, visualized.
The OrgOrgChart (Organic Organization Chart) project looks at the evolution of a company's structure over time. A snapshot of the Autodesk organizational hierarchy was taken each day between May 2007 and June 2011, a span of 1498 days.
Each day the entire hierarchy of the company is constructed as a tree with each employee represented by a circle, and a line connecting each employee with his or her manager. Larger circles represent managers with more employees working under them. The tree is then laid out using a force-directed layout algorithm.
From day to day, there are three types of changes that are possible:
- Employees join the company
- Employees leave the company
- Employees change managers
Read more here
How Bad Online Shopping Experiences Look Like In Real Life
Google Analytics has produced a trio of excellent videos to help E-commerce sites improve their customer service by pointing out what not to do.
By putting the common mistakes and bad practices that online merchants make into a real life shop, the videos show how alienating bad user experience design and marketing can be for potential customers by ruining the experience of shopping online.
For instance, one of the videos highlights how frustrating it can be to check out online when there are too many security measures and hidden costs for customers to get through.
via Google Analytics
By putting the common mistakes and bad practices that online merchants make into a real life shop, the videos show how alienating bad user experience design and marketing can be for potential customers by ruining the experience of shopping online.
For instance, one of the videos highlights how frustrating it can be to check out online when there are too many security measures and hidden costs for customers to get through.
via Google Analytics
How long different animals live, in vintage ISOTYPE infographic. Austrian sociologist, philosopher, and curator Otto Neurath, who was born 130 years ago today, and his wife Marie pioneered the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education in the 1930s, laying the foundation for modern infographics.
via the incredible Brain Pickings
via the incredible Brain Pickings
French reporter fails with touch screen
LCN News anchor fumbles with touch screen timeline, The reporter was trying to present a timeline of the conflict in Gaza when things went pear-shaped unruly graphics slipped out of view, expanded wildly and vanished from the screen.
Virtual Photo Walks
Share what you see with your camera with others in real time. Excellent evolution from taking video call technology and extending it to a virtual / augmented reality for those who can't get outside. This idea will only get better over the years as the technology improves.
Photographer John Butterill discovered a way to share his photo walks through Google+ Hangouts. Almost immediately photographers around the world began volunteering to share their view of the world with people whose mobility was limited.
Photographer John Butterill discovered a way to share his photo walks through Google+ Hangouts. Almost immediately photographers around the world began volunteering to share their view of the world with people whose mobility was limited.
A map of the universe
A map of the universe by René Descartes from Principia philosophiae, 1644, one of many fascinating depictions in the visual history of mapping the cosmos.
Read more over on Brain Pickings.
In politics, the era of big data has arrived
This is a really interesting article from Time about the quantitative data analysis that was carried out to ensure that Obama won the 2012 election.
It explores a previously secret department of Obama's campaign team that was tasked with number crunching on a phenomenal scale. By first merging all the data sets the campaign team had on Obama's voters (a task which took 18 months) they were then able to create models of Obama's potential voters, see what type of person was likely to donate to the campaign, assess when was the best time to screen campaign ads on the television, and even simulate the election night to see where they had to spend their budget to increase their chances.
On Nov. 4, a group of senior campaign advisers agreed to describe their cutting-edge efforts with TIME on the condition that they not be named and that the information not be published until after the winner was declared. What they revealed as they pulled back the curtain was a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.
Read the whole article here: http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/
It explores a previously secret department of Obama's campaign team that was tasked with number crunching on a phenomenal scale. By first merging all the data sets the campaign team had on Obama's voters (a task which took 18 months) they were then able to create models of Obama's potential voters, see what type of person was likely to donate to the campaign, assess when was the best time to screen campaign ads on the television, and even simulate the election night to see where they had to spend their budget to increase their chances.
On Nov. 4, a group of senior campaign advisers agreed to describe their cutting-edge efforts with TIME on the condition that they not be named and that the information not be published until after the winner was declared. What they revealed as they pulled back the curtain was a massive data effort that helped Obama raise $1 billion, remade the process of targeting TV ads and created detailed models of swing-state voters that could be used to increase the effectiveness of everything from phone calls and door knocks to direct mailings and social media.
Read the whole article here: http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/
Maps before maps
Awesome collection of medieval maps from the 11th to the 14th centuries. Some of them are geographic, but most of them are more like rough sketches of how the individual saw the area the image represents.
Check out more here.
Getting to know Windows 8
With the launch of Windows 8 also comes two very interesting "usability testing" videos.
The first is from the New York Times and features some very heavy handed facilitation of the testing sessions (check it out at 22 seconds in where the facilitator is clearly telling the participant what to click on. Obviously, lurking behind the participant, pointing at things to click on, and generally leading the user is not a good way of gathering useful insights about a new interface. As a promotional piece, the video is great but some of the techniques used in the sessions made me laugh.
The New York Times invited five computer users to try their hands at navigating Microsoft’s new tablet-friendly redesign.
Next up is a bizarre piece of video from Three Sheets Research which looks at how users handle new interfaces when drunk.
This video is part of a set of web usability tests, focused on drinking customers, conducted by Three Sheets Market Research. Following the release of Windows 8, we wasted no time in trying out Microsoft's new operating system on a drunken subject. Jennifer, a 40-year-old mother of 2, is an active consumer of PCs, software and alcohol. She agreed to sit down with us the afternoon following the product's launch to share her thoughts on Windows 8, all while imbibing several rounds of her favorite tequila.
The first impressions of a new interface are crucial and the subtle hints provided by the user experience are designed to ease the user in by introducing the fundamental interactions and then building the experience up around them. Providing users with prompts should only be done if the task they are carrying out has been totally failed and there are no new insights being captured. Also, introducing a user to a new interface when they're drunk is totally useless as they might as well start again when sober.
Any new operating system will be difficult for a first time user, whether drunk, sober or just a bit slow. It is possible Jennifer will eventually learn how to use the software. But it is doubtful that, even the morning after, she'll ever fully recover from her initial impression of Windows 8 as confusing and unwelcoming.
Think about a time when you might have been drunk and first turned on a new mobile phone, played a new video game, or tried to buy a ticket from a ticket machine that you'd not used before. Unless you were incredibly persistant the experience will have been written off and you would have mentally started afresh the next day. The initial experience is considered null and any negative impressions should be considered alongside the fact that you weren't in "learning mode". Unless of course, the interface was designed to be used whilst drunk as is the case with SingStar which was usability tested on groups of drunk people before launch to see if it was simple enough to use after an night out - which was the exact scenario that Sony Computer Entertainment wanted their users to be in..
The first is from the New York Times and features some very heavy handed facilitation of the testing sessions (check it out at 22 seconds in where the facilitator is clearly telling the participant what to click on. Obviously, lurking behind the participant, pointing at things to click on, and generally leading the user is not a good way of gathering useful insights about a new interface. As a promotional piece, the video is great but some of the techniques used in the sessions made me laugh.
The New York Times invited five computer users to try their hands at navigating Microsoft’s new tablet-friendly redesign.
Next up is a bizarre piece of video from Three Sheets Research which looks at how users handle new interfaces when drunk.
This video is part of a set of web usability tests, focused on drinking customers, conducted by Three Sheets Market Research. Following the release of Windows 8, we wasted no time in trying out Microsoft's new operating system on a drunken subject. Jennifer, a 40-year-old mother of 2, is an active consumer of PCs, software and alcohol. She agreed to sit down with us the afternoon following the product's launch to share her thoughts on Windows 8, all while imbibing several rounds of her favorite tequila.
The first impressions of a new interface are crucial and the subtle hints provided by the user experience are designed to ease the user in by introducing the fundamental interactions and then building the experience up around them. Providing users with prompts should only be done if the task they are carrying out has been totally failed and there are no new insights being captured. Also, introducing a user to a new interface when they're drunk is totally useless as they might as well start again when sober.
Any new operating system will be difficult for a first time user, whether drunk, sober or just a bit slow. It is possible Jennifer will eventually learn how to use the software. But it is doubtful that, even the morning after, she'll ever fully recover from her initial impression of Windows 8 as confusing and unwelcoming.
Think about a time when you might have been drunk and first turned on a new mobile phone, played a new video game, or tried to buy a ticket from a ticket machine that you'd not used before. Unless you were incredibly persistant the experience will have been written off and you would have mentally started afresh the next day. The initial experience is considered null and any negative impressions should be considered alongside the fact that you weren't in "learning mode". Unless of course, the interface was designed to be used whilst drunk as is the case with SingStar which was usability tested on groups of drunk people before launch to see if it was simple enough to use after an night out - which was the exact scenario that Sony Computer Entertainment wanted their users to be in..
Rory Sutherland's thoughts and observations
Fantastic animation by Animade which visualises some of Rory Sutherland's (Vice Chairman, OgilvyGroup UK) thoughts and observations. He talks about the ways people's patience is managed when having to wait for a service - it has been found that the inclusion of a timer will greatly reduce a person's frustration if they know exactly how long they have to wait.
SimCity
This gameplay video for the new SimCity game has gotten me really excited. As a big fan of the initial series, this video shows how much cooler the simulation of running a city can look with the added layer of sick graphics over the top of a realistic gameplay model.
Ultimately you can do whatever you want, focus on growing your population, increasing wealth or even build a city that looks like your hometown. Whatever your motivation, you have to the power to experiment with a number of different strategies.
How you choose to play will influence your city, the neighbouring cities and the lives of all the Sims across the region.
Ultimately you can do whatever you want, focus on growing your population, increasing wealth or even build a city that looks like your hometown. Whatever your motivation, you have to the power to experiment with a number of different strategies.
How you choose to play will influence your city, the neighbouring cities and the lives of all the Sims across the region.
Digital library in Bucharest metro station
This is an idea that has been seen on the Bucharest metro - as you wait for your train use your mobile to scan a book from the bookcase printed on the walls and then you'll have something to read on your journey. Fantastic!
via Reddit
via Reddit
Usability testing with DMX
"What is a Google?" asks rapper DMX as he is gently introduced to the web on a laptop.
Sight
Sight is an interested short film by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo that is set in the near future and explores a type of augmented reality that is overlaid onto everything people do. From recreation, to cooking, to social interaction, everything has levels and tips on how to be better.
This concept of overlaying information on your sight was also explored in this short clip by Keiichi Matsuda.
The effect on the character's eyes reminds me of "The entire history of you" episode from Charlie Brooker's 'Black Mirror" television series on Channel 4.
Sight from Sight Systems on Vimeo.
This concept of overlaying information on your sight was also explored in this short clip by Keiichi Matsuda.
The effect on the character's eyes reminds me of "The entire history of you" episode from Charlie Brooker's 'Black Mirror" television series on Channel 4.
21 Balançoires (21 Swings)
21 Swings, an exercise in musical cooperation.
Every spring, an interactive installation takes over a high-traffic area in Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles and sets a collective ritual. The installation offers a fresh look at the idea of cooperation, the notion that we can achieve more together than separately.
The result is a giant instrument made of 21 musical swings; each swing in motion triggers different notes, all the swings together compose a piece, but some sounds only emerge from cooperation.
The project stimulates ownership of the public space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre.
Every spring, an interactive installation takes over a high-traffic area in Montréal’s Quartier des spectacles and sets a collective ritual. The installation offers a fresh look at the idea of cooperation, the notion that we can achieve more together than separately.
The result is a giant instrument made of 21 musical swings; each swing in motion triggers different notes, all the swings together compose a piece, but some sounds only emerge from cooperation.
The project stimulates ownership of the public space, bringing together people of all ages and backgrounds, and creating a place for playing and hanging out in the middle of the city centre.
21 Balançoires (21 Swings) from Daily Tous Les Jours on Vimeo.
StreetPong
Ever wondered how you could be putting your time spent waiting at a pedestrian crossing for the lights to change to better use? Well, check out StreetPong which puts strangers together in a brief game of pong across the road from each other until the traffic lights change!
STREETPONG from HAWK Hildesheim on Vimeo.
Augmented Reality on the iPad.
Using an iPad, Inition have created an Augmented reality platform that allows you to superimpose incredible content. From static pictures and shapes to fully animated characters.... to an entire city!! Complete 360 perspective, ridiculous detail on the zoom and content that you can customise as you watch it.
Interactive Plant Technology
Botanicus Interacticus is a technology for designing highly expressive interactive plants, both living and artificial. Driven by the rapid fusion of computing and living spaces, we take interaction from computing devices and places it in the physical world using livings plants as an interactive medium.
Botanicus Interacticus has a number of unique properties. This instrumentation of living plants is simple, non-invasive, and does not damage the plants: it requires only a single wire placed anywhere in the plant soil. Botanicus Interacticus allows for rich and expressive interaction with plants. It allows to use such gestures as sliding fingers on the stem of the orchid, detecting touch and grasp location, tracking proximity between human and a plant, and estimating the amount of touch contact, among others.
In Botanicus Interacticus we also deconstruct the electrical properties of plants and replicate them using standard electrical components. This allows the design of a broad variety of biologically inspired artificial plants that behave nearly the same as their biological counterparts. From the point of view of our technology there is no difference between real and artificial.
Botanicus Interacticus technology can be used to design highly interactive responsive environments based on plants, developing new forms of organic, living interaction devices as well as creating organic ambient and pervasive interfaces.
Read more here http://www.disneyresearch.com/research/projects/hci_botanicus_drp.htm
Botanicus Interacticus has a number of unique properties. This instrumentation of living plants is simple, non-invasive, and does not damage the plants: it requires only a single wire placed anywhere in the plant soil. Botanicus Interacticus allows for rich and expressive interaction with plants. It allows to use such gestures as sliding fingers on the stem of the orchid, detecting touch and grasp location, tracking proximity between human and a plant, and estimating the amount of touch contact, among others.
In Botanicus Interacticus we also deconstruct the electrical properties of plants and replicate them using standard electrical components. This allows the design of a broad variety of biologically inspired artificial plants that behave nearly the same as their biological counterparts. From the point of view of our technology there is no difference between real and artificial.
Botanicus Interacticus technology can be used to design highly interactive responsive environments based on plants, developing new forms of organic, living interaction devices as well as creating organic ambient and pervasive interfaces.
Read more here http://www.disneyresearch.com/research/projects/hci_botanicus_drp.htm
The Big Brother Pizza Shop
Fictitious pizza shop of the future - Big Brother infringes your privacy while ordering a pizza.
Buurbecue
Lovely idea from Dutch design company Natwerk, the Buurbecue plays on the Dutch word "buur" which means "neighbour" and is a great way of enjoying cooking outside with the people you live next to.
"Breaking down social walls while enjoying the most popular outdoor activity, because this summer we're doubling the fun. "
"Breaking down social walls while enjoying the most popular outdoor activity, because this summer we're doubling the fun. "
New York City Subway Stairs
Dean Peterson's local subway station has something unique about it. One of the steps on the stairs leading out of the station is fractionally larger than the others which causes a lot of people to trip up on it.
VW - The Original Click
VW Auto parts have found an innovative way to use YouTube to get people thinking that there’s something wrong with alternative part suppliers; that imitations are poor quality.
Advertising people on advertising
Great series of shorts on what advertising people think about advertising. 1/3 of agency workers plan on leaving this year, and these are a series of promos by Deutsch LA's talk at Cannes this year on Ending the Agency Talent Rotisserie.
What creatives think
What producers think
What account people think
What creatives think
What producers think
What account people think
Ford Keyfree Login
Get rid of the problem of remembering all your different passwords with Ford's Keyfree login software. Great concept - place your smartphone near your computer to automatically log in to your accounts.
Ford Keyfree Login from Ogilvy Paris on Vimeo.
Dynamic Physical Buttons on Touch Screens : Tactus Technology
World's first dynamic deformable tactile surface capable of creating dynamic physical buttons that users can actually see and feel in advance of entering data into the device.
Live Augmented Reality-National Geographic
Fantastic execution of augmented reality by London-based agency, Appshaker.
Out of the box Samsung
This is a great idea! "Out of the Box" is a friendly user manual for Samsung smart phones by Vitamins Design London, Royal College of Arts Helen Hamyln Center and Samsung Design Europe.
Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA
This is a brilliant video about the growing 'problem' of iPhone users who are shooting video vertically. Agreed, it doesn't look good, but I never knew it was such a big problem until I watched this...
MaKey MaKey
MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for everyone.
Have you ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World, and start inventing The Future.
Have you ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to Your World, and start inventing The Future.
80's technology
These two images made me laugh, the first for the obvious (I'm going to start using them as post-it notes from now on!)
This one made me think: can it really only have taken 20 years for all of this technology to fit on one device? What's more, on a device that is so affordable that it is more common to own one than not own one.
This one made me think: can it really only have taken 20 years for all of this technology to fit on one device? What's more, on a device that is so affordable that it is more common to own one than not own one.
How to Rank #1 on Google - By Matt Cutts
Funny mash up video of Matt Cutts giving advice on how to rank number 1 on Google search.
Acquiring and Monetizing Mobile Users
Really interesting talk by Nick Bhardwaj on Acquiring and Monetizing Mobile Users. He discusses the importance of timing when it comes to finding the correct balance between making money and establishing a solid user base.
Acquiring users and monetizing an application can be very difficult with so many companies and such little information. How does a developer find networks who are looking to build a partnership rather than make a quick buck? What is the right price point a studio should be acquiring users at?
Nick will explore key questions and stipulations gaming studios should be asking for when signing contracts with mobile ad networks, review current offerings and platforms in the space, and provide insight on how NaturalMotion has developed their own user acquisition and monetization channels.
Acquiring users and monetizing an application can be very difficult with so many companies and such little information. How does a developer find networks who are looking to build a partnership rather than make a quick buck? What is the right price point a studio should be acquiring users at?
Nick will explore key questions and stipulations gaming studios should be asking for when signing contracts with mobile ad networks, review current offerings and platforms in the space, and provide insight on how NaturalMotion has developed their own user acquisition and monetization channels.
Revolutionary User Interfaces
The human computer interface helps to define computing at any one time. As computers have become more mainstream the interfaces have become more intimate. This is the journey of computer technology and how it has come to touch all of our lives.
Now this is really cool; an interactive timeline that describes the milestones in human computer interaction over the years.
Check it out here - http://timeline.verite.co/examples/user-interface/
Google's Project Glass
We believe technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't.
A team within our Google[x] group started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.
Follow along with us at http://g.co/projectglass as we share some of our ideas and stories. We'd love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?
The prototype version Google has been demonstrating looks like a very polished and well-designed pair of wrap-around glasses with a clear display that sits above the eye. The glasses can stream information to the lenses and allow the wearer to send and receive messages through voice commands. There is also a built-in camera to record video and take pictures.
Love this fan-made video which shows what it could be like playing Battlefield.
Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet & PC
Sci-fi author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke predicted in this 1974 TV interview that in 2001, regular people would have personal computers that communicate and retrieve information using a system that sounds rather like the Internet.
Wind map
An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.
This map shows you the wind flowing over the US in real time.
Check it out here http://hint.fm/wind/
How to Avoid Idea Plateaus
Do you come up with an idea, spend an evening / a week / a month working on it and then let it stop, something else get in the way of finishing that idea? Human nature is to allow the brain to reward ourselves for the creation of an idea only to not follow it through because it is easier to simply come up with a new idea.
"The project plateau is littered with the carcases of dead ideas that have never happened. What do we do? We just generate a new idea. We do it again and again and again. What we continue to do is we escape this project plateau with a new idea, and instantaneously we return to this high of excitement, this willingness to execute. And this is why there are more half-written novels in the world than there are novels.” ~ Scott Belsky
Check out Scott's book, Making Ideas Happen, it draws on years of research and interviews and is an excellent guide to improving your productivity.
"The project plateau is littered with the carcases of dead ideas that have never happened. What do we do? We just generate a new idea. We do it again and again and again. What we continue to do is we escape this project plateau with a new idea, and instantaneously we return to this high of excitement, this willingness to execute. And this is why there are more half-written novels in the world than there are novels.” ~ Scott Belsky
Check out Scott's book, Making Ideas Happen, it draws on years of research and interviews and is an excellent guide to improving your productivity.
Perpetual Ocean
Using a computational model called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2), the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio visualizes surface currents around the world.
Read more here.
Screenshots of despair
Love this tumblr dedicated to only the most depressing messages experienced when using online services.
http://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com
http://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com
Turning pretty girls ugly
This is interesting. These faces have not been altered in any way.
It's a new scientific finding called the "Flashed Face Distortion Effect".
When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems to become a caricature of itself and some faces appear highly deformed, even grotesque. The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (eg if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large). This new method of image presentation, based on alignment and speed, could provide a useful tool for investigating contrastive distortion effects and face adaptation.
Read more about it here
and here
Thoughts on social networks
It was the start of 2007 and I had just moved to London to start my Masters in Interactive Media when I signed up to MySpace. I was a fairly late adopter of social media since I favoured (and still do) using the mobile phone when I want to speak to my friends. It immediately annoyed me that people stopped using their mobiles when they realised that they could message each other through MySpace for free. It got to a point where some friends would only contact me on MySpace and if I didn’t check it, I would miss things. For about five months, I enjoyed using MySpace and spent time crafting my page using html to make sure that I was completely happy with it. I quickly became aware of how important it is to edit your ‘details’ to ensure that you present yourself properly to your friends online. The popular thing to do was to fill in all sorts of ridiculous information about yourself such as your favourite bands and who were your ‘top friends’. This was awkward and put quite a lot of pressure on me and my friends to appear to be cool. A little too much concern was given to editing and re-editing this information, and it was great fun to edit someone else’s entire page when you discovered that they’d forgotten to sign themselves out.
Then, one day I saw a friend logging out of his MySpace and then logging in to his Facebook account. I asked what it was all about and he said, “it’s like MySpace but better. Things don’t look as good, but it’s easier to use’. I doubted this, and was immediately against the idea of having to re-enter all of my carefully selected information about myself. My friend told me, “trust me, once you’re on Facebook, you’ll forget all about MySpace”. For another two months I resisted as more and more of my friends started signing up to Facebook. I even deleted my MySpace account as I was fed up with people relying on it to get in contact with me. Then, one Monday in July 2007 I crumbled and signed up to Facebook. Immediately, I wasn’t impressed. It was confusing and felt incredibly sterile; there were no custom pages, or music playing on people’s ‘walls’. However, after a month of using it, I had made ‘friends’ with almost everyone I have said more than five words to in the last twenty years. I then was shocked to discover that photos of me were popping up and that everyone could see them. Censoring myself became a daily chore as I untagged myself from entire albums of nights out that my friends were enthusiastically uploading.
This is when I began to understand the allure of the site; it’s all about you, the user. You are encouraged to interact under the premise that the more you put in, the more you get out of it. Logging in becomes an exciting activity as you eagerly anticipate seeing just how many people have interacted with you in some way (tagging, poking, sharing a link, sending you a message). Herein lies the problem – Facebook’s users become hooked on all the little features available to them and it soon becomes part of the routine’ to check in on your account and see what’s new. This sucks as it is siphoning off the time that should be spent catching up with someone in real life. I would rather spend one evening a week catching up with an old friend than spending that time flipping through Facebook to see how many people have ‘liked’ my link of a dog running into a wall. Facebook has become a serious problem because too many people take it too seriously; for example, a friend of mine became incredibly agitated recently when I didn’t bother responding to their invitation to birthday drinks, I figured I would just turn up to it, and when I did, I was confronted with “I didn’t expect to see you here because you didn’t reply to my event invitation on old FaceyB”. Ridiculous.
Recently I went on a Facebook friend ‘cull’ and decided that I’d had enough of people that I spoke to one afternoon when I was sixteen being able to track my every movement through my wall. I now only have ‘friends’ on Facebook that I speak to regularly in the real world, and am very careful to not add anyone I work with. I’ve worked it out: keep your friends on Facebook, and your colleagues on Linked In and everyone else (including family) can email me.
Then, one day I saw a friend logging out of his MySpace and then logging in to his Facebook account. I asked what it was all about and he said, “it’s like MySpace but better. Things don’t look as good, but it’s easier to use’. I doubted this, and was immediately against the idea of having to re-enter all of my carefully selected information about myself. My friend told me, “trust me, once you’re on Facebook, you’ll forget all about MySpace”. For another two months I resisted as more and more of my friends started signing up to Facebook. I even deleted my MySpace account as I was fed up with people relying on it to get in contact with me. Then, one Monday in July 2007 I crumbled and signed up to Facebook. Immediately, I wasn’t impressed. It was confusing and felt incredibly sterile; there were no custom pages, or music playing on people’s ‘walls’. However, after a month of using it, I had made ‘friends’ with almost everyone I have said more than five words to in the last twenty years. I then was shocked to discover that photos of me were popping up and that everyone could see them. Censoring myself became a daily chore as I untagged myself from entire albums of nights out that my friends were enthusiastically uploading.
This is when I began to understand the allure of the site; it’s all about you, the user. You are encouraged to interact under the premise that the more you put in, the more you get out of it. Logging in becomes an exciting activity as you eagerly anticipate seeing just how many people have interacted with you in some way (tagging, poking, sharing a link, sending you a message). Herein lies the problem – Facebook’s users become hooked on all the little features available to them and it soon becomes part of the routine’ to check in on your account and see what’s new. This sucks as it is siphoning off the time that should be spent catching up with someone in real life. I would rather spend one evening a week catching up with an old friend than spending that time flipping through Facebook to see how many people have ‘liked’ my link of a dog running into a wall. Facebook has become a serious problem because too many people take it too seriously; for example, a friend of mine became incredibly agitated recently when I didn’t bother responding to their invitation to birthday drinks, I figured I would just turn up to it, and when I did, I was confronted with “I didn’t expect to see you here because you didn’t reply to my event invitation on old FaceyB”. Ridiculous.
Recently I went on a Facebook friend ‘cull’ and decided that I’d had enough of people that I spoke to one afternoon when I was sixteen being able to track my every movement through my wall. I now only have ‘friends’ on Facebook that I speak to regularly in the real world, and am very careful to not add anyone I work with. I’ve worked it out: keep your friends on Facebook, and your colleagues on Linked In and everyone else (including family) can email me.
Cell Lets You See Your Own Digital Aura
Cell is a project about online identity. It began as a conversation about how people represent themselves on the Internet. "The idea of the 'digital aura’ became central to the project-a cloud of information that is associated with us, our virtual double," he says. When visitors enter a room rigged up with Cell, keywords float out of the air and attach themselves to an individual. They follow you around as you move through the area, like a virtual mirror of your reputation.
Read more over at FastCodeDesign
Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes
Great new website called Pictures of People Scanning QR-codes.
No posts yet.
http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/
and this is just as entertaining wtfrqrcodes
Behind the Screen Overlay Interactions
Behind the Screen Overlay Interactions: Behind-the-screen interaction with a transparent OLED with view-dependent, depth-corrected gaze.
A project by Jinha Lee and Cati Boulanger, former intern and researcher respectively, at Microsoft Applied Sciences would change all that. They’re using a special transparent OLED screen from Samsung and a series of sensors, along with custom software that reshuffles the keyboard to the back of the screen. So you can work with your hands inside the virtual desktop.
Kevin Allocca: Why videos go viral
Kevin Allocca is YouTube's trends manager, and he has deep thoughts about silly web video. In this talk from TEDYouth, he shares the 4 reasons a video goes viral.
Live Webcast Fail
This epic fail on a live webcast is brilliant. Reminiscent of the movie Inception, the host of this webcast tries to click to see a live stream of himself running the webcast..
Fresh Impressions on Brandmarks (from a 5-year-old)
A fantastically fresh look at brand logos from a 5 year old.
Dark Patterns: User Interfaces Designed to Trick People
Normally when you think of "bad design", you think of laziness or mistakes. These are known as design anti-patterns. Dark Patterns are different – they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind.
Read more over at Dark Patterns
Dark Patterns: User Interfaces Designed to Trick People (Presented at UX Brighton 2010)
View another webinar from Harry Brignull
Read more over at Dark Patterns
Social media overkill vs smart televisions
This morning, I read the presentation below on how damaging it will be to our mental processes if the filter on information fails. As we hurtle along through life in the digital age, constantly increasing the amount of data we produce and store, reducing our attention spans, and becoming addicted to consuming snack-sized pieces of information, there are few people who are considering the negative impact this may be having on our overall enjoyment of our spare time.
Charlie Brooker has provided some hilarious, but as always, poignant commentary on this phenomenon in the form of a clip from his annual review of current affairs.
Below is a fantastic example of how UX designers at the forefront of technology and the immersive television experience are planning for users to experience entertainment.
Read more about this here http://lab.syzygy.de/
The Dark Side of Social Media 2012
View more presentations from Sander Duivestein
Charlie Brooker has provided some hilarious, but as always, poignant commentary on this phenomenon in the form of a clip from his annual review of current affairs.
Below is a fantastic example of how UX designers at the forefront of technology and the immersive television experience are planning for users to experience entertainment.
GOAB. A TV Experience Concept from SYZYGY on Vimeo.
Read more about this here http://lab.syzygy.de/
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