Combined video editor and monitor Tetsuro Miyazaki

An interesting patent from Sony about some sort of portable editing system. One point of interest is that it references the first laptop patent ever. 

Combined video editor and monitor Tetsuro Miyazaki

Design in Holland

I am in Amsterdam for 2 nights and on this trip I have realised a few more things about the design here.

On my last trip here about a month ago I noticed that many systems are rather open, more so than in many other countries, with the expectation that people will find a good solution and use it instead of having to follow a strict set of rules. Now obviously this has advantages if done well because it means more things are more intuitive to do if things have been made "open" properly.

I think it is often considered the case that less confined things tend to succeed more often or at least have serious advantages that lead to a market share.

I should note that despite there being a lot of really well designed open systems in Holland I think they just have a lot of trouble with information systems even when they have obviously had the crap designed out of them. Perhaps this is a cultural thing but I have found on a number of occasion that there is not a lot of consideration for real users. One instance was in a parking lot payment system where almost every user I saw firstly did not understand how to use the machine and then when they thought they did it still seemed not to work properly.

So, on this trip I think I realised there is more to the multitude of open systems here than simply making things more intuitive. Having spent a significant portion of my time on this trip looking at architecture here in Amsterdam and also in Utrecht, I have realised that though may people live in apartment blocks and many apartment blocks are similar there is a lot of subtle work done to make apartments dissimilar. The way this is done, a block of several hundred apartments may be made up of something like 10 different apartment types each with a few subtle but noticeable differences. In many places it is common to have 2 or a few more types of apartments making up the core of the block because of the symmetry about elevators etc.  Here in Holland buildings are usually not so tall and people are less lazy so there are stairs. So yes 10 different sets of 10 apartments scattered around a building so each has a unique view and has unique value. The reason, I think, is because of the perceived value of being personally unique. So now I think, though I could be totally wrong here, that in Holland there is a strong value associated with being unique. Of course there are lots of social norms and people tend to be similar as people are in most places of the world, however I think people here really like the idea that they could do things specifically how they wanted, and see things in a way that suits them.

I think this is really different from the perception of uniqueness that is found in many Americans as here it is based on actual interactions and systems built to provide for them where in the USA it is much more based on personal claims and perceptions.

This does not explain the multitude of really badly design information systems but it does give me a lot more context to watch the way people do various things. I know this is just an assumption but I have not seen any contrary evidence as far as I know.

Improving Bathrooms

Korean and Chinese and other bathrooms are really neat because they use a much more open architecture and contribute to a more designable experience for the user. I think there are a few important parts to this flexibility that make it really fun:

1. Water Room - everything is designed to get wet. It is easier and more fun. I think it could be a good design principal.
2. Feature full Floor - many bathrooms have wash racks mounted into the floor for people to do laundry. I think this could be extended to a few other features.
3. Continuous Experience - this is a bit less certain but it just seems that when I use bathrooms in Korea or China, whatever I am doing it feels that the tools are really built into the environment. I am not sure what I mean but I think it is a good feeling and I think it is something that could add to the experience of western bathrooms. Perhaps it is the really modular multi function nature of every aspect of this kind of bathroom. Each fixture seems to have distinct uses but also ends up emerging as a solution to many problems, just by the nature of the simple and elegant environment. 
4. Isolation from Dirt and enforcing Cleanliness - In these settings it is common for people to use small towels which is really nice for various reasons, and also use slip on shoes when they are in the bathroom. This is interesting because it combines to make a really fresh cleaning experience every time. That is to say; I think I feel a lot more clean after showering like this because you can concentrate on cleaning and you are sort of forced into cleaning. A small towel also works better to retain quality in your skin. 

That is all I can think of at the moment. I am trying to put together some ideas to make a bathroom design that ties a few ideas on washing together to create something that is a bit more efficient and a better experience.

Comments or stories about interesting washing experiences would be great. Especially if you know a lot about Japanese washing. 

Innovation in work settings

So a whole lot of companies recently have been talking and thinking about work settings to cultivate good work and innovation. (I think I posted about this before but I can not find it so oh well) The thing that is interesting is that what many of these companies are doing, i.e. google, is creating more flexible environments and more ad-hoc relationships so that people cross-pollinate a lot. There are various other objectives as well, including user convenience and the ability to enter and stay in a state of flow. In any case, when I was recently looking at this kind of innovation I thought a few things. One main one being that it would be a good project to actually go and do some research in how people work well because I totally think the "nice" offices of the world are doing little more than scrambling it together. A lot more recently I was thinking about it again and I thought what a good office from my perspective would be.

For me a good office is a clean desktop on a nice little and adaptable laptop. I do not use paper (though I think it would make my work better if I did more often) and I do not use a mouse (people who actually know how to use trackpads know they are faster than mice) and I tend not to use a table even when it is available. I am happy with my laptop in my lap. Additionally I need my office with me all the time, because I work everywhere and all over the world, and I need my office to be able to fit in and interact with anyone else's office. In addition to a laptop my office includes a few things like cameras, a global socket power board, so I can plug in a lot of anythings, and a global plug adapter, so I can plug my power board in anywhere. I also tend to have at least one mobile phone and about 20 SIM cards for various different countries. For networking I carry a Airport Express because even in a hotel room wireless is really convenient, especially when working with a few other people and creating ad hoc networks. I also carry a large hard drive but ideally I would have a smaller one of similar capacity, 500 Gb or 1 Tb. Headphones are also really important, though at this point I should invest in an ace bluetooth earpiece, the B&O one seems nice or perhaps the new Jawbone. For the time being I am not sure what the ideal office would be like in terms of a cubicle. I mean, I presume I should have a briefcase however so far I like a simple bag that I can take anywhere. Perhaps I would also take a pen but I think that is it.

So, if a ad-hoc work space can be this ad-hoc, can it also be more motivating of innovation and flow producing?

I think that a few steps could be taken. Firstly, better flow creating software needs to exist and more users need to be in a position to take advantage of the more advanced flow related features of tools they use (Designers fault not users fault). For the cultivation of innovation I think it comes down to some other issues. One key one, and something that really gets in my way some times, is a way to take notes and make them easy to find and readable. Evernote is ok in theory but a bit much effort for my needs some times. Another thing is being able to interoperate as much as possible and being able to operate as effectively as possible outside ones' own office. The obvious thing here is to use web-tools but sadly I have found that sometimes the web sucks in some places, and some websites do not work everywhere. So this is an issue that I have yet to find a good enough solution for. I think the only thing that computers and computer systems still do rather poorly is integrate functions, especially communication with other tools. i.e. modelling and talking to someone on the other side of the world about my model at the same time is really lame, even with the various tools that people have been working on.

So at some point I am going to try to find a better way to ensure this kind of mobile office is really mobile but also good and innovative and flowing and then I am going to try to link it back to the way real offices work to see if they can be made better...which I am pretty sure they can. More on that later.

Ok. So that was almost ranty I think, and I think I did not really come up with a good closing solution yet. Does anyone have any suggestions. I would really benefit from them :-)

Another project that I have been playing with a little bit is trying to work out what people actually need to travel with. Every time I travel I find I have something I do not need. So I want to put together a document that helps people work out what they need and which products are good solutions for those needs. If anyone is interested I would love some help because I suck at packing light.

iCar Initial Thinking

This afternoon I spent 6 hours in a KTV room and although I can sing a few songs I could not sing that many. The extra time I used to start thinking about what an anthropomorphic car is going to be and what kind of features it might have. I am still pretty lost in this regard but I have a few notions.

So my thinking was along the lines of a car that acted the way a car should act in order for it to parse correctly in terms of the human experience. This is a bit strange as it is hard to say what a car should do, however, I guess it is pretty obvious that it is a driving machine. So, a thing for moving people around. I am guessing it might park automatically. I am also trying to think of how one should get into and out of such a device. I think doors are a pretty in elegant solution but for now they may be the only option.

Next I tried to think of what is wrong with the state of existing cars. There are a lot of things, but the ones that are really important are the ones that people have not solved well. One is the power issue, so I have a feeling the iCar would be not that fast and pretty toy like. Its speedometer would go no higher than the speed limited of a road. I suspect it would also function mostly automatically. I am still not sure how to deal with reversing. I think that is a major point of failing in the driving experience. Another point I thought of is getting into and out of cars and loading things in and out of them. Other issues include things like safety.

I have very little idea of the driving experience for now. I think this will be hard. I am not sure how removed it should be or how familiar it should be.

I have also thought a little about the overall object of the car. I have a feeling it will not look a lot like a car and may look a bit more like the Scion box cars that exist in Japan and now the states, however I am not sure yet. I think because I suspect for it to be all electric I suspect there to be very little mechanical envelope. So the car may end up as basically a box (smooth or not) on wheels. I am not sure if it should be solar assisted. I am also not sure if it should be AL, Polycarbonate or Si3, or SS, but I think those might be the main materials. I do however want to incorporate a black plastic like is current at the back of the iMac.

What do you think? Comments Appreciated!!!

iCar - Thinking Agian

Soumitri has started blogging about making an iCar again. We had talked about this project a while back and done a few things for a competition along the lines of an iCar. The idea being worked with at the time is as pictured.

Since then I have become a little less stupid and realised more about what is really needed in an iCar. I in fact think this project is quite fun an interesting so I am going to try to create some kind of solution. I think the approach that I am going to start with is to start to get an idea of what makes a design Apples'. There is quite a lot of literature on this but for now I will just make a cursory list.

1. An obvious reaction to the norms of an industry or expected experience - I think Apple often tries to make the quintessential product of a sector. iCar should be the quintessential car.
2. Anthropomorphic - The user experience should parse logically to all users.
3. Intuitive - New users should have little or no trouble understanding what is expected of them
4. High Quality Experience - Where quality is not possible, design to remove the need for quality (or the perceived lack of quality) is important.
5. No buttons - Specific mechanical interfaces only, as much as possible or none what so ever.
6. Important controlls are really easy to get to. The things one would want to can usually be done with no digging in the interface.
7. Manufacturing is invisible.

So. Please add more things or ideas in comments or link to articles etc. that might be interesting for this project. Soumitri linked to an article on this matter but I think they writer is not completely right. I would love to see more info if anyone has found interesting stuff.

Reinclusive Design

Reading about Ergonmidesign who seem a bit cool and I noticed a thing they were calling Inclusive Design. The idea is as follows:

Have you ever felt excluded? Many people find it difficult to carry out simple, everyday tasks such as opening food packages, retrieving cash from an ATM abroad, or finding clothes that fit properly.

Now imagine if you have such pain in your wrist that you cannot enjoy the simplest of pleasures, such as calling a friend, using the TV remote, or preparing your favourite meals. All of these examples are affected by, and can be aided by, inclusive design.

Inclusive design is about making sure that as many people as possible can use or consume products, services and spaces. At Ergonomidesign, inclusion takes human diversity as a starting point.

I think it is quite silly. I think the world would suck if things where designed for everyone, I think a huge value in society is that we can creat demographics and target products acordingly. That is perhaps an over simplication of the matter at hand but I think a more valid way of looking at this process is to reinclude an audiance by creating more independanttly targeted products.

 

I think the weakest link is often not strong enough to be accomidated by a single solution. I think targeting is gold.

On Real Semantic Web and Language

I am in China :-) and I am really happy to be back here. At the moment I am in Hangzhou which is where I used to live.

The other day I posted about language and how natural language systems would be gould for Semantic Web and then today I cam upon a Google tech talk that details the matter quite well.



Have a look if you have some spair time. I am about 20 minuts in so far and though it is not completely thrilling the speaker has made some interesting points.

Sorry about spelling I am using an internet cafe in which pages are not loading perfectly and spell checkers are not working.

China is so much fun.

More Images from France

Paris Trip 2008

I am really slow to put images online. Sorry world.

I have however updated and put a bunch more from Paris on Picasa.

Language for Computers not People

A post about the UNIX programer who killed his wife drove me to consider the notion of syntax heavy languages being used to avoid the large problems associated with the semantic web. I am not really sure what this would entail but I guess it is really something like the kind of pattern language issue that I was thinking about for my graduate project at RMIT.

What makes what we say and think so hard to understand (for computers at least) apart from what we use to say it?

Is it possible to make design decisions for a language at this point and have a substantial enough effect on syntax and parsing to achieve the goal of natively supporting direct communication with computers? 

Just on the matters of designed language, in Korea they use a really really awesome alphabet called Hangul. It is highly optimised for both high speed reading and pure graphical logic. It uses simple letters that build things like syllables that become visually compressed into a character without reducing the identify-ability of the individual letters. The system was designed rather recently, 1443, with the intention of creating a better system for dealing with complex sound based languages. 

Future and Magic

Today I thought about how a big part of the things have made now the future are the things that do what would have been considered magic and are now provided by technology and science. At the same time, I think the other side of the future is undoing all the bad innovation that has lead to the strange world state we are in now. 

For those who have not seen it please watch Future Perfect's TED Talk


Today I had I took a train too and from Daejeon, about 2 hours south of Seoul where I had an interview with KAIST for a PhD. I am not sure if it is the right place for me. 

Korea is still a lot of fun however this evening I realised I had no water. I will have to find a way to get some tomorrow.