Having Read Some Books

Recently I have been listening to a lot of audio books because I have 40 minutes to 1 hour of walking every day. Many of the books I have listened to relate to psychology on some level however some are of other areas. My favorites recently have been: Connected, Predictably Irrational, What the Dog Saw and The Language Instinct. On the other end of the list are books like Rework, The Four Hour Work Week and The Pursuit of Elegance which I thought were all relatively shallow. However, I have noticed an important issue with audio books which is that if the reader is bad the book seems a lot worse, which I think is the case with some of the ones I have disliked. So far, it seems that a bad reader is exemplified by a strong American accent and a tendency to over pronounce and over emphasise the text with seemingly no awareness of it's meaning. On the other hand, books read by the author seem to have remarkably more impact, however that could just be because of the meaning the author can naturally evoke. 

For more on what I have read or will read check my google books library. 

I suppose I am looking for suggestions in what to read next. Also, I would be grateful for suggestions on where to find good collections of audio books. It may be clear that this list is almost completely non fiction of some kind or other which is something I would like to change in the future. I feel these days few people read enough fiction.

The images are from various sources but all show pages from one of my favorite books, Codex Seraphinianus. 

Anyway, please suggest books and sources in the comments.

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Progress by Title

Last semester I was TA for a class doing some new product development work with LG. It was a lot of fun because I got to interact with a number of teams as they developed their projects throughout the semester. 

After a several weeks of trend research and preparation the students started to propose concepts and a seemingly important factor in their success was in the choice of a title. This may seem strange, and to me it originally was quite unusual, however I think there are some strengths (and some weaknesses) of this approach which are worth contemplating. 

A positive attribute of concept naming is that if done effectively it can communicate the core value of a concept quickly and easily and can drive more laser like development in the future. Also, naming obviously offers a quick way to refer to the idea which makes discussion and reflection more accessible. On the other hand, naming too early seems to result in heightened perceived familiarity with the concept (especially in others introduced to the idea) which can lead to scope creep (either perceived by the audience or real within the team) as further development occurs. Another negative impact is when a name poorly communicates a concept and it is thus drastically misinterpreted. 

During my work as a TA I observed all of these situations on numerous occasions. In reaction, I have considered some precautions which could be taken to gain maximally from early naming. 

1. Don't Name Too Early - If a design can't yet cause an impression, but can only be interpreted as an incomplete concept then it is not ready for a name. However it can be useful to name features or other design patterns before a complete concept is established. 
2. Make the Name an Icon - Names should be act as symbols of the core concept. They should be a logical and clear explanation of the concept being presented and they should help others understand it and remember it.
3. Keep it in Beta - Early names should always remain flexible
4. Always Iterate - As changes are made new names should be considered. I personally think this is worth doing even if the factors which make the name significant have not changed significantly. 
5. Be Righteous - The name is part of the design so it should be treated with the same level of flexibility and the same sensibility as other parts of the design.

I think many further and better informed claims could be made about how to deal with naming effectively but for now this is what I think. What do you think about this issue? 

Image: Irrelevant but Pocari Sweat seems like a pretty disgusting name to me. I took this shot with my S90 which is now lost. 

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The optimism of adaptation

you're already doing something — whether it's a job, a hobby, or an occasional recreational pastime — that exploits your strengths, allows for your weaknesses, gives you pleasure, and uses your uniqueness.

via blogs.hbr.org

This is a short quote from an optimistic article at HBR about how if you try to use your values effectively you can probably, over time, create a rather lucrative niche for your self. I agree in general, despite numerous obvious exceptions.

In any case, I agree with the greater point of finding a true value in what is had, as opposed to trying to create a new kind of value. I think, by extension, this also applies in many other forms of value and even in design. In some strange way, the best design could be to use what you have in a reasonable fashion to perform the activities you need to.

What do you think?

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Which DSLR Should I Buy?

I am thinking of getting a DSLR. Which one should I buy?

I am looking for something quite cheep because I agree with Ken Rockwell that in most cases more features and pixels in DSLRs do not tend to improve people pictures. He does offer some good suggestions but I need to also consider several other factors:

1. I currently own 2 Nikon lenses. A 50mm 1.8 Prime and a relatively old zoom lens. Both require a motor in the body of the camera for autofocus. (which limits me to a D80 or higher, the D5000 will not work) It may well be better for me to replace these lenses but for now my budget is limited.
2. I don't mind Nikon and Canon but I also appreciate many factors of other companies like Pentax etc. (I also have access to several older Pentax lenses, though they are currently waiting for me in another country)
3. I am interested in used cameras as much as new, such as a used D90 etc.

Any suggestions or useful comments would be really appreciated. 

The image is a Leica S2, the DSLR I want but can not afford. 

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Rings

Today I spent a little time modelling and rendering a ring. It is loosely based on one from Tiffany's and currently rendered in polished silver. Not much more to say about that. 

I am also playing with DOF in Modo. All except one of the two closeups has DOF. I cant get it to look really great. Any suggestions?

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Design for Medicine

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research in Bremen, Germany have developed biodegradable surgical screws. The screws are a composite of polylactic acid and hydroxyapatite, biodegradable over 24 months. Hydroxyapatite, a major component of bone, promotes bone growth into the screw.

Full story: Bone-hard biomaterial...

via medgadget.com

I think medical design often ends up showing what designers (or the feature creators) can really do because of the obvious risks involved. Additionally because of the nature of living things, many features must be considered in a simple but complete way. This screw design is not interesting to be because of the materials technology but because of the elegance of the industrial design and the tight relationship of all the features which make it up.

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The Zen of Language

I am a lover of Zen, though my notion of Zen is quite specific to a certain perspective, as most peoples' interpretations of that word seem to be. To me, Zen is about a conceptual purity and simplicity but also a high level of appropriateness or correctness for a context. I have thought quite a lot about what this means for design but I am not ready to share that now. 

In any case, recently I have been exposed to another kind of Zen in a vaguely unexpected environment. During my masters here in korea, one of the fundamental things I am learning is the value of a Zen like approach to language. In this case, english, from my professor, who speaks english as a second language. What I mean by this Zen is a kind of ideal use of language to describe exactly what is meant, despite arbitrary complexity and the possibility of various interpretations of words. I think this kind of english is favoured in Korea, because of the way people learn english, as a kind of exact science, and also, favoured at my university, KAIST, because of the kind of publications expected here. Personally, my english is still far from Zen-like, and I think, though I am learning to improve it to participate here, it is probably never going to be as exact as many academics here make it. I believe this because I think native english speakers simply do not tend to treat words with such subtlety of application. Some poets and authors seem to be able to do it, however, most seem to use words like the USA uses oil.

I have never really liked reading, because I am slow at it and distracted easily, however, all my life I have enjoyed learning and acquiring knowledge, especially on mass. I have, on many occasions complained that books are aggravating because they act as a jail for knowledge, hiding it among numerous useless pages of imprecise words. Zen language is thus when every word counts and contributes fully to the meaning, not only of the sentence but to the whole work.

This view of Zen seems to act as a good framing example of what I think the general concept of Zen implies. What do you think? (I am sure my notion of Zen is not in accordance with more formal definitions, let me know if you have a more informed perspective)

Also, does anyone have suggestions about how to become able to write with Zen language? 

The images are a little bit random, just three shots of a lotus farm in Chungdu in SiChuan China. It seems that lotuses are often depicted in relation to Zen. 

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See Creatures

Sometimes we see creatures because of the way we make things look. This was a quite simple example which turned into a sea creature of sorts when I made it look the wrong way, accidentally. 

I think it is a small creature, perhaps similar to a jelly fish and I think the ridges wave like continuous fins. Perhaps it eats by induction being that it has two loops or by burrowing in the sand and absorbing nutrients. It is hard to know. 

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Chrome OS as a platform without versions, potentially even for mobile

Chrome OS is really exciting to me, partially because it is like having an OS on a thumb drive, as some people have done, only even more flexible in some ways, and partially because it will break down many of the platform issues that we commonly run into. Software that works in the browser, or at least in Crome, will do so on any computer that can run Chrome or ChromeOS. 

Recently many people are talking about the growing issue of fragmentation of the Android platform and most people seem to be pretty worried about it. Michael Gartenberg has written a related article for engadget, Will Android Fragmentation Destroy the Platform. I think the crux of this issue has a few factors. 

1. People expect to own phones for too long. 2 years is a long time to wait before getting a new phone and right now phones and their contracts are designed to endure this kind of period. This needs to change if technology is going to continue to also change so rapidly
2. Phone manufacturers having to do too much to make Android work they way they want it. I am afraid I do not know much about what they need to do so this point could be framed slightly inaccurately, however, I think if Android was designed to evolve in a more friendly way and if the efforts to make a phone work on a given platform were less significant, then this kind of issue could be reduced quite a lot. 

In any case, as most have probably read, Chrome OS is currently including designs for various different window styles, which are targeted at various different device form factors, including touch input devices. The one platform they have not mentioned targeting is of course mobile handsets, however I tend to think their could be some value in doing so. ChromeOS on a mobile phone would mean several things.

1. Native support for great browsing.
2. Software independence. Because:

1. ChromeOS auto updates - which is not that significant..
2. Chrome is becoming an industry standard and is really good at running almost every website out there and it is really unlikely that there will suddenly be a new kind of browser that can not run on year, or even two year old hardware. 
3. This would also mean that any apps would work on any other phone or platform with a modern browser. 

Device independence. With android you can already log in and out of your phone easily but with ChromeOS syncing you could imagine setting the experience on all your computing devices at once, and not being particularly miffed if data failure of any kind occurred. 

One issue this raises is how manufacturers can give their users a custom experience, however, given the ChromiumOS is open and adaptable I imagine we could see a version which still supported Chrome syncing and updates to the engine etc. 

Also, issues like a dialer could be solved with some local code or with Google Voice, via the mobile HTML5 client. 

I have included a Phone UI mock up based on the current ChromeOS Touch UI which is on the Chromium website. 

In a lot of ways, I am talking about something similar to what Apple seemed to be presenting when they first released the iPhone, a phone without an app store that just uses web apps, however now, it seems this is becoming a desirable reality for several reasons.(sorry I had a link for that but I forgot where it was - perhaps next time) 

So, what would you think about a Chrome OS phone?

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God of the Black-holes not Just the Gaps

With a 30 minute walk too and from my lab each day I now have a good amount of time to listen to audiobooks (Something I rather like because I am a slow reader usually). In any case, I am currently reading the rather long but interesting, History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (another good link and his listing on google books). He details the history surrounding many significant philosophical developments, discussing their relevance and their value. So far, apart from hearing a lot about greek philosophers I have also been introduced to 2 points which I find particularly interesting. 

1. Religion of the gaps can be more clearly though of as religion of the black holes in our perception of the world. Many people like to think of the so called 'God of the gaps,' or the idea that religion exists as a way of describing things we don't understand and as history has developed and various findings have occurred in psychology, mathematics, physics and other sciences, more and more aspects of our religions are defined and though of in non religious ways. Bertrand Russell suggests that God, in this way, may be more of a representation of the things we will never understand, not just things we don't understand for now. An example of a contender of this kind could be the meaning of life, which for all intensive purposes, we have no hope of learning without a distinct change to our current secular understanding of the universe. 
2. Learning about others' philosophies through the context of their logic. Bertrand Russell talks about many interpretations of the notion of philosophy as well as several ways of understanding the writings and opinions introduced by others, in particular, philosophers. The significant advice he offeres is to not concentrate on showing that a statement is true of false but instead to understand why the philosopher though it to be true or false at the time that they did. This of course gives us more than simply and understanding of the concept as a group of words but lets us understand the concept as a reaction to a context which we chan then determine to be reasonable or unreasonable and which we can potentially transmute in a useful way to a modern scenario. 

I find both of these to be rather useful ways of thinking, and I would be interested to learn of any extensions of either. 

I rather enjoy consuming audiobooks however I wish there were better services for getting them and I rather wish that more publishers made them of all their content, in particular academic works. 

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An interesting user interface innovation. http://www.physorg.com/news186681149.html

Recently I though about UV mapping living humans so we could do interesting skin touch stuff. This system seems to work quite well though it seems a little invasive.

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Bricks and Some of Their Innovations

I like the strange things that happen when we think about count nouns as noncount nouns and vice-versa. One situation where this kind of issue comes to mind is with ground covering technologies. This may seem really strange but I find the continuousness of ground and the singularity of bricks used to sometimes cover it a oxymoron of sorts

In some parts of the world bricks are often not just rectangular prisms that sit next to one another. People have added some technology to integrate them and give them some influence on each other. In particular, in Korea, one often finds bricks that have a jagged profile that fits into the bricks around it. This is rather advantageous because the bricks are then much more likely to hold together, so much so that they often ley them without mortar, and as a result, they are reusable, which to my surprise I have seen first person on a few construction sites here.

A further innovation in the design of ground covering bricks is the integration of some holes to let soil through and, eventually, let grass grow. This is not uncommon in most places where bricks are used in gardens but here in Korea I have seen an augmentation of this technology so that the areas of dirt from one brick connect to those on another with a shallow section. The advantage of this system is that grass now grows to hold the bricks together and creates a more adaptive combined surface. I think this is quite brilliant because not only does it support a sustainable use of effective ground cover but it means that parking lots and other places where this method is used end up being about 40% green (made of grass) which is a significant further benefit to the environment. Personally, I think we should not have many flat surfaces in modern construction that do not have some kind of plant sustaining features but that is another thing to talk about. 

The images are just a few of the varieties of interesting ground coverings I have seen in Korea. And of course, there are many in other places it is just that here is where I have started thinking more about this issue. 

There is potential for many more ideas here. What do you think about this? 

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How would you improve Wikipedia?

I was thinking about this one day, because I think it is important to think how we can improve things we like and use a lot, and I thought of a few possibilities:

1. Quality assurance factors with suggestions for reliable research - This could be a bit like a widget that shows Google Scholar results based on some aspect of the current page.
2. Better citing tools - These might be simply citation suggestions based on related search results.
3. Ways to inspire people to correct more articles and write new articles, especially people who have valuable knowledge. 
4. Expert days or other short periods where many experts are asked to write in wikipedia. A bit like talk like a pirate day or earth day, but instead just make wikipedia much better day. 
5. History Colouring - It looks like they should be doing this now but seems they are not. If good data was collected on this method we could also create some kind of quality assurance based on the same methodology.
6. Fewer advertisements from Jimmy Wales heart. I know they need money I just hate the way they ask for it. Partially because of an interesting situation highlighted by Aaron Swartz in his widely read article "Who Writes Wikipedia?"

What do you think? 

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What we really want to carry and compute with...

The future of mobile computing is a total hot topic at the moment and this video of a moleskin laptop brings up a recurring aspect of the issue. 

As far as I understand we can make small computers quite well and we are still getting better at it. For several years companies have made small computers of notable speed and with reasonable battery life. However, for the most part, companies are not doing this. I think, as a consumer, I feel as though companies are purposefully neglecting to make what I want. Instead they are making many other things which, seemingly fewer people want. 

The iPad, despite its lack of camera etc., reminds me of a device people want, in the same way many people want a moleskine notebook, and possibly, in the same way we would want a moleskin notebook PC. 

Moleskine recently released a tool to help people make print outs to go into their notebooks. I think this is a nice idea though very wasteful of paper, as you will be discarding offcuts, and it seems relatively inconvenient. I think they would benefit from providing special printer paper with round corner stickers that fit in the notebooks, but they may also do well to look at the opportunities of a digital moleskine style experience; perhaps an iPhone app, or a whole new approach to portable computing. 

What do you think? 

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Great Design from Non Designers

What's the right approach to new products? Pick three key attributes or features, get those things very, very right, and then forget about everything else. Those three attributes define the fundamental essence and value of the product -- the rest is noise. For example, the original iPod was: 1) small enough to fit in your pocket, 2) had enough storage to hold many hours of music and 3) easy to sync with your Mac (most hardware companies can't make software, so I bet the others got this wrong). That's it -- no wireless, no ability to edit playlists on the device, no support for Ogg -- nothing but the essentials, well executed.

via paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

I have written before about creating a design school or curriculum around the principals of a company like Google. In this provoking post Paul Buchheit (one of the people who did Gmail and later Friendfeed) talks about a perspective on design that I agree with very strongly, and that I think many other people have failed to clearly represent.

Additionally I think it is rather interesting that many non designers have very valuable perspectives on design, not just as solutions but really as methods and models for the creative process. I wonder how much we can really learn?

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A door into the mind

I am very interested by the idea of a language of the mind as has been discussed by many authors including the well known Steven Pinker in The Stuff of Thought and The Language Instinct. In any case, so far as I have read there is not a good way to bridge interface of human language and an underlying mental one, so called mentalese. 

There seem to be a number of non verbal systems for surpassing common animal interfaces. One interesting example is in certain ant colonies, pheromones are used by wasps to essentially mind control the colony during some invasive procedure. In humans hormons can have similar effects although they tend to be much more subtle. (It is also often said that the sense of smell has the most significant influence on the brain because of its proximity and direct connection, as can be seen when sniffing a strong acid). In a recent TED conference however, Vilayanur Ramachandran discussed how nurons can be effected directly by the eyes in a strange kind of empathic consciousness. 

Anyway, I am interested in this idea of having some kind of interface into and out of the mind for a few reasons.

1. For design and psychology research being able to measure emotions more accurately by using digital smell sensors which give some idea of the endocrinological condition of a subject. 
2. For high speed learning, to learn logic structures faster without the barrier of language.
3. For computational knowledge systems, something which is still largely nonexistent. Even Google's data scheme is not generally based on knowledge but just a coincidence of the way knowledge needs to exist. 
4. To create a kind of mental API

What do you think? 

The image is obviously from the matrix.

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BLOOM- Ruth Whiting and Tim Elverston's art show

My sister is putting on an exhibition with her boyfriend in Gainesville Florida. It should be pretty interesting so pleas check it out if you have a chance.

Bloom

Handmade Seeds in a Technological Age.

Bloom is a show about passion. It's a show about a choice to make our own reality. It's a study in the density of hand-made technology and the miracle of cumulative intuition. No matter what we ask of our materials, they always have an answer.  This work is about learning to listen—as indeed, appreciation of subtlety is often a matter of survival.

Ruth Whiting and Tim Elverston foster a handmade future in a world where products arrive in sealed packages and advertising tells us how to dream. Bloom is a glimpse into a reality that is painstakingly fashioned from the raw fruits of our technological age. Tim Elverston is a designer and kinetic sculptor who makes kites, lamps, mobiles, and clothing. All his work is tuned with exquisite function from the most appropriate materials. Ruth Whiting paints sumptuous and imagined worlds where electric cables come to life within a thriving ecology of their own.

Opening February 26th during art walk at Randy Batista Gallery in downtown Gainesville next  to the Hippodrome.

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Virtual Reality and Real Virtuality

Recently I have realised that many ideas in design: new design models, processes and theories of design, are in some way related to a transformation of ideas from computer science or related digital logic into the real world. Examples for this are the concept of Object Oriented Design in product design which is something I have been considering for a few years now but also, as a less dependent example, the prospect of an API for a non digital object seems quite interesting. In any case, I think computer science is built on very rich developments on logical systems which I think many other disciplines can learn from in some situations. I hope this happens often, and in more ways than simply the current interest in openness such as open-source hardware (and more from Make and Wired) in which open-source notions are physically represented. 

In any case, I thought an important step here would be to devise a term to describe this trend. One that I thought may be appropriate in some contexts is Real Virtuality, but that is more like tangible computing or meeting online friends offline. I would be interested to hear any other suggestions. 

The image is an Arduino board which is a notable example of open-source hardware. 

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On a short holiday in Busan.

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Google Chrome for Korea (an IE extension)

via chrome.google.com

In Korea people the web world is designed so people need IE to run many of the major websites and in fact, to do any online payment as far as I know. I hear that to buy a mac online in Korea you need to have a PC to do so for this very reason.

In any case, this situation has caused many potential Korean Chrome users to shy away, knowing they would have to use two browsers regularly. This option however, an extension for Chrome which enables it to display IE webpages seems to be quite a lovely work around, and may well let people avoid ever having to undergo the embarrassment of opening IE.

I hope it works!

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Meaning or Infrastructure for Local Information

In some parts of the world they do not use street names in common communication for navigation, or for that matter, anything else really. Korea and Japan are two such countries, however China is mostly not that way now days, as far as I have experienced at least. I do not know about other examples but I am sure they exist. In any case, in Korea, we do not generally know the name of any streets and we do not use them to explane how to get places. This is a reasonably big change for me because all my life my world has been oriented about streets that have some nomenclature, a name or a number. So, in Krorea, instead of streets, they use points of significance, such as shopping centers, apartment blocks, or region names. Then for more granular instructions, people will say something like "walk towards the coffee shop then make your second left, then walk about 100m and we live just there." As you can imagine this sometimes ends in tears and yet more often ends in numerous phone calls and eventually the resident or a local going out and finding the visitor who is lost in the streets near by. In Seoul if you live 10 minutes walk from a train station, it is almost impossible to give instructions to a foreign visitor, but also in general. People thus often create meeting points, for example, "Lets meet at the 5th exit of the train station" and accordingly will show the way to their destination. 

This system intrigues me for various reasons. It means that signs with content (as opposed to signs with infrastructure), i.e. what business is where and what building is where, are very important as they are the primary mechanism by which people can recognise a location. It also means that there is a very valuable body of knowledge held by locals about the local area and that people are more likely to ask others in an effort to use this knowledge. The interesting conclusion however is that this system is meaning based, as opposed to infrastructure based as it would be in most other countries. That is to say, everything known about where something is is also meaningful knowledge about the area around the something. In the infrastructure based system, we generally do not know what stores are where and what kind of apartment is in which area of town, instead we know a system of meaningless infrastructural information which lets us navigate alone, and generally not understand our surroundings. So, the Korean system encourages interaction and knowledge of businesses and localities while the street address system encourages isolation from others and from an understanding of any locality, in some cases, even one's own. 

I think the Korean system has a distinct advantage, however it is hard for new visitors, especially foreigners, and it is probably a little slower than using street addresses. Similarly I think creating an abstract infrastructure reduces the movement of knowledge, a notable disadvantage. However, I think given an awareness of the Korean method and its benefits, I think places could be designed to optimally use this system, over simply instituting a crowded area, which as far as I understand, accurately summarises design principal currently in place in most Korean developments. Perhaps one example of a well designed system like this is Disney Land where many areas do not have infrastructural nomenclature but most places are findable due to the numerous destinations that people have awareness of. 

What principals do you think we could use to build better location information systems while avoiding creating a separate infrastructure to represent the information?

The images attempt to depict the situation of navigation of several Korean cities including Daejeon, Seoul and Busan. Notice that image of a map does not include any street names but simply landmarks of some kind or another. 

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