Thursday, July 1, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Progress by Title
- 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.
- 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.
- Keep it in Beta - Early names should always remain flexible
- 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.
- 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.
From Mark Whiting at 09:01 0 comments Labels: abstract, design, design process, development, naming
Thursday, April 29, 2010
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.
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?
From Mark Whiting at 00:52 0 comments Labels: good design, HBR, planning, Progress, success, workflow
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Which DSLR Should I Buy?
- 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.
- 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)
- I am interested in used cameras as much as new, such as a used D90 etc.
From Mark Whiting at 01:14 5 comments Labels: advice, buying, camera, crowdsourcing, DSLR, SLR
Monday, April 5, 2010
Rings
From Mark Whiting at 11:38 0 comments Labels: depth of field, luxology, modo, render, ring, Tiffany and Co.
Monday, March 22, 2010
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...
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.
From Mark Whiting at 23:21 0 comments Labels: design, elegance, human factors, medical, medical design, medicine, screws, simplicity
The Zen of Language
Sunday, March 21, 2010
See Creatures
From Mark Whiting at 13:12 0 comments Labels: animal, modelling, modo, render, sea creature
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Chrome OS as a platform without versions, potentially even for mobile
- 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
- 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.
- Native support for great browsing.
- Software independence. Because:
- ChromeOS auto updates - which is not that significant..
- 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.
- This would also mean that any apps would work on any other phone or platform with a modern browser.
From Mark Whiting at 02:32 0 comments Labels: Android, chormeOS, chrome, google, Mobile Computing, OS, Platform
Monday, March 8, 2010
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.
- 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.
- 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.
From Mark Whiting at 02:10 0 comments Labels: Bertrand Russell, god of the gaps, philosophy, religion, theology
Monday, March 1, 2010
An interesting user interface innovation. http://www.physorg.com/news186681149.html
From Mark Whiting at 22:41 0 comments