There’s something really magical about this; jump to a random eye-level view of almost any street in the world: Globe Genie – Joe McMichael.

Fascinating article in the NY Times that explores how language shapes the way we think about the world. Different languages, different ways of experiencing it.

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.

Similar to my observations about how language affects meaning from years ago.

Worry isn’t work. Being stressed out isn’t work. Anxiety isn’t work. Entertaining a sense of impending doom isn’t work. Incessant internal verbal punishment isn’t work. Indulging the great unknown fear in your own mind isn’t work. Hating yourself isn’t work.

Work is the manifestation of value, and anyone who tells you that a person whose mind is 50% occupied with anxiety is more likely to manifest value is a person who isn’t manifesting much.

• Dan Pallotta

The way you handle the small things in life seems to determine how the big things end up.

Nice 1-day conference by Kicker Studio last Friday. A few notes:

Kim Goodwin and Michael Voege, IxD + ID

• When ID & IxD can work together from the start, can be a good convergence process. Start wild, gradually narrow down
• ID often requires more emotional cues from people in user research
• Daily, quick checkins are useful between design teams even in the separate design phases

Stuart Karten, Hearing aids

• People of all ages wanted the hearing enhancement one hearing aid company was offering; not just the old
• Modemapping: research technique to chart all the activities a person does throughout the day by time and quality/happiness, to discover common pain points and patterns across people, then list out functional, behavioral, and social needs in those.
• Sample themes for ID of hearing aids: jewelry, algorithms/nature, performance enhancement.
• Capacitive touch on the ear has issues when people brush their hair back
• Using an iPhone/Android app can be a good way to test touch interactions; just simulate the product onscreen and use the iPhone to respond to touch input

Wendy Ju, Implicit Interactions

• Joe Malia’s privacy scarves are awesome
• Many important interactions take place in the “attentional periphery”: a doorman’s offer to open a door; a dog wagging its tail. Each communicates status, an offer, and acknowledgment of you.
• Implicit interaction axes: Foreground/Background, Proactive/Reactive. A single interaction can move around these quadrants. Most UIs today are Foreground + Reactive; lots of potential in the others

Mike Kuniavsky, Information as a material

• FedEx Senseaware, a passive (soon active) device + web info system for packages
• Multiple screens (phone, tablet, desktop, tv) are “holes in space to the same thing”
• Are you building an APPLIANCE (limited functionality, focused UI) or a TERMINAL (infinite functionality, general UI)?
• A terminal: “a transparent window into services”

Ian Myles, Astro Design

• Concept design can be a fancy concept movie or a simple sketch with localized glowing; both convey the idea but the latter is much simpler
• Intel Moorestown device; ultra widescreen (32:9) suggests new interactions/uses

Dan Harden, Frog -> Whipsaw

• Interesting Skymall items: laser scissors; overhead book holder
• “A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his workand his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” – LP Jacks
• “Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.” – Marcus Aurelius
• Livescribe pen lets you draw interface elements and then use them by touching: http://waynehodgins.typepad.com/ontarget/2008/08/cool-tools- live.html
• “There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. ” – C.A.R. Hoare
• Vudu remote control is beautiful
• InfiniteZ virtual holographic display system

Julian Bleecker, Design Fiction

• “A Survey of Human-Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies“
• “Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision” – Genevieve Bell
• “Scientists on the Set“, “The Future is Now“, & upcoming book “Science on the Silver Screen” by David Kirby

Watch a School Bus Go 367 MPH On Fiery Rocket Power.

“Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” – Clayton Christensen.

Another excerpt:

“It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.”

Brooks: Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.

Wired: But surely The Design of Design is about creating better processes for great designers?

Brooks: The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing.

via Master Planner: Fred Brooks Shows How to Design Anything | Magazine.

That is, addiction in general and information/Internet addiction in particular.

The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40…

My latest trick is taking long hikes. I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. Now the slowness of hiking seems an advantage, because the longer I spend on the trail, the longer I have to think without interruption…

We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.

The Acceleration of Addictiveness.

Thank you internet.

Yes please.

A great example of what my dad always called “using CAD: Cardboard-aided design. If you can make it out of cardboard, you might be able to make it out of metal. But if you can’t make it out of cardboard, you definitely won’t be able to make it out of metal.”

The Global Lives project is an effort “to collaboratively build a video library of human life experience that reshapes how we as both producers and viewers conceive of cultures, nations and people outside of our own communities.”

They started with an exhibit of 10 people at the Yerba Buena Center. I missed that unfortunately but they’ve put some of the video online. You can even view the raw 24 hours of footage for each person, linked at the bottom.

It’s interesting to think about this as a resource for virtual ethnography–just dial up 24 hours in the life of someone in your target market and observe them on demand…

Those who listen to XM Radio may have heard Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. This three-year show explored a ton of Dylan’s favorite music and got rave reviews.

Those who missed it (like me) may enjoy the Theme Time Radio Hour Archive, which hosts most of the music and links to commentary on each track. That should be enough for the next few weeks…

I’ve written about this before, but two great articles recently said it even better:

Don’t try to control or make safe the fumbling, panicky, glorious adventure of discovery. Occasionally, one sees articles that describe how to rationalize this process, how to take the fuzzy front end and give it a nice haircut. This is self-defeating. We should allow the fuzzy front end to be as unkempt and as fuzzy as we can. Long– term growth depends on innovation, and innovation isn’t neat. – Bill Coyne of 3M, via Bob Sutton

If the process of bringing new things to life were a living, breathing organism, it would be a nasty beast! It would be unpredictable. It would consume as much as you dared to feed it. Some days, it would really stink. Yucko! And it would have a tendency to chew up people and spit them out. Most of all, though, it would hairy. Really hairy — think dense forests of tangly, greasy, matted, hair, the likes of which make people run for shampoo, scissors, clippers, straight razors, and a blow dryer…

But in that fuzziness is an unpredictable wellspring of creativity, which — if left to do what it will in in its own nonlinear way — is the source of the new and the wonderful. Consequently, one must never give in to the temptation to shave the fuzzy hairball that is innovation…

Understanding how to deal with ambiguity at a personal level is the key to unlocking one’s creative confidence. An organization which understands how to resist shaving the hairball, populated by people who know how to orbit the hairball, will be capable of bringing amazing things to life. – Diego Rodriguez

This is a fun-looking bicycle child seat. We saw a kid in Tiburon riding one and having a blast.

Jeff Buckley died accidentally at exactly the age I am today (via Dead At Your Age, which sounds morbid but is mostly motivating).

Before that, he performed this:

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one — Michael Forbes

It’s better to fail with your own vision rather than following another man’s vision. — Johan Cruyff

I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take a game winning shot….and missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed — Michael Jordan

Deforestation is the single biggest factor in greenhouse gas emissions, nearly twice as big as either road transportation or residential buildings.

Plant With Purpose is a great organization working to replant trees in damaged areas. Here’s their compelling intro video.

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

This exploration of Lincoln’s depression shows a man who, instead of trying to destroy or avoid his mental pain, integrated it and drew the strength to do great and difficult things.

In his mid-forties the dark soil of Lincoln’s melancholy began to yield fruit. When he threw himself into the fight against the extension of slavery, the same qualities that had long brought him so much trouble played a defining role. The suffering he had endured lent him clarity and conviction, creative skills in the face of adversity, and a faithful humility that helped him guide the nation through its greatest peril…

Lincoln then took a small Bible from a stand near the sofa and began to read. “A quarter of an hour passed,” Keckley remembered, “and on glancing at the sofa the face of the president seemed more cheerful. The dejected look was gone; in fact, the countenance was lighted up with new resolution and hope. Wanting to see what he was reading, Keckley pretended she had dropped something and went behind where Lincoln was sitting so that she could look over his shoulder. It was the Book of Job…”

Viewing Lincoln through the lens of his melancholy, we see one cogent explanation: he was always inclined to look at the full truth of a situation, assessing both what could be known and what remained in doubt. When faced with uncertainty he had the patience, endurance, and vigor to stay in that place of tension, and the courage to be alone.