• Spinach
  A “qualitative research agency” in the UK. I like the site, although it does leave me wanting more. Roll over the goose for a fun little design detail.

• JumpBlog
  Jump Associates has a new blog
• Deduction & Induction
  I was unable to articulate this clearly the other day, so I’m blogging it for my (and your) reference. Deductive reasoning is top down (take a theory and apply it to specific data points) whereas inductive reasoning is bottom up (take a set of data and build a theory around it).

We’re located near the Pacific Ocean, where Highway 1 scoots along past small towns like ours, and then zips long a crazy road known as Devil’s Slide, with a mountain to the east and a cliff edge to the left. A tunnel is being built (after decades of controversy and planning) but most of the progress is hidden by the mountain itself. Not to mention that as you drive along at breakneck speed, it behooves you not to peer too closely at whatever is not the road itself.

So what are they building in there? Well, Caltrans, in a remarkable display of transparency, has photographers who document the work as it progresses. The pictures are really amazing, showing the people, the process, and the previously hidden environment. For some these are simply your usual construction photos, but for people who drive by there every day, waiting for the tunnel to open (2011 or something) and have little sense of the work behind the scenes, this is a really wonderful peek. There are tons and tons of pictures to browse, and I’ve nicked a few, below.

Tags: caltrans, construction, hardhat, highway 1, labor, rebar, transparency, tunnel, work

• Steven Heller interview on mediabistro.com
  They do eventually talk about design but I love that a good chunk of the interview is about interviewing and asking questions (one of my favorite topics). “Well, it helps to ask questions that people want to answer.”

On the street, near Market St. in San Francisco. Construction worker (with an extremely personalized hard hat, thick with stickers) carrying a bottle of Lipton Iced Green Tea, a product that is stereotypically opposite from the drinker. A few blocks further and I see an older man who’s odd fashion sense meant he was either foreign or homeless (or both) with a cheap pink fake-leather iPod case around his neck (with iPod), as if he was given the setup by a 13-year old girl. A block further I approach a cluster of people standing in front of some building on Market having a smoke break. They are all fairly young and relatively well-dressed, perhaps it’s some sort of continuing education or something, but as I pass by I see in their midst is a big clergy dude complete with rope-belt-and-brown-robes. As I enter my parking lot, I hear a noise as something hits the ground. “Sir, Sir!” voices call. As I turn I realize it’s something I’ve dropped and they are calling to tell me. I walk towards the item to retrieve it, but before I can get there a man of 70 (not with the “sir” group) scampers over and bends over to pick it up, and hands it to me so I don’t have to get it!

It was a fun ten minutes, filled with many surprises, confounded expectations, juxtapositions, and cultural collisions.

Tags: culture, downtown, lifestyles, observing, people, San Francisco, streets, walking

Booking the hotel for our event at the IASummit I found this rough edge on the confirmation screen.

Circled in red, about halfway down. “Need copy.” Yes, you do still need the copy there. Sad that you launched this with the memo-to-self still intact. It’s smart to use a different tool for marking up content, lest the markup gets confused with the content itself. Proofreading can catch some of those mistakes, but not all of them. And here, we the end-user get a small reminder of the hands at work behind the scenes.

Tags: confirmation, copy, editing, flamingo, iasummit07, las vegas, markup, mistake

• Calvin Trillin test drives er parks the Lexus LS 460 L Advanced Parking Guidance System
  Funny article in the often-tired aren’t-newfangled-technologies-zany vein. Some valid critiques and some excellent writing.
• Fruit on the Box does not mean Fruit in the Box (packaging imagery or name)
  And we’re comfortable with this disconnect

• Conway’s Law (1968): Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
  Obviously applies to “systems” as much as “software” – put another way “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations.” Thanks to Kristian for this one.

• Trade Show Displays, Exhibits, and Booths Blog
  This riff on booth design uses my photos from The Conversation posted here a few days ago. No interaction design folks yet picked up on the cool old tech (buttons!), but a trade show booth designer does. Not what I expected to happen.
• Rock music, originally a rebellion, has worked hard to preserve itself as the status quo
  For a VERY long time. Enough for rockers like Eddie Van Halen to have hip replacements and children who grow up and join their band in a reunion tour. The typology has shifted from “The [name] Brothers” to “[Name] and Son”
• TLA on Wikipedia
  Three-letter acronym
• A new TLA: UXE (aka User Experience Evangelist)
  We’ve had evangelists in technology since at least the early days of Apple, but somehow calling yourself a UXE takes something away

• Brian Ulrich’s photos of retail environments are some of my faves
  Good story about some stores being more (rather than less) comfortable with allowing photography.

Here we go again. From the Isaiah Washington slur flap

I welcome the chance to meet with leaders of the gay and lesbian community to apologize in person and to talk about what I can do to heal the wounds I’ve opened.

Now that’s how to get a meeting.

Tags: al sharpton, gay, healing, homophobe, insult, isaiah washington, lesbian, meeting, michael richards, networking, slur, wounds

Last week I posted (on Core77) about Virgin America’s new on-board entertainment system.

Here’s a run-through of the system by Charles Ogilvie of the airline.

The information is good, the capabilities are good, but the video is filled with corporate/tech jargon. I’m always amazed at how unable some business folks are to talk to (or about) people in plain ol’ English.

Some of the scary phrases to listen for

• globally available
• primary navigation areas
• list construct
• watch-related options
• toolbar will return but in a reconfigured state
• a cache-format
• hardware platform
• running application over Linux
• stock-out situation

Good marks, however, when a TLA is introduced and defined, and then explained, which is nice,

Much of the lingo is pretty far from how we might want to talk with Virgin (although they mention the dialog back and forth with us they are interested in).

Oh, and did you see the arrow cursor flipping around whenever they showed the on-screen display? Is that real, or an artifact of the demo actually being filmed on a desktop computer and not the seatback? A detail, for sure, but if you’re going to talk about open source, Linux, multi-stream, file servers and the like, expect that same audience to notice things like faked-out demos.

A quicker and more polished on-board tour is here.

Tags: airline, airplane, demo, on-board entertainment, virgin america

• What kind of underwear causes insomnia?
  We don’t have the answer, but we are the #5 hit on ask.com
• MediaMaster: Your music collection is now safe, organized, and accessible anywhere.
  Now in Private Alpha. A year ago we did upfront research on a variety of concepts they were considering. Exciting to see how they are moving forward, and I can’t wait to try it myself.

The Conversation is a fantastic 1974 Coppola film that has surveillance as one of its central themes. There’s a lot of great technology imagery, especially the analog audio that Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) uses to decipher the content of the conversation, and also the surveillance trade show that Caul attends. Here’s a sampling of stills depicting the awesomeness:

The lab, with lots of reel-to-reel and plenty of buttons for Bill DeRouchey.

The trade show, complete with booth babe, and some very 1970s design (environments, hardware, clothing, typography).

Tags: 1970s, analog, audio, booth babe, film, francis ford coppola, gene hackman, harry caul, movie, seventies, technology, the conversation, trade show

• SFist:: I Saw Gavin Newsom
  I sent in this little story to SFist about our encounter with the Mayor at Sheila’s goodbye party
• Terminate and Stay Resident or TSR
  A bit of arcania, I guess. Saw a sticker for a band in a urinal (!) at O’Neill’s pub in San Mateo. The sticker saiid “TSR” and I geekily remembered this old DOS-era technology that I hadn’t thought about for years.
• Depressing but not surprising description of audience research for radio stations
  Get your demographic (narrowly defined) into a room and let ‘em sample a huge number of songs, and rate ‘em. Then tally it up and play ‘em. Yes, yawn.