• [from steve_portigal] My Year Without Star Wars [io9] – [Screenwriter/producer reflects on the lessons learned from stepping back from his beloved Star Wars] How many modern blockbusters seem like cargo cult versions of that childhood inspiration? How many times do I have to walk out of a theater thinking "I just paid to see a laundry list of beats that "worked" in Star Wars" before wondering if our collective doorway to archetypal storytelling hasn't become a Trojan Horse? Star Wars may have taught the Hero's Journey to entire generations, but it is our responsibility to use the paradigm and to forge something with its own emotional integrity. All creators imitate, emulate and steal. All maturing artists engage in a dialogue with what came before… but I can't think of a single instance in history when so many of us are so actively engaged in paying homage to a single work of art. Bluntly: we are all cribbing our best moves from the same two-hour movie and it has to stop. There just isn't enough meat on the carcass.

Tags: culture, denial, movies, quickies, reflection, starwars

• [from steve_portigal] Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die [Wired] – [Provocative musing on what the Internet has wrought to outsider enthusiasts, but the piece falls off a cliff after this. I yearned for Chuck Klosterman to make this funnier/insightful] With everyone more or less otaku and everything immediately awesome (or, if not, just as immediately rebooted or recut as a hilarious YouTube spoof), the old inner longing for more or better that made our present pop culture so amazing is dwindling. The Onion’s AV Club—essential and transcendent in so many ways—has a weekly feature called Gateways to Geekery, in which an entire artistic subculture—say, anime, or the Marx Brothers—is mapped out so you can become otaku on it but avoid its more tedious aspects. Here’s the danger: That creates weak otakus. Everything That Ever Was – Available Forever doesn’t produce a new generation of artists—just an army of sated consumers. Why create anything new when there’s a mountain of freshly excavated pop culture to recut, repurpose, and manipulate on your iMovie?

Tags: culture, fandom, geekdom, media, oswalt, otaku, outsider, quickies

• [from steve_portigal] 19 Lessons from United Airlines on How To Build A Crappy Survey [UIE Brain Sparks] – [Jared's detailed deconstruction of a badly written and entirely inappropriate survey - on board a United flight before he can get to the WiFi login screen - let alone find out if there's even a charge for the onboard WiFi - reveals the tragic limitations of badly written surveys and puts the lie to people who shrug off bad questions with "Well, at least you learn *something*". Even more this blog post reveals the emotional and intellectual state of someone who is taking a survey; the external orientation most surveys lack or deny. Required reading.] My biggest worry is the next flight I’ll get on with wifi service will have the exact same survey. If that’s the case, I’ll probably answer all the questions differently, just to mess with their heads. After all, if they’re going to waste my time…

Tags: epic, fail, quickies, survey, uie, umbrage, united

• [from steve_portigal] NoseDial iPhone app – [The craziest workaround I've seen. Also reveals the cost of producing WTF solutions is falling to near zero] Whether you're at the Christmas market, taking a winter walk or out skiing – you don't have to take off your gloves when you want to call your friends on your iPhone anymore. Now you can dial using your nose. NoseDial isn't just a favorites list you can style individually. The app also shows you pictures of your friends and allows you to navigate through your contacts by tilting your iPhone and to then call them using your nose. Forget special touchscreen gloves and iPhone input pens, just call using your nose. This saves money and is a lot more fun.

Tags: app, iphone, longtail, nose, quickies, touchscreen, workaround

Warning, Portland, OR, December 2010

Last week I stopped at a Safeway store in Portland, OR. On my way to the bathroom, I passed through a backstage area with the various HR notices, schedules, and so on. And then, I see this sign, depicting a crazy-eyed dog, and the exhortation: Warning – A customer who wants a sample looks like this. Don’t Forget The Selling Suggestion.

I’m astounded that Safeway would put this sign where customers can see it. I would hope that companies wouldn’t be using anti-customer imagery as motivational posters, but if they are, I would expect that they wouldn’t put it where customers can see it.

Really, Safeway? You think so little of us that you don’t even care if we know how little you think of us?

Tags: backstage, contempt, customers, dog, fail, motivation, safeway

2010 has been an amazing year for us. While we can’t talk about many of the incredible experiences we had doing fieldwork and working with clients, below are some of the highlights that we can share:

• New faces! Our team is ably enhanced by Julie Norvaisas and Wyatt Starosta (also see a conversation with Julie here)
• Steve shared observations of Austin/SXSW, SXSW again, Austin again, Munich, Rome, and gleaners at the Munich airport
• We noted symbols and meaning, branding in the details, the need for authenticity in marketing (and in jeans), and the need for something we’re calling anticipatory design,
• We took umbrage over ridiculous user experiences from United Airlines, airplanes and elevators, hotel elevators, conference badge design, a cupcake store, Lenovo, and a shaver out-of-the-box experience
• We mused about packaging and branding, conceptual collisions, neighborhood erosion, Harley branding dissonance, uncomsumption, localized stereotypes, super-immediate gratification, global norms for question asking, how research informs design, and this thing we call user “needs”
• We tracked provocative, charming and curious messaging, designs and user experiences from a cupcake store (by Steve; by Julie), a parking lot, toilets, Vodafone’s retail outline in Munich, building painters, JetBlue, what’s in the garage, foreign groceries, Devo, and the Savannah police
• We prototyped the ideal research study for Netflix (sadly, we never got the gig)
• We drew inspiration from Eminem, Will.i.am, Jack White, photographer Michael Schmidt, James Toback, fiction in the New Yorker, Douglas Coupland, and Neal Stephenson
• Steve assessed the human impact, micro and macro, of technology and design for interactions, extracted innovation principles from an discomfort-inducing ad for menstruation products for Core77, considered Homer Simpson and global culture for Core77, and interviewed Eric Ludlum (of Core77) for Ambidextrous
• Steve was interviewed for a book about innovation in design for emerging markets and in a podcast with Jared Spool about user interviewing best practices
• We interviewed ourselves for the premiere of Core77′s Wiretap feature
• Steve presented When Not To Follow User-Centered Design Techniques at HFES, Ethnography as a Cultural Practice at PARC, Skill Building for Design Innovators at CHIFOO, Culture, You’re Soaking In it at UPA 2010 in Munich, Integrating User Insight (with Aviva Rosenstein) at SXSW, and Deep-Dive Interviewing Secrets at a UIE Virtual Seminar
• Steve also lectured on improv and creativity for Seattle’s CHI group, Reading Ahead for Adobe and SCAD, innovation skills for Amazon, and synthesizing user research at the Austin Center for Design, Formation Design Group, CHI2010, University of Oregon, PDX IxDA, SF IxDA, and Interaction 10
• We attended November’s User Research Friday 10 and reflected on what we learned; we also led a Thursday workshop for User Research Friday and reflected on what we learned. We also attended last February’s User Research Friday 10 and reflected on what we learned
• Whew!

You can also see previous summaries from 2009 and 2008.

Tags: 2010, all this chittahchattah, blogging, customers, design, history, observations, patterns, portigal consulting, reflection, summary, themes, users, year

• [from steve_portigal] Marrow Donor Campaign Relied on Flirtation, Officials Say [NYTimes.com] – [Guerrilla marketing tactics from the past (?) being used for slightly more virtuous purposes] The recruiters were actually flirtatious models in heels, short skirts and lab coats, asking passers-by for DNA swabs. The registry, Caitlin Raymond International, was paying up to $60,000 a week for the models. The state’s senior assistant attorney general said the registry had hired models based on their photographs and had given them “explicit instructions” to wear heels and short skirts. The registry paid the models to approach potential donors at dozens of malls and events throughout New England. “The models worked the crowds, if you will,” he said. “We were told basically they would engage a lot of younger men with some sort of flirtatious thing: ‘Hey, don’t you want to be a hero? Come on, do this!" If people expressed interest the models — who, for reasons that remain unclear, sometimes also wore electric-blue wigs — would hand them off to registry employees who would take mouth swabs.

Tags: buzz, guerilla, marketing, marrow, quickies

• [from julienorvaisas] Overwhelmed Online Shoppers in UK Can Justbuythisone [Advertising Age] – [Beta site leverages online reviews of many products to lead online shoppers directly to a product.] The explosion of consumer choice makes the internet a giant playground for some, but for the many people who find themselves paralyzed by too many options, Justbuythisone.com is coming. It offers consumers the opportunity to "stop shopping and start enjoying life" by providing just one search result for each category of electrical goods. So if you're looking for a TV for less than $500 it will tell you which one to buy, and give you three concise reasons why. Kyle McGinn was part of the team that came up with the idea during an offline brainstorming week. "We knew that 25% of people are overwhelmed by the choice on price comparison sites and inspired by TED talks on the paradox of choice and the need to sweat the small stuff, we decided to create something utterly simple and extremely useful." It is also built around principles of data visualization.

Tags: choice, justbuythisone, online, quickies, reevo, reviews, shopping, TED, visualization

• [from julienorvaisas] Stephen Hawking’s Radical Philosophy of Science [Big Questions Online] – [Mental models are described as quantifiable manifestations of various interpretations of reality. There can be more than one, but some more closely represent reality.] Model-dependent realism argues that there is no privileged position in the universe — no Archimedean point outside of our brain that we can access to know what reality really is. There are just models. It is not possible to understand reality without having some model of reality, so we are really talking about models, not reality. The tools and methods of science were designed to test whether or not a particular model or belief about reality matches observations made not just by ourselves but by others as well…nearly all scientific models — indeed, belief models of all sorts — can be parsed in such a manner and, in time, found to be better or worse than other models. In the long run, we discard some models and keep others based on their validity, reliability, predictability, and perceived match to reality.
• [from steve_portigal] Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes] [Techcrunch] – [This is our platform for easily and collaboratively assembling ChittahChattah Quickies. Not sure how we'll carry on, but hopefully we'll figure something out]
• [from steve_portigal] Reclaiming the rainbow [OneNewsNow.com] – [The battle for meaning: the dispute over who defines and controls a symbol as a stand-in for the larger debate. This about taking ownership of the story away from the other side. The irony of the rainbow as symbol of diversity and inclusion appears to be lost, however.] An activist fighting for traditional marriage in California is urging Christians to reclaim the rainbow from homosexual-rights activists who have hailed the symbol as their icon of "gay" pride. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the San Diego-based Ruth Institute rightly argues that the rainbow is a sign of God's covenant with man, and she says "We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow."

Tags: delicious, hawking, meaning, models, philosphy, quickies, rainbow, reality, rip, science, symbol

• [from steve_portigal] The future of books is a real page-turner [Sydney Morning Herald] – [With so much prognostication going on, this government effort to foster a conversation about the future of books is refreshing] When in electronic form, storytelling may benefit in ways that no one can yet articulate. This is one reason why the Book Industry Strategy Group, established last year by Kim Carr, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, is seeking public submissions about the future of the industry. It is seeking ideas from writers, educators, librarians, publishers, retailers and – most importantly – readers about how to enhance the Australian publishing industry as an important sector of our economy, society and culture. Will the "deregulation" of the publishing industry, where anyone can self-publish, result in more stories of highly variable quality? Of course it will – just as the printing press did. But it may lead to some new and innovative ways of storytelling, ways that engage the reader in different or deeper ways. [Thanks, Wyatt!!]

Tags: Australia, future, government, publishing, quickies, reading, Reading Ahead, storytelling

• [from steve_portigal] Romance Books Are Hot in the E-Reading Market [NYTimes.com] – [We've commented extensively on how printed books are a means of conveying identity by displaying a key to their contents; something that is lost with e-books. Now here's an example where that limitation provides a benefit] Sarah Wendell is passionate about romance novels. Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests “They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said. So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

Tags: books, content, covers, identity, privacy, quickies, reading, Reading Ahead, romance

• [from steve_portigal] The time-warp room and other medical breakthroughs [CultureBy – Grant McCracken] – [A fascinating example but as usual it's Grant's gentle pokes in his analysis that offer the most value in this post] Coombe End Court, a retirement center in Marlborough, Wiltshire has a "time-warp" room. It’s outfitted with a gramophone, manual typewriters, a telephone made of Bakelite, and furniture from the 1950s. That this "reminiscence room" is loved by residents is not surprising. Who doesn’t like to see the return of an "old friend" from the object world? What captured the attention of the gerontological community (and the magnificent website Retronaut) was that this room as lead to a "dramatic" drop in the need for the anti-psychotic drugs given those who suffer from Alzheimer’s.

Tags: artifact, comfort, history, memories, quickies, retirement, retro, time

• [from steve_portigal] Snowclone [Wikipedia] – A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants". An example of a snowclone is "grey is the new black", a version of the template "X is the new Y". X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases – for example, "comedy is the new rock 'n' roll". Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called "snowclones". [Thanks @mulegirl]
• [from julienorvaisas] The Business of Unfriending People [inc.com] – [Suggests that the social media footprint in our lives is contracting, voluntarily, and explores cultural trends informing that. Is the social media bubble about to burst (or at least diffract)?] New evidence suggests that as social media gets bigger, we're getting smaller. This is the growing trend of descaling—the pruning of our social lives on the Internet. Here we take a media, which is structurally perfect for massive scaling at low cost, and use it to make the Internet a more meaningful, emotional, and intimate experience.This new sense of intimacy derives from two places. The first is our growing sensitivity and sophistication about privacy. Secondly, this trend to intimacy isn't relegated to the digital world. It's happening across our economy. The pre-crisis consumer has become a smart shopper, more concerned with maximizing both the value of his or her purchase, but also actively supporting the brands, ideas, and friends that share his or her values.

Tags: bubble, culture, descaling, facebook, internet, intimacy, language, media, meme, quickies, social

I made my second trip to Austin a couple of months ago and was struck again by the Keep Austin Weird ethos. Once you start seeing it, it’s fairly pervasive (i.e., tie-dyed souvenir shirts, tote bags, bumper stickers, keychains, etc. at the airport). Of course, memes become co-opted and corrupted. Here are two examples I found

A McDonald’s mural by David Soames gives new meaning to the term “counter culture”

Keeping Jesus Weird – a different and unpredictable faith conversation – offers a Ladies’ Night event, where women are the topic. I count two memes being repurposed here

I’m not sure that “Keep [thing that you're selling] Weird” is going to work (even in Austin) for every possible brand, product, service, religion, or combination thereof, but it’s amusing to watch the purveyors try real hard to make it happen!

Tags: austin, authenticity, city, culture, jesus, marketing, McDonalds, meme, slogan, texas, weird

• [from steve_portigal] Tesla Motors resolves nagging trademark dispute [MarketWatch] – [Good contrast between brand meanings] Tesla Holding is a successor to the massive, state-owned Tesla conglomerate that churned out ubiquitous, communist-era electronics. Prior to the overthrow of the totalitarian regime in 1989, visitors to what was then Czechoslovakia were often treated to hotel rooms outfitted with a small, black-and-white Tesla TV, capable of picking up only a few channels. According to Tesla Holding’s website, the company also at one point provided transceivers for more than 60% of the radio and TV broadcasts in the former Soviet Union. In its current form, the Czech firm offers technologies for water treatment and military communications, while guarding a trademark it claims to have registered in dozens of countries…In spite of its frequent identification as a household name from the communist era, the modern Tesla Holding has sought to popularize its brand. The Tesla name adorns Tesla Arena in Prague where recent events have included a concert by 50 Cent.

Tags: branding, meaning, naming, quickies, tesla, trademark