every. single. time. we. go. online…. fail.
Archive for the 'Design' Category
A few weeks ago, I got the chance to see a private screening of Objectified at the Institute of Design by Director Gary Hustwit (director of Helvetica). The movie was spectacular. It had the same characteristic cinematography as Helvetica, and featured sweet tunes from El Ten. The movie featured Paola Antonelli (MOMA), [...]
Obama, speaking at Georgetown:
One of the changes that I would like to see — and I’m going to be talking about in this in weeks to come — is seeing our best and our brightest commit themselves to making things — engineers, scientists, innovators. For so long, we have placed at the top of our [...]
I was just revving a diagram of bettr@ today and looking for an icon for the Amazon kindle. Search for one on Google. You won’t find one. Okay, then search for “ipod icon” in images.
Now, there are already problems with the naming of the Amazon Kindle (yes, it reminds me of Fahrenheit [...]
Sometimes I sit through lonnnng classes at ID. I, like most design students, routinely get inspired by mentioned of authors and articles, ideas outside the four walls of the academic institution.
Sometimes, these extra connections are extremely useful and welcome. Other times, they are just noise and are unabashed yakshaving. I was [...]
Last week, we sat down with senior professors at the Institute of Design the other day, we got some great feedback about Bettr@ and its current business model and interface.
In particular, Tom MacTavish (adjunct Professor and former Motorola executive) had some good ideas about goal setting and referred me to Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model. [...]
Tomorrow (or I guess today, at this late hour) starts the first day of Design Analysis at the Institute of Design, taught for the first time by Pip (of Doblin fame).
For this class, I’m a teaching assistant, which is great for multiple reasons. The first of which, I think that design analysis and synthesis [...]
Since August, I’ve been working on a project in an office on the 4th floor. I sit in front of a 30″ LCD screen working on wireframes and product roadmaps for the majority of the day. People walk by and comment on the screen “holy @#$%, that’s the biggest screen ever!” — “You [...]
Cookie Monster
Originally uploaded by neilbetter
Alan Cooper drops some awesome knowledge on us that tells us why we need to have empathy in designing stuff, (like Bettr@)
Most digital products today emerge from the development process like a monster emerging from a bubbling tank.
Developers, instead of planning and executing with their users in mind, end up creating [...]
In creating Bettr@, sometimes I talk to people who aren’t exactly motivated to improve themselves. They just don’t get it. Maybe their kids need to learn new things, but they don’t have the time to with everything else going on in their busy lives.
Here’s the rub. People are living longer than [...]
::sigh::
Dave introduced me to this money quote the other day by Yves Behar: “Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal”.
The price in Microsoft’s case, $300 million.
fail.
This summer, I was at bar called Weeds here in Chicago with some friends when a guy came up to us with a styrofoam container that had a handle on it like a cooler and said “Tamales?”
No, he didn’t work at the bar, and no he didn’t speak the greatest English so I wasn’t sure [...]
we’re busy trying to figure out what the guest experience is going to look like on bettr@ and what the hook might be to get someone to join an already awesome content aggregation site.
obviously, we think that guidance and mentorship is a huge part of informal learning, but is it large enough to warrant [...]
Lately, I’ve been reflecting about the meaning of being in “beta”. Web startups are interesting because they can always be in motion, adding new features and functions on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis (though that’s a little overboard).
The iPhone is kind of like being in beta. You can add bells [...]
The NYTimes ran an article very relevant to design.
According to the article, The Macklin Intergenerational Institute developed a program called Xtreme Aging as a sensitivity training program for schools, churches, workplaces and other groups that have contact with the elderly.
Increasingly, these types of simulation programs are going to be important for designers [...]
