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At Lextant's opening reception for IDSA's mideast conference a few weeks ago we did an quick Pecha Kucha type event where people came up and presented 20 slides about something, anything.
My presentation was on where I typically find or have found inspiration. Inspiration for what? Anything that needs to drive me for the moment. Usually design ideas, concepts, creations, brainstorms etc.
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Had a good weekend recording several Kaossilator jam sessions.
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So after some fun frisbee today I opened up my GMAIL and saw a reply from Jeff at Neoformix. I really dig his blog, lots of cool data visualization methods on there and recently I saw that he was available for potential gigs. So I emailed him, asking him about some of our current challenges in finding an application to do text analysis.
He posed an interesting question to me.
Are you thinking primarily about more easily extracting understanding out of your focus group and interview transcripts ? What exactly do you mean by a topic ? Do you have preexisting topics of interest defined with associated vocabulary ? Or are you thinking of a bottom-up approach that assembles clusters of words related through co-occurrence and considers each cluster a topic ?
Right away I think to myself, bottom up. We what that bottom up process, but all to often in research, ya really don't know for sure just what people want to see. This got me into thinking of asking the crew at work to visualize the output. Dream a little, make it up, tell me what you expect to see. For some researchers or folks in general this could be impossible to compute, you need data first right? Get that dreamers cap on, whip it up, think it, dream it, visualize it. Then we can look at that and better understand to an extent what you want the tool to do.
Come to think of it, this approach would be handy for my own internal survey tool project PRIME. Maybe I should ask the folks that use it, since many of them are designers, to tell me what the experience looks like in the browser, give me it all. Not just a screenshot, I was the firefox bar up there, etc, alive and real, if fantasy of course.
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There's been a trend in my head lately. Personal Data. I personally, am consumed and infatuated, damn near addicted to personal data. The internet has brought me so much of this personal data. My blog hits, analytics, youtube stats, feedbuner data on my blog, tag clouds in delicious, you name it, everything I do on the web has a data trace and while the media goes after the whole fear angle of your data online, I kinda like the empowerment aspect. I see my data, I can really see my affect.
In products lately there's been a trend in data as well. Products like Nike Fitness, The Body Media arm band used in the biggest loser show, the stress eraser, and other products revolve around your own physical and chemical personal data. Thats pretty cool too.
Then theres products that infuse data into them like the Ambient Orb makers, they have that energy gizmo that connects to your wall outlet and informs you on how you consume energy, prompts you to save.
A few years ago we tested thermostat systems that you could control online, informing you of their energy usage. Then there's smart ovens and washers that tell how many cycles your washer has made.
Alot of car junkies get off on downloading all the various tweakable bits of car data. It wont be long before we'll be able to see data in everything.
Data is golden. Data is empowering. I love the data. Actually I like data that informs me and teaches me like the Nike Fitness product, or like YouTube or Google Analytics data.
Not all data is equal. Old schools systems like the gas monitoring thing on the side of my house, I'd really like to understand that data better. Someday it may be nice to jack into anything and see if its really all that effecient at what its doing vs just taking its word for it. Maybe even buildings can share their data on how humans use them. Maybe my cat can inform me of its data.
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Yesterday I was really burnt out. There are times where I feel i've come so far yet often I'm still surrounded by constraints that bring me down. I have to continually learn to no carry the weight of others in vibe, expression, or anything. Its all he said she said dead weight, you walk out the door and its done, ya gotta move on.
Music is one of the best ways for me to retune into who I am inside. Sometimes I get so wound up by negative closed minded people it drives me nuts. I myself get closed, and then I start reflecting off that. Not a good palce to be.
Need tunes.
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Yesterday on the way home from work I conducted experimental "kaossil-driving", that is playing the Kaossilator while driving.
Now its not as tricky as it sound really. Now it'd be nice to connect the Kaossilator directly up to my stereo but I can't do that so I have one mini earphone piece in one ear while I drive.
Playing the Kaossilator itself while driving is pretty easy, ya gotta of course keep you're eyes on the road and let your fingers do the action for ya. It took me about 6 or 7 tries to come up with a good jam while driving. I usually ended up either picking at random either a really slow bmp or a super fast one. But when I found something nice, it was fun to blindly create music while driving. Probably not recommended for everyone.
The other day I picked up the Korg Mini KP, essetentially a smaller version of the KP3, without the sampler. Part of me really didn't need this miniKP, I had the KP3 afterall, but now whenever jamming out a Kaossilator tune, I need the MiniKP to run it through, just to make sound even sweeter. The added battery portability of the MiniKP is also very nice. I wish the KP3 had that, though I'm sure it'd eat batteries like crazy.
I like to think that my skills with the Kaossilator are getting better and already I'm hungry for new sounds, but thats where the miniKP, and KP3 come into play giving me something run to listen to.
Tags: kaossilator, kp3, minkp
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This morning I read a nicely made PDF about Being Human in 2010 and beyond. It was a forward thinking document filled with gesture based ui's, agumented reality, smart robots that learn, ideal this, fantical ideal that.. it was whimsical goodness.
Later it got me into thinking wait a sec, thats proposed future, what about likelyhood to be adopted future?
Often in design and in research especially we like to think we are crafting THE next experience for people. THIS is the way it will go down, THIS is it. Rather than designing for a set experience, which in all honesty is not our's to begin with, we should design for a state of mind that conveys a whole slew of intended experiences.
Building that foundation for a potential experience frees it and frees your mind to possibility that you do not own the future experience of that product or service, the wielder, the customer owns that experience.
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Starbucks stock is still hovering around 17 bucks and I know that in time it will rise again and all will be well with the company. But folks around me insist that Starbucks, the concept, the powerhouse, the game changing latte weidling third place construct is history. McDonald's is moving in. Ummm you mean like captain cina-melt and big mac's are taking over the third place? My third place?
Starbucks coined the term 3rd place when they launched their store concept. Home is 1st place, then work is 2nd.. and coffee lounging is 3rd.
But now it appears or at least people keep telling me Starbucks is goin down, that model o biz will fail, boom crash.. but i just don't see it happening. I never see my love for a yummy latte coming from the banner of a place that serves me big mac's. It seems oddly wrong to me. Its like getting fine china from a homeless person, I just don't see it, I suppose they could have some fine china on them somewhere but odds are, they probably don't. But again, hey you say they might.. may be.
Anyways, I just see too many compelling factors. Apple deals, free wifi, good coffee, established infrastructer base, it seems to all click really. Granted its a recession and all I see that, but thats tempoary. People are still blowing cash on luxury items. That's what I think has shifted in terms for Starbucks, they worked hard to be established in people's everyday commute, everyday juant into the real world. Then when they got there, they exploded, they were part of life, no longer a luxury, they were essential. Then the market explodes, fear arrives and reccession sets in and the one staple of life goes where? People insit it dies, yet I feel it just goes back to being a luxury item. Still thriving but only in small occurences.
In th end, while my $4 dollar latte has shifted back into the luxury category for my consumption, it will never fall under the banner of "do you want fries with that?" cause that my friends is not my 3rd place.
2 hot cherry pies for a buck, that, however is a deal.
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My What? You're thought leadership project.. how's that going? Ummm whaa?
You're blog, how's it going...! OH my blog.. well first.. call it a frickin blog dude!
Corporate america is entertaining. Forever they ignored, mocked and made fun of blogs, now they are swarming to the concept and hell they've decided as usual to rewrite the rules and the very construct of what a blog is, its not a journal of ideas and thoughts its portal for thought leadership. Its a thought leadership initiative!
Pishposh I say. Though that classic predictable thinking from them.
I have a client going on and on about figuring out this whole marketing gig, we gotta get in on thought leadership in social media.. oh you mean make a blog, yeah well wake the F up dude, yeah no shit.
They also used the term "earned media" as something they really needed to get out there. Its another marketing term for "umm we need to show people that we really care about stuff..." maybe its like saying "I need to get some face time..." meaning I need to talk to someone. You could just say you need to talk to someone, but in the corporate world we cant say that. We must not be obvious to ourselves or our customers, that doesnt make sense.
Yesterday I was talking to Max, a new recruit here, about company he was working with that had this special saw that was best usable by right handed folks, if you were left handed, it was very awkward and potentially dangerous to use. Ideally it needed be a product that was controlled via either hand. Of course the client later opted in the end not to make a design for everyone and go with what they percieved as the majority population of right handed dominant folks. This happens often in design. Part of me would like to take a concept that is very near to the heart of stake holders and turn the tables on them. Like take something that they are used to using with their right dominant hands, and then make it left handed or change it in such a way that they couldnt use it to its fullest extent and then see how they feel. Sometimes clients cant connect with an issue by voice of the customer, or video, or images, or even in the loss of sales, they can't seem to fully connect with the big idea thats when I say we put them in the world of their customers. Heh.
Ahhh well, crazy week... gotta split!
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