This is where the Vostok crew blogs
I think of UCD (User-Centered Design) a little as I think of Christianism. The fact I’m an atheist today does not stop me from recognizing that some Christian values have shaped my worldview and my belief system in very positive ways.
Ariel Guersenzvaig, who knows me well and understands my take on user-centered design, refered me to Apple’s Secret? It Tells Us What We Should Love, an article that questions UCD as a tool for radical innovation. I’ve been moving from true believer in UCD to these positions over time and, although I think it’s easy to use Apple as an example, I consider this article by Roberto Verganti full of true statements:
User-centered innovation is perfect to drive incremental innovation, but hardly generates breakthroughs. In fact, it does not question existing needs, but rather reinforces them, thanks to its powerful methods.
Firms that create radical innovations make proposals. They put forward a vision. In doing that, of course, they take greater risks.
Thanks to this process these companies are serial radical innovators. Their non-user-centered proposals are not dreams without a foundation. Sometimes they fail. But when they work, people love them even more than products that have been developed by scrutinizing their needs.
User centered-design (observation, interviews, user testing, etc. ) is for those who want to improve something existing, not for those who want to create something new. Those need to understand human nature but don’t need to microscope every little behavior and take it as a starting point.
This is a house with no exterior windows, only skylights. It’s percieved as a closed space from the outside but if you see it from the inside it gives a great sense of openness:
It kept me thinking about isolation, percieved isolation and openness. Do their inhabitants feel free? Do outside people see it as a jail or, even worse, as a bunker? How it would be to have children inside? How seing only the sky would affect your mood if you lived there? Would that be a good solution to ugly sorroundings?
The house can be found in Obama, a Japanese town. It was designed by Suppose, a Japanese design and architecture firm which has other interesting and provoking works.
Our admired Keko Ponte (we want to cosmomeal with you!) suggested a redesign for renfe.es, übercrappy and ultrabuggy website for the Spanish railroad company. This is his proposal:
Just call. It’ll be easier.
Today is Apple fanboy day. Go get one of these 101 Apple t-shirts, popcorn and a beer so you can fully enjoy the Keynote.
Chances of surviving a plane crash according to statistics:
Plane chrash on Hudson river:
What would you chose?
Kanya Hara, art director of Muji, explains Japanese design taking knives as an example:
Japanese cooks who have special skills prefer knives without any ergonomic shape. A flat handle is not seen as raw or poorly crafted. On the contrary, its perfect plainness is meant to say, “You can use me whichever way suits your skills.” The Japanese knife adapts to the cook’s skill (not to the cook’s thumb). This is, in a nutshell, Japanese simplicity.
The piece, translated by Oliver Reichenstein is also part of a larger article about Japanese aesthetics published at the NYTimes under the title Beauty and the Bento Box where also John Maeda, Nick Currie and Denis Dutton go through the subject.
Worth reading.
When I see these things I feel designing websites doesn’t make any sense at all anymore:
(thanks denegro)
This is how movies are made nowadays.
ALERT: not suitable for those who want to keep believing.
I.D. will close. It was announced recently on a press note published on FC:
Since 1954, I.D. has served as one of America’s leading critical magazines covering the art, business, and culture of design. Today it is with regret that we announce its closure. The January/February issue of I.D. will be its last; subscribers to I.D. will receive Print magazine for the balance of their subscription.
Image ©Fast Company
I used to buy every number of it when I was a junior interaction designer. It was fascinating to see those amazing projects and prototypes where technology met real atoms. You couldn’t (and still can not) see that in Spain. I even dreamt of working for the companies mentioned there: Pentagram, IDEO, Teague… After some time I felt that the interaction side of it was weak and form + firm was somehow more important for the Magazine than real life projects and I quitted buying it.
I don’t buy design magazines any more. Well, somtimes I pick Metropolis at a press kiosk in some internationa airport (it’s hard to find in Spain) but I mostly read about design on the web. I feel kind of sad, though. It was part of my professional life for some time.
Spanish online newspapers seem to be clueless when it comes to designing their homepages. Their strategy seems to be “put everything on the homepage, no matter how”. No order, no sequence, no freakin’ idea about reading patterns. I’m not making this up, check these screenshots, they speak for themselves:
The images correspond to El País, El Mundo and ABC.
These structures bleed consensus and politics from every pixel. I’ve been in a couple of these projects and I understand the politics behind a newspaper redesign. All the “we cannot harm our current readers” and “we need to find a spot for this and that” only leads to having the same again and again.
And the constant increase of screen resolution is not helping but increasing the damage. Remember when most newspapers went from 800×600 to 1024? Instead of using those extra pixels to make everything bigger and give some white space they came up with an extra column for junk.
Much has been said about how to renew online journalism. If they just started by questioning these obsolete structures… Jeez… I am so looking for the day when a big exec has the guts to get rid of commitees, consensus and departmental presence to make something different, some design where you see a strategy, a point, a purpose.
Vostok está buscando una persona con perfil técnico, media jornada o prácticas profesionales, para trabajar presencialmente en Madrid. Buscamos gente con potencial, con miras formar a parte del equipo más adelante.
Necesitamos a alguien con conocimientos prácticos sobre desarrollo web (html, css, ssh, xml, ftp y demás acrónimos), y algunos conocimientos de programación (javascript y php o rails). Preferimos candidatos con nociones de diseño, pero si eres muy bueno en la parte técnica y estás dispuesto a aprender, también nos gustaría saber de ti.
Somos un equipo pequeñito, por lo que importa la química personal. Te adelantamos que nos gustan las personas que le prestan atención al detalle, con una amplia gama de intereses y con mucha pasión por su disciplina.
Es imprescindible presentar un portafolio, sin importar si los proyectos son profesionales, personales o académicos. Si está montado en una web recibes puntos extras. Envía el enlace o PDF con una carta de presentación a hello@vostok.es.
I found this pretty illustrative. Too bad I don’t know its author (source here).
UPDATE: Here is the author info (thanks Ale).
