• More retro video: Year 1999 A.D, a 1967 Philco-Ford prediction flick
  There’s a whole category of cultural/historical/technological analysis one can do by looking back at old visions of the future and considering where and why they diverge (or don’t diverge) from reality.

• Blue Man Group products
  Interesting brand extension

Lululemon got into trouble last month for selling clothing made from a seaweed-based fabric that supposedly had many unique properties. But independent tests revealed that the material was just cotton, and performed like cotton.

Mr. Wilson added that the company probably did not have enough money to test the material back when it started using it 18 months ago. When asked about Lululemon’s product tags and the claims about vitamins and minerals, he said, “That’s coming from the manufacturer. If you feel the fabric, it feels a lot different.”

And it gets even more laughable in the followup story

When told earlier this week about the Times’s test, Dennis Wilson, the founder, chairman and chief product designer, said: “If you actually put it on and wear it, it is different from cotton. That’s my only test of it.”

In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

and The Substance of Style we learn about the dramatic increase in choice for so many products and services, why that is, and what it means to our experience with those products and services.

But let’s not forget that things go other way as well. Like the banana convergence I blogged about before

, apples are a paradox of limited choice.

The United States was once home to more than 10,000 named apple varieties, but nowadays it’s hard to find more than a handful, even at farmers’ markets.

Although theories like those authors put forward (and I’ll throw in the Long Tail too) are useful lenses to help make sense of out what we see there often completely opposite gravities occurring simultaneously. But hey, culture is a complex beast, isn’t it? Because both of the contradictory trends are indeed true.

Steve in Tokyo, 2000

Although we’re still recovering from Bali and Taipei (more pictures and stories coming soon), we’re headed back to Asia at the end of this month. If any folks out there would like to meet for hot-coffee-in-a-can or biiru in Tokyo (Dec. 25 to Jan 2.) or Kyoto (Jan 2. to Jan. 5), let me know.

I recently discovered the Prelinger Archives

of American Ephemera-
an amazing collection of advertising, educational, industrial, and
amateur films.

For anyone into these types of artifacts, this is a veritable buffet.

Design fans, I heartily recommend checking out American Look:
a lovely piece of Chevrolet-sponsored cultural self-definition from 1958:

American Look Part One

American Look Part Two

American Look Part Three

• Paris Sep 07 – a photoset on Flickr
  Photos, observations, and comments from my weekend trip to Paris from September.
• Workshop: Designing Cute Interactive Media
  Cuteness has an effective design philosophy that can be used in many areas to make emotionally engaging user interactive systems.

Shot this video the other day in Taipei. I love the animation of the “it’s okay to walk” guy and how it changes when time is running short (and the pedestrian is encouraged to hurry).

As Stephen Colbert would say, “A wag of the finger” to LimeWire for their somewhat misguided attempt to persuade me, within their software interface, to upgrade to LimeWire pro.

There are examples all over the web of the use of Persuasive Design to guide user actions toward preferred outcomes like purchasing, joining and contributing.

Designer and author Andrew Chak says persuasive design is “really about “supporting the decision process.”

When I’m being upsold, it’s quite possible that my decision will be “no.” In that case, the choices “Later,” “Yes,” and “Why” don’t support me-they confuse me, and keep me from doing what I’m there to do. And that only makes me angry.

My dad received the following offer in the mail: a chance to win a free cremation. If he enters, he’ll have a chance to win each month!

They don’t specify, but I guess that must be each month until you die?

What’s especially fascinating is their connection between cremation and mobility:

“With everyone moving around these days,
placing a loved one in a ‘local’ cemetery
may not be as functional as it used to be.”

Portigal Consulting has been doing some projects recently on mobile devices, but I never thought to include cremation urns in that category.

The best part of the letter is the disclaimer at the end of the second page:

“Please accept our apologies if this letter
has reached you at a time of serious illness
or death in your family.”

How compassionate.