Like before, we’ve asked students in our Design Research class to regularly blog or post pictures to flickr as a way to exercise their noticing skills, as well as having a chance to tell stories to each other. You can check out their efforts
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here and
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Via PopSci, comes Granny’s Inbox

This connected printer uses a phone line to periodically dial into an e-mail account that only certain people can send to. Then it automatically prints new messages, even ones with photos. HP Printing Mailbox with Presto presto.com; $150

I was intrigued/amused because of this: a concept from work we did at GVO back in early 2001 (not for HP).

I don’t mean to imply that “we thought of it first” because no doubt we weren’t the first ones to come up with the idea; no doubt our client had probably thought of it as well. It’s amazing to see the same ideas come up over and over again (the fridge with the LCD screen is one of my favorite examples). It doesn’t mean they are good ideas or bad ideas. Sometimes they are just obvious ideas. It depends on who the company is and what the time period is. Push-printing seems pretty ridiculous in 2006, with “Grandma” (an aside rant – that’s an incredibly annoying but prevasive stereotypical user that everyone who has no clue always wants to design for) no doubt being fully capable of sharing her own photos via flickr or email, and not really needing this.

But once again you can see that ideas are relatively easy. Connecting your ideas to something relevant from culture, company, brand, customers – that continues to be the real challenge I see.

The Seattle Monorail is no longer the dream it once represented

Repairing the monorail is not always easy. Some parts are unique. After the collision last fall, the scene shop of the Seattle Opera was hired to build new monorail doors.

Wow – I guess that’s the get ‘er done attitude I wrote about before, but also the challenges of non-standard designs that seem common in transit infrastructure that I also wrote about earlier.

We did an unplanned meal shopping thing at Safeway the other day – went in for that night’s meal, thinking “let’s get some fish, and maybe some vegetables.” We check out the fish and choose Dover Sole, relatively bland. We think about some spices and I go off to the spice aisle for something from Zatarains or whoever has that silhouetted dancing chef (anyone?), but then we see this pretty cool display right in front of our noses (there’s so much crap on display in these stores that I guess we tend to look past it when possible) – a variety of spices and marinades.

The fish-prepping man was incredibly nice, very genial, and asked lots of questions as he prepared our food (“how spicy do you like it?”, etc.). We could get the spices on the fish, or on the side. He pointed out another flavor they had but didn’t have room for in the display. We went from ingredients to meal with an enjoyable and custom bit of service (yeah, you can buy flavored/spiced fish and chicken, already done, but this was done at that moment, just for us).

Of course, there were no ingredients on these containers and if you’ve ever read the packages on marinades and flavoring spices you’ve probably noticed the ridiculous amount of salt they contain. We usually comparison shop at length until we find something that is not going to drown us in NaCl. Well, as you can imagine, the fish was spicy and really really really really salty. Each bit was like someone held your tongue with a pair of tongs and held a container of free-running salt above your head for a full minute.

Interestingly, I don’t blame Safeway for that. I take responsibility – caveat emptor – for purchasing a likely-to-be-salty product without finding out more. I compliment Safeway for providing a value-added experience (with the quality of the service – the human – really making it work). I guess we won’t do that next time, and will take the prep burden back on ourselves.

also: I thought the design of the marinade dispensers was kinda cool, allowing you to measure and presumably prevent overpouring.

Some recent product recalls

Wild Planet Toys Inc. of San Francisco is recalling 273,000 Jet Streamers Water Blasters pool toys. When partially filled with water, the pool toy can stand upright on the pool floor with the rigid narrow end pointed upward, posing an impalement risk.

— LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. of Emeryville is recalling 186,000 Playground Activity Centers. A child’s arm can become caught in the activity center’s plastic tube.

— Olympus Imaging America Inc. of Center Valley, Pa., is recalling 1.2 million Olympus 35mm film cameras. A defect with the flash circuit in the cameras can cause it to smoke and overheat when the camera is turned on, posing a burn hazard.

— Syratech Corp. of East Boston, Mass., is recalling 10,000 frog, fish and duck lawn sprinklers. The plastic body of the lawn sprinkler can crack when placed under intense water pressure, and pieces of it can break off and be projected 5 to 10 feet in the air.

— Pier 1 Imports (U.S.) Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, is recalling 4,300 Ming television stands. If a person leans on the stand’s drawer when open, the unit can tilt forward and cause a television on top to slide off, posing a risk of injury or death.

— Ballard Designs Inc. of Atlanta is recalling 775 candles and candle sets. The packaging or holder can ignite, posing a fire hazard.

— Agio International Co. Ltd. of Hong Kong is recalling 33,800 Garden Treasures steel dome fireplaces. Touch-up paint used on the fireplace’s exterior can ignite during use, posing a fire hazard.

— True Religion of Los Angeles is recalling 150 hooded fleece jackets. A drawstring is threaded through the hood, posing a strangulation hazard to children.

— Onward Manufacturing of Waterloo, Ontario, Mi-T-M Corp. of Peosta, Iowa, and Deere & Co. of Moline, Ill. are recalling 3,100 John Deere gas barbecue grills. Operating the grill in windy conditions can blow the flame under the control panel, causing the grill to overheat or cause flashbacks. Flames could damage the hose that supplies gas to the burner, causing an uncontrolled flame. Also, the grill’s control knobs could overheat, resulting in burns to hands.

— Deere & Co. of Moline, Ill., is recalling 16,000 John Deere X300 Select Series lawn tractors. A problem in the manufacturing process could cause damage to the circuit in the interlock module. If the module fails, the mower blades will be able to run with no operator on the tractor seat.

— Kindermusik International Inc. of Greensboro, N.C., is recalling 10,000 cage bells. If the bell inside the instrument is damaged during manufacturing, the bell can be pulled out of the instrument, posing a choking hazard.

— Triangle Tube/Phase III of Blackwood, N.J., is recalling 3,000 water heaters. The burner plate and flue hood seal on the water heaters can fail due to an improper seal, causing a leak of flue gases and deadly carbon monoxide.

— Gotham Architectural Lighting, a division of Acuity Lighting Group Inc. of Conyers, Ga., is recalling 4,700 lighting fixtures. The reflector/trim pieces may not be properly attached to each other. The lower portion of the reflector/trim assembly could detach and fall from the ceiling, striking people below.

Of course, being injured by a product you’ve purchased is not funny, but something about the tone of the descriptions is funny (if you find police blotter sections of local papers funny, then you’ll know what I mean here) in a Simpsonsesque fashion (or the famous German Forklift Safety Video).

And in blogosphere synchronicity, Niti’s last story in this post is a slightly more sober take on a product recall.

The SF Chron devotes a fair amount of the front section and most of their Sunday Style section to stories and photo spreads about a new mall opening in San Francisco. Granted, it’s not the front page or anything, and we don’t expect hard news, but does it have to be such blatant content of commercial interest? It’s one thing when the local community papers write about small businesses, some quid pro quo for advertising dollars before, during, or after, but a big-city newspaper? Yuck.

Meanwhile, I only knew get ‘er done as the catch-phrase of Larry the Cable Guy, but I am noticing it now in stories about construction, like the above photo from the building of this new mall, or the re-opening of our local Devil’s Slide road. I guess it’s another example of cultural reverse engineering

; presumably the working-class salt-of-the-earth lingo of construction works was where Larry picked up that particular phrase.

On Monday is Paola Antonelli at Stanford.

Tuesday, after MarCamp wraps up, is Bruce Sterling at CCA.

Let me know if you’ll be at any of these?

Throw in Pho in Daly City on Monday, dinner at Le Charm on Wednesday, a presentation to the San Francisco branch of the Taiwan Design Center, and our class at CCA…next week promises to be busy in a few different directions.

A videotape from Fuji. The front and spine labels that come in the package should fit the indented area perfectly; at least that’s my expectation based on decades of buying magnetic media. But these ones don’t. I figure that they switched suppliers of either labels at some point and decided to stick with the remaining supply of the other.

99% of the time it wouldn’t matter, but I was actually delivering these tapes to a client, and that little extra edge of unprofessionalism was kind of a bummer.

This one is for Niti – about the “without borders” brand increasing in popularity, at least with a certain flavor of organziation.

There’s Acupuncturists Without Borders, for instance, which is featuring its Katrina recovery efforts on its website with the distinctive tag line, “We Stick Bayou.”

There’s Clowns Without Borders, whose members apparently function as a traveling USO show for children and other audiences in war-torn countries.

There’s Engineers Without Borders, whose website includes a quote from former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn on empowering people and a regular feature on the “Sustainable and Appropriate Solution of the Month.”

There’s Grantmakers Without Borders, which seems to understand that a better world won’t happen without some funding.

I was hoping to find Zoologists Without Borders, but there is no such group – yet. There is, however, down at that end of the alphabet, Veterinarians Without Borders

Clowns…[shudder]

[via Agenda]

I was thinking about how to describe this mess of a Safeway receipt when I read a post on Niblettes

that mentioned “brand diarrhea.”

[as I’ve said, I won’t call the person Niblettes, I’ll call him John, but I will call the blog Niblettes. This is my brand aphasia. Or silliness threshold]

They’ve jammed every form of bonus/status/ad/info at the end. For this purchase, the checkout dude even stopped afterwards and recited a lengthy speech referring me to the information located on the bottom of the receipt that I should check out if I had time. His tone suggested there was maybe something special there that I hadn’t noticed, something specific they would want me to find. But what?

He then called me Mr. Portugal and also gave me $100 cash-back, even though I had only paid for $80. I returned the other $20.

I was pretty intrigued by the discounted gas purchase available. But there’s no info on where to get that! Or any info about how to find out where to get that! Nothing on the back, either. Which makes it basically a useless offer if we can’t redeem it!

I await that heavenly day when I earn my free deli sandwich!