Dan Taylor is a plagiarizing individual, of questionable character. He includes a ridiculous legal disclaimer on his site and elsewhere states “I encourage professionalism in Industrial and other Design fields” but his front page includes an enormous chunk of text lifted wholesale from portigal.com

I go beyond the reach of traditional research to discover new insights about how people, businesses and governments; set policy, work, play, shop, entertain, eat, and live their lives around my clients’ products, services, and other “stuff”.

The services that I provide help my keep clients’ costs down, profits up and competitive advantage high.

On their own, these insights are powerful tools to inform the ongoing decisions that clients make. My specialty is recommending specific actions that are responses to these insights, including:

* improvements to existing products and services
* improvements to public policy
* improvements to infrastructure
* ideas for new products and features
* corporate branding and positioning
* new applications for existing technologies
* specific implications for design
* new positioning for existing products
* new strategic directions

This is lazy, wrong, immoral, and scummy. Do not hire Dan Taylor.

The ID Magazine Annual Design Review page shows last year’s cover while the Current Issue page show’s last month’s cover.

Old media acting very very old. Is it any wonder that the Business Week/IDSA IDEA awards have been all over the blogosphere for a couple of weeks and I’ve seen nothing about these? I thought at one point the two awards were equally prestigious, but I dunno about ID mag. They aren’t online, so they’re hard to blog about. Is that the only reason?

But let’s look a little at some of the content. The jurors (and editors) did a good job at pointing out good and bad things about selected items. Although I began to wonder at what point do these negative aspects of a design become absolute deal-breakers?

Veneerware Disposable Plates – Design Distinction

Conceived as an alternative to paper or Styrofoam…made from bamboo taken right from the cane. They’re meant to be tossed away but at $11 for a set of eight, “That’s some costly disposability,”…the plates raised a larger discussion about garbage. “They are biodegradable but that doesn’t mean they’l find their way to a place where they can actually biodegrade.”

Z-Series Ironing Board – Design Distinction

Polder’s new ironing board has thin, flat legs, made of two sheet-metal panels sandwiching a polypropylene core, which end in protective nonskid bumpers…But as much as the jurors liked the product, they raised aneyebrow at the price. At $130, “it feels a little untenable,”

American Red Cross Preparedness Start Kit – Honorable Mention

Chan unfortunately injured his finger trying to open it.

What the hell is wrong with this picture? These are award winners? More expensive disposable plates, a first aid kit that injured a juror, and an “untenable” ironing board?

Elsewhere, the Sony Handycam HDR-HC1 Video Camera gets an Honorable Mention, “Granted, it’s only 3 megapixels,” as if that’s insufficient for most uses? The Birkis Pro Clog received an Honorable Mention even though they only had a photograph, saying “Maybe it’s more comfortable on the foot.” They gave a design award to a shoe that they couldn’t experience?

I appreciate the skepticism of the jurors – the Nike Considered shoe that they don’t believe is actually purchasable, the W Line tennis racquet that offers a bigger sweet spot, a claim that the jurors saw as something that every manufacturer makes – but why do those ones win?

The furniture jurors decided that they would consider price in their judging. But they selected a $9450 couch, and a felt material assemblage that “at these prices – $850 per yard for rugs, $1,680 per yard for cushions – the pieces are more likely to become heirlooms than landfill.” Doesn’t seem like they stuck to their guns.

Meanwhile, the equipment jurors (specifically Ted Selker) sneer “All of these things have a real purpose and solve a real problem. These aren’t consumer products that some people are buying because of some ad. These things have to be reliable, honest, and serve a serious function.” How ID could publish that line when elsewhere in the same issue they are judging award-winning consumer products is beyond me. Where Selker gets his contempt for “consumers” who just watch ads and do whatever the fuck they want, I guess, is another question.

Being cynical about design awards (or hell, any form of awards) isn’t novel. My concern is not so much with what things deserved to win, I honestly don’t care, but the hypocrisy of the decision making process, which they reveal in some lame attempt at transparency.

It’s hard to have much interst in this magazine from this point on.

Todd writes, over at the adaptive path blog

Focusing exclusively on tasks and goals means that you tend to ignore or de-emphasize all of the activities that people engage in that are specifically not goal-oriented. It also means that you will often ignore the messy jumble of activities that take place around but are not oriented toward your system. This is not always problematic but it quickly becomes so when you are designing for multiple contexts and mediums. When it comes to designing for the total experience, the activities that have little to do with the system you are designing are often just as important as those that are central to it. More than ever before, people switch from one context to another rapidly and often. They were in the outskirts of Cleveland mowing their lawn then the cell phone rang and suddenly they’re planning a trip to Thailand.

The thesis of the piece, as I read it, is not simply to shift methodologies (do ethnography and forget usability) but to change the fundamental way that we structure and act on the information we gather about the people we are designing for.

It’s a great challenge for organizations, and for consultants, because there’s powerful cultural infrastructure that drives what is an acceptable piece of new knowledge, and of course, what isn’t. In order to see how you might act on something – what do we DO with this information – requires a shift in perspective. And those don’t happen overnight, when they do happen.

Bricoleur

A bricoleur is a person who creates things from scratch, is creative and resourceful: a person who collects information and things and then puts them together in a way that they were not originally designed to do.

This can apply to actual stuff, but also to ideas or concepts. I certainly resonate with this approach to synthesis. Thanks to Stacy Surla for this one!

Wabi-sabi

Japanese aesthetic based on the acceptance of transience, described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”

Andrew Juniper claims, “if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi.” Richard R. Powell summarizes by saying “It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.”

(edited from Wikipedia link above)
Little light on examples, one can imagine things we find in nature, or maybe antique furniture or maybe the undesigned and Beta-y software/web of Google and MySpace?

Another one I’ve heard but don’t always have handy, maybe blogging it will help me. Or you? Poka-yoke

Poka-yoke (pronounced “POH-kah YOH-kay”) a method of preventing errors by putting limits on how an operation can be performed in order to force the correct completion of the operation.

E.g. the inability to remove a car key from the ignition switch of an automobile if the automatic transmission is not first put in the “Park” position

(edited from above Wikipedia link)

In The “nod” and other acts of rudeness in the consumer society Grant takes inexplicable offense to The Nod – the phenomenon where an eye-contact/chin gesture is exchanged between two people who drive the same vehicle, use the same computer, or whatever.

But I have to say “the nod” creeps me out. I don’t want to be a co-conspirator in someone else’s act of self congratulation.

I am pleased that you believe your choice of computer or car or browser makes you look riskier or indie-er. But leave me out of it. The fact that we share consumer choices, put that down to coincidence. The moment you start sending me the nod for my MINI is the moment I take it to the used-car lot and see if I can’t trade it in for a Nod-proof Valiant.

Hey, to each their own, but one wonders why Grant constructs this as rude, or as evidence of personal inadequacy.

I’m fairly certain this has come up on his blog before – I remember commenting about the nod that motorcyclists exchange, and then amending that once I realized it was actually a wave, a one-hand-slightly-uncurled-from-the-handlebar as you pass. Or an arm stuck straight down. But you can’t search comments on that blog, so I can’t find the last time we all discussed this.[Yes I can. Grant linked to it in his posting. It’s here]

When we go through decisions to acquire things that are visible, in many cases, that’s a personal decision. The belongingness we feel when we observe that in someone else is a great deal of fun, not a product of personal inadequacy. I wouldn’t nod at someone else carrying a can of Coke. I might nod at someone else wearing a Rolling Stones tongue shirt. Hey, I might nod at someone else drinking a can of Jolt (I drink neither, I’m just hypothesizing about the level of identity, meaning, uniqueness, tribal, outsider, etc. embedded in the various product choices). I do have a few shirts with tongues on ’em, however.

At least Cayce Pollard was allergic to brands; she had no choice but to remove them from her person. Grant seems allergic to personal connection, we’ll have to do more than simply sand off his Dockers logo if we are to help him.

Update: the direct link above to the blog entry in qustion still works but a visit to Grant’s blog itself doesn’t show the post any longer.

I’m amazed (constantly) at how fast this blogosphere stuff is. BoingBoing posts a story about a stupid move by a corporation or politician, and within 24 hours there are t-shirts, slogans, dance videos on YouTube, mashups with new lyrics; all based on some simple and outrageous idea.

I was actually refreshed (instead of my usual infuriated) when a story about running into (a lookalike for) Samuel Jackson at the airport did not turn into a Snakes On Plane (or SoaP as it’s now known) story. Further, one of the people in the group hadn’t heard of the movie (et. al).

And no, I’m not going to explain any of that, or even provide links. That’s sort of my point – that a seemingly tight network establish common language and points of reference proceeds to further riff as any group does) in extremely inventive and entertaining ways. But it’s very disposable. You don’t need to know why my Rolling Stones group makes jokes about cheese, and you don’t need to know why Samuel Jackson wants to get the motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane. If you do want to know, there’s always Google.

But my impetus for this post (finally!) was this (via Chroma with absolutely no context provided): an instantly famous sports moment (a head-butt in a World Cup match) is now rendered as an 8-bit Nintendo game, complete with animation and sound effects and music.

Sure, it was the World Cup, and it was one of the more dramatic moments (I guess; I didn’t see moment one of the whole affair), but isn’t interesting how some people – many people – don’t know of the original moment, but others are doing their own versions of it? Indeed, maybe someone reading this will learn about the head-butt (and I’m not going to bother looking up the story, who it was, that’s my point, the partial knowledge or even lack of knowledge, in the face of all this other energy – maybe Ronaldo or Ronaldino or Rodolfo – either you know how wrong I am, or you have no idea what I’m talking about) as a second-order effect.

The classic example of this is kids using Mad Magazine as a source for plot lines and famous moments of classic films. I read many issues of Mad, long before I saw a James Bond film or Chinatown, yet I was conversant with their iconic aspects through exposure to the parody.

Update: moments after posting this I see (via Experience Curve, also without explanation) another funny site on the same incident – here – and learned that the player’s name is (presumably) Zidane. No Ronaldino, guess I was wrong. And I noticed that both these paraodies came from the same domain. Whoah! It’s called YTMND – You’re The Man Now Dog, and they’ve got a great story.

YTMND is a site created for the purpose of furthering the creativity of its users. It stems from an idea that, using sound, and image, and some text, the users can convey a point, funny, political, or otherwise, to the general media.

I know someone is reading this and thinking “Dude, you don’t know about YTMND?!”

In a post-Omnivore’s Dilemma world, we had a recent chance to participate in a service usually reserved for big cities – home delivery of organic produce.

Here in Montara (pop. 4000 or something; home to an Alpaca ranch, a cafe, and a convenience store but very little else commercial) there is a little produce stand called “Sweet Peas” and they’ve begun home delivery.

I don’t think I’ve ever had non-restaurant food delivered (and I can’t remember the last time I had restaurant food delivered at home). We were totally struck by our visit to the suburbs of Mumbai when our host called and ordered some bottles of water and cigarettes and they appeared a few minutes later. One of my first real design/research projects, in fact, was a grocery store home delivery service (pre-Webvan, in fact, pre-web). And many many years later, I finally experienced it.

They send out a Tuesday email with a spreadsheet; you fill it out and email it back that day and the food comes on Friday. Leave the resuable boxes (they have our names on a sticker) out next week and do it all over again

I’m intrigued by the complexity of the cultural factors that impact the experience, and here’s my first pass at it:

Home delivery – food comes to the door – time-saving and convenience
Organic – I admit I don’t care about this as a principle, but some of the food does taste better, richer, fresher. There’s a snob factor to organic as well that I’m sure I am participating in. Hey, those two boxes cost $41. The prices are definitely higher, but I’m trying not to compare apples and apples, if you will.
Local business – I am surprised at how much this appeals to me – maybe the lack of commerce in my area makes this more tangible. Maybe I can relate, as a small business myself. The fact that we walk our dog past the owner’s home and see the garage filled with produce boxes makes it more tangible; we’re presumably doing good for our community and helping someone we can point to make a living. Of course, our Safeway employs locally and shopping there gives people jobs well. But Safeway seems like The Man and this feels like Sticking It To The Man; a rare chance to feel some power, to have some choices. These delivery services have appeared over the past several years in big places like New York (where FreshDirect seems to have had a similar cultural impact to Starbucks) and Vancouver. We’re getting some of that big city flavor of small(er) business in our own small community.
Small farms – I don’t know if this true and I don’t care to verify it but I get the vibe that the producers of these products (perhaps because of the organic thing) are small businesses themselves, and as consumers we hear about the corporate farms and how that’s vaguely bad, so there’s a further flavor of Doing Good attached to this purchase.
Local farms – Again, I don’t know if this is true, but it’s part of the mythology of the service – but I’m guessing the food hasn’t come a long way (the stand itself highlights some local farms). We’re being told that having a product sit on a truck and burn fuel to go a long distance isn’t good for us or the environment.
Reactive eating – For our first purchase, we picked from a list, but Sweet Peas will also let you specify a weekly dollar amount and simply pick stuff for you based on what’s fresh that week. In combination with the local food thing, this suggests a different philosophy of food consumption, that we bend with nature rather than forcing it to our will through the magic of science
Surprise and Mass CustomizationBecause of their local and small nature, Sweet Peas seems very willing to help come up with a weekly menu that is some combination of staples (i.e., we always want 3 bananas) and what’s fresh (i.e., to make a total of $XX.XX). Even if we don’t make use of that, the flexibility and choice seem very appealing.

I received a Verizon promotion recently, the text on a white box over pale gray stripes on the background of the card (think of a linen suit that Gatsby might have worn). Flip it open and it reads

Come into your local
Verizone Wireless Communications Store
and leave with a Loyalty Credit.

New 2-year agreement required

This cracked us up around here; it reads like a typographic version of the ad speak so beautifully parodied by SNL and the Simpsons, where a smarmy announcer trumpets a ridiculous claim and a fast-talking serious voice denies that claim immediately: Blammo will Save Your Life! — saving-of-life-not-guaranteed.

I’ll get a Loyalty Credit (? turns out that means $30) if I sign up for two more years? Nice to be offered the chance to demonstrate my loyalty in order to get some reward. The presentation suggests I am being rewarded for actual loyalty, something that has already happened, but in fact, they are rewarding for future loyalty, because that’s what a company actually cares about! What have you done for me lately!