• IxDA SF presents Interaction09 Redux – Saturday, March 14th – I'll be leading a condensed version of my IXDA workshop from Vancouver (Well we did all this research…now what), looking at a framework for transforming questions into answers, answers into insights, and insights into actions.
• Steve's photos from Vancouver, Feb 2009 – I was in Vancouver to run a workshop at the IXDA conference and to visit family. Some of the photos will make their way into dedicated blog posts but meanwhile here's the whole set.
• Juice is in the details – Tropicana's redesign is being heralded for the caps that look like oranges. We've got a carton in the fridge and it's as plain as plain can be, so I'm not sure where these great caps are lurking. Meanwhile, back in 2006 we were seeing orange-looking caps on Florida's Natural packaging.
• Tropicana reverts to "classic" packaging after their crappy redesign is met with broad scorn – Mea pulpa: "Asked if he was chagrined that consumers rejected the changes he believed they wanted, Mr. Campbell replied: “I feel it’s the right thing to do, to innovate as a company. I wouldn’t want to stop innovating as a result of this. At the same time, if consumers are speaking, you have to listen.”"

• Report: Real-world police forensics don't resemble 'CSI' – Even before the popularity of shows like CSI, there was presumably a cultural belief in the "science" behind these techniques. But the report finds that:
  – Fingerprint science "does not guarantee that two analysts following it will obtain the same results."
  – Shoeprint and tire-print matching methods lack statistical backing, making it "impossible to assess."
  – Hair analyses show "no scientific support for the use of hair comparisons for individualization in the absence of (DNA)."
  – Bullet match reviews show "scientific knowledge base for tool mark and firearms analysis is fairly limited."
  – Bite-mark matches display "no scientific studies to support (their) assessment, and no large population studies have been conducted."
• NJOY electronic cigarette – Looks like a real cigarette, complete with glowing tip on inhale, and exhaled vapor that resembles smoke. Gives an inhaled nicotine experience, while messaging to the rest of the world that you are really smoking a real lit cigarette. Paging Erving Goffman?

  Someone was using one a party last week; someone else got out their simulated Zippo lighter (an iPhone app) and lit it for them.

Man and boy, Chicago

The US auto industry now has its own crisis news page.

In a recent Daily Show interview, Jon Stewart and UC Davis transportation expert Daniel Sperling pondered the idea of using this crisis as an opportunity to put money into building a new, more sustainable transportation infrastructure.

A friend of mine has put down a deposit on the Aptera, but is unclear about when his car will be coming.

While all of the alternatives to gas-powered vehicles have their pros and cons, the current personal transportation model is providing clear feedback that it’s time for some divergent thinking on this topic.

What do people really want and need? Are there viable paradigms besides the “car-in-every-garage” (e.g. Zipcar, etc.)? How are systems as complex and socially/economically ingrained as the auto industry and vehicle infrastructure best addressed?

Related posts:
This year’s (business) models
Rage With The Machine
Cultural reverse engineering
Parody as time capsule

• Designer Neologisms – Tragically non-ironic video from frogdesign about some important new words (i.e., simplexity) they are designing to explain emerging concepts.
  (thanks, Tom)

• Sony [but it could have been anyone] Releases New Stupid Piece Of **** That Doesn't ******* Work (NSFW) – "I can't wait to get home and spend most of my night trying to figure out how to get the @#$%^ thing to work" – expletive-filled Onion news video about not-ready-for-prime-time technology that we willingly pursue and struggle with

• What comes after super-noticing power? Bionic noticing! – [Matt Jones] sees mobile as something of a super power device and described something he calls "bionic noticing" – obsessively recording curious things he sees around him, driven by this multi-capable device in his pocket. "Making maps and taking photos and sucking photons out of the city and putting them up on Flickr. It's the thing I can't do without now – this remembering machine."

• MediaMaster is shutting down – We did some really interesting user research to help define the overall value proposition, concept, and user experience. Exciting to see what they were able to do but obviously disappointing to see where it ended up a few years later. "Don’t wait for large corporate partners to make your business viable, it needs to be so on its own. Design it well from the start, it helps when you don’t have to re-engineer the interface, it’s the most complex part! (That was not a problem we had)"

Our giving in 2008 was in support of two organizations. Locally, we gave to Coastside Hope

the “primary provider of safety net services,” providing a “monthly food harvest, emergency shelter and rental assistance services, crisis intervention and referral services, clothing vouchers, Christmas Adopt-a-Family program, [and] citizenship services.”)

We also gave to the American Cancer Society, acknowledging a loss in our firm’s extended family.

Previously: Portigal Consulting Philanthropy, 2007

• Photo Clichés (You're Not As Original As You Think) – Pictures of people being uniquely hilarious, just like all the other people who took the same photo – (via kottke) At first I thought yeah, people are really lame, acting all goofy and clever but being just like everyone else, but then I realized that this is all about culture, and design. Cultural stories – memes – travel fast, far, and wide, and so imitating a famous pose become a rapid shorthand for belongingness. And designed objects and environments have affordances, built-in invitations to be used a certain way, to be grabbed, held aloft, or whatever. Everyone puts their head in the shark's mouth because it's designed to invite you to do so. When people use a product over and over the way it was intended, we may consider that a design success. So while these are funny pictures to look at it the aggregate, it doesn't mean that we (or the people in the pictures) are all that lame. We're collecting and transmitting culture and we're responding to artifacts that are designed to be used any number of ways.

• Ziba's Sohrab Vossoughi on the multitude of sins the consumer electronics companies are guilty of – "Consumer electronics companies need to clearly communicate what their products are about and who they are for." I agree with Sohrab; we find ourselves recommending this very strongly to almost all of our clients. But why are people still writing about this after more than 10 years of usability in the mainstream? I mean this isn't news, except for the fact that it still is true.