ChittahChattah Quickies
June 27th, 2011
- [from steve_portigal] Short Cuts [London Review of Books] – [The application of number-crunching style analytics to cracking a cultural code.] Spies aren’t known for their cultural sensitivity. So it was a surprise when news broke last month that IARPA, a US government agency that funds ‘high-risk/high-payoff research’ into areas of interest to the ‘intelligence community’, had put out a call for contributions to its Metaphor Program, a five-year project to discover what a foreign culture’s metaphors can reveal about its beliefs…The teams that get funded will collect large amounts of text in four languages, representing four cultures: Iranian Farsi, Mexican Spanish, Russian Russian and American English. With the help of heavy-duty computer analysis, they will spend the first couple of years identifying conceptual metaphors in each language and listing them in a ‘metaphor repository’ along with their associated ‘affect’,
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 24th, 2011
- [from steve_portigal] New book about recurring technological failures [Pasta&Vinegar] – [Nicolas Nova has written a lot of great articles, presentations, and blog posts about failure, technology, society, and design. Now he's got a book. Let's hope an English version appears before too long?] My new book about recurring technological failures has been released two weeks ago. It’s called “Les flops technologiques: comprendre les échecs pour innover” which obviously means that it’s written in French. Based on the analysis of several cases (the intelligent fridge, the visiophone and e-books), the book describes the notion of recurring technological flops, discusses the very notion of failures and their underlying reasons. It also addresses strategies and design tactics to take them into account.
- [from steve_portigal] The Art of Garfinkling [Splunderousnoog] – [We tend to conceptualize experiments and research as dispassionate or disconnected endeavors, but there's so much that can happen when we as experiments or researchers risk our presumptions and comfort level in order to get deeper understanding. In describing ethnography, I often refer to the researcher as the "apparatus" who is embedded and gathers data through that experience.] Carry out a simple experiment. When you are on the bus or the train, ask a person to give up her seat. Make sure you're young and fit. To make it easier, ask someone who is as fit or fitter than you. It is a hard thing for most to do. There is emotional distress involved. The fear of opprobrium, the need to be liked, to be nice…This sort of experiment is known as a "breaching experiment". It involves violating social norms. A famous, pioneering exponent of breaching experiments was a chap called Harold Garfinkle. So much so that "breaching experiments" are known as "Garfinkling"!
- [from steve_portigal] Jeter’s 3,000th Hit Will Bring About as Many Marketing Possibilities [NYTimes.com] – [Merchandising a celebration.] Tablespoonfuls of the dirt will be poured into capsules to dangle on key chains; ladled into disks to be framed with photographs of the hit (in what is called a dirt collage); and glued into the interlocking NY carved into commemorative bats…The selling of Jeter’s hit…is quite a list: T-shirts, caps, jerseys, bobbleheads, decals, cellphone skins, wall murals, patches, bats, balls, license plates and necklaces made by licensees…Jeter will share royalties with M.L.B. and the players’ union; Already, he has designated proceeds from the sale of a silicone bracelet to benefit his Turn 2 Foundation. Everything Jeter touches or wears as he pursues his 3,000th hit carries value. So will the bases he steps on. In deciding what to provide for sale, Jeter controls his cleats, wristbands, bats and batting gloves. The Yankees control what they provide to him, like his uniform, warm-up jackets, and caps, as well as the dirt, the bases and the pitching rubber.
Tags:
authenticity, baseball, culture, design, dj3k, experience, experiment, failures, french, garfkinling, interviewing, jeter, marketing, memorabilia, merchandising, norms, nova, observation, provocation, quickies, sports, violating
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 22nd, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] 5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet [Wired.com] – [Echoes the work we did in our 2010 Reading Ahead project, "The unabridged reading experience includes crucial events that take place before and after the elemental moments of eyes-looking-at-words" https://portigal.com/blog/reading-ahead-research-findings/] E-books are still falling short of a promise to make us forget their paper analogs. For now, you still lose something by moving on. I have never owned an e-book reader, because I have an ingrained opposition to single-purpose devices. But since getting an iPad on day one, I haven’t purchased a print edition of anything for myself. I am hooked — completely one with the idea that books are legacy items that may never go away, but have been forever marginalized as a niche medium. With that in mind, however, here are five things about e-books that might give you pause about saying good riddance to the printed page. 1) An unfinished e-book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it…5)E-books can’t be used for interior design.
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 17th, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] Invasion of the body hackers [FT.com / FT Magazine] – [Opportunities for data visualization abound! I find these trends simultaneously compelling and terrifying.] Over the last weekend of May, in the heart of Silicon Valley, 400 “Quantified-Selfers” from around the globe have gathered to show off their Excel sheets, databases and gadgets. Participants are mostly middle to upper class, mostly white. Europe is well represented. There are plenty of nerdy young men, nerdy older men and extremely fit men and women with defined muscles and glowing skin. There is also a robust contingent of young urban hipsters in military boots, hoodies and elaborate tattoos. A quiet middle-aged man walks around with a pulse monitor clipped to his earlobe, a blood pressure cuff on his arm and a heart rate monitor strapped around his chest, all feeding a stream of data to his walkie-talkie-like computer. Someone from the UK unrolls a 12ft line graph charting the fluctuations in his mood over the previous year.
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 16th, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] Data Visualization/Communication [Lauren Manning Design] – [Manning has done a lot of work to provide these instructive visualizations. The approaches privilege different aspects of the data. Which ones tell the strongest story? I am a fan of those that include actual images of the foods; they seem to require one layer less to decode. French Fry Consumption by Month is terrific!] Data sets vary tremendously, so one man’s brilliant solution can be another’s complete failure. Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? Using a data set created from two years of meticulous life documenting, I visualized one point of data – food consumed – over forty ways. Exploring various methods, techniques, styles, degrees of complexity, degrees of additional context and many other elements, a true “apples to apples” comparison has emerged.
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ChittahChattah Quickies
June 15th, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] Posters Promoting Non-Events, Everyday Life [DesignTAXI.com] – [Delightful celebrations of the stuff of everyday life!] These posters don’t advertise a gig, a club night or any worthwhile event. They’re for the mundane things: enjoying a sunny day, singing in the shower, or anything that we do everyday but don’t realize. Created as part of the EDPED (Each Day Posters Every Day) project, the posters are designed to highlight how 'no activity in your life is too boring or mundane.The idea is to take trivial activities and promote them with posters to give them a sense of importance they ordinarily would not have.'
- [from julienorvaisas] Customizable Stencil Lets Anyone Make Street Art Infographics [GOOD] – [Pretty cool idea, but we all know that the power of statistics in the wrong hands can be dangerous. I can't help but notice that the kit doesn't include a spot for a citation of source! I imagine this kit being mostly used for humorous imaginary statistics ala thisisindexed.com rather than political commentary.] With the help of a new pie chart stencil by interactive media artist Golan Levin, creating politically charged graffiti just got a bit easier. The fully customizable "Infoviz Graffiti" toolkit allows users to quickly swap out the numbers and letters and adjust the slice of the pie.
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 14th, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices [WSJ.com] – [This review of Frank Moss's new book about the MIT Media Lab includes commentary on Moss's exaltation of "undisciplined" and "antidisciplinary" methods and their single-minded application of science in the service of developing devices and machines, at the expense of more traditional research methods.] Everything looks promising and possible at the demonstration and prototyping stage, when even sponsors may be willing to excuse the recalcitrant model hastily assembled to meet a deadline. But what will be the long-term implications of antidisciplined and undisciplined new technology that might be loosed upon the world? Do either sorcerers or apprentices caught up in the rush of casting spells have the time to ponder the consequences of their magic? Frank Moss appears to be aware of the potential problems with rapidly expanding technology. He has said that "today, society is awash in digital affordances" but admits that "paradoxically, we feel less in control of our lives."
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 13th, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] Empty trash. Buy milk. Forge history. [The Boston Globe] – [Of course, I'm a big fan of looking at the seemingly-mundane to examine what it means to be human and bring meaning.] A household list might seem a fairly modest starting point upon which to build a whole theory of economic development. But in fact these types of lists are becoming increasingly important to historians — documents produced not as a message to posterity, like a memoir or diplomatic record, but as a simple snapshot of everyday life. Taken as a group, lists offer a rare window into the building blocks of society, economy, and culture — one that is becoming only more valuable as historians gain the processing power to make sense of them. “Something as innocuous as a list turns out to be incredibly fruitful if you bring both a sense of historical questions and context."
ChittahChattah Quickies
June 2nd, 2011
- [from julienorvaisas] Facebook Policy Spurs Big Pharma to Rethink Social Media [Advertising Age] – [Beyond challenges such as authenticity, relevancy and voice, social media presence is a regulatory risk for brands in some industries.] Being forced to enable comments on its Facebook pages puts pharmaceutical companies at risk of running afoul of the current FDA regulations, even if it's just consumers making the comments. For instance, if a company has a branded page for an antacid, and a consumer comments that it helped lower his blood pressure as well, that's considered off-label promotion. "The Facebook decision is entirely consistent with what Facebook is designed to be — interactive. A Facebook page with the interactivity turned off is just a static web page residing on an interactive platform. And that isn't what Facebook is all about. It's time for regulated industry to step up to the plate and embrace the powerful tool that is real-time interactivity."
- [from steve_portigal] Focus Groups That Look Like Play Groups [NYTimes.com] – [The lede, emphasizing focus groups, is misleading. The article explores a range of methods that market researchers are using. Maybe some novel ideas in here but also a good artifact of the popular press discourse about how we work.] Mr. Denari’s agency takes a different tack, interviewing consumers in their homes and leaving them with journals called “Little Truth Books” for a week or two. “It forces people to think a little more deeply than they normally would,” Mr. Denari said. When Ugly Mug Coffee wanted to retool its brand, Mr. Denari’s agency asked consumers to use the journals to draw family trees showing which family members were coffee drinkers. They were also asked to list some of the worst things about coffee, what their coffee “cut-off time” was and why they drank it at all. “The whole goal is the get to the heart,” Mr. Denari said. The research helped Ugly Mug create new packaging and expand distribution. [via @serota]
- [from steve_portigal] A gelato-less June [Gelatobaby] – [Interesting to see how blogs can structure/support deliberate habit changes.] I wrote an essay pledging to fly less to reduce my environmental impact. (I’m actually only allowing myself one round-trip flight per month, compared to the 23 trips I took last year.) My friend Greg Lindsay, author of the new book Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next pointed out that my air miles were nothing compared to the footprint of my gelato habit. A United Nations report from last year noted that “agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.” I’m hoping that I can fill my gelato-less days with facts and information about where my dairy is coming from, how it’s produced, and ifif!I might even come to love some dairy-free options. Suffice it to say, this is going to be an extremely enlightening 30 days. Especially since I have just discovered that the LA Weekly has embarked upon 30 Scoops in 30 Days project.
Tags:
eating, facebook, food, gelato, habit, insights, methods, pattern, pharma, quickies, research, social, sustainability, users