We love iPhone applications. Heck we may even be making one of our own, but here are a few of our absolute favorites. Most are free – some are fee – all are worthy. (we are not).
GeoPedia – GeoPedia is basically a location-based Wikipedia interface for your iPhone.
AmazonMobile – The note/snapshot feature is still pretty cool!
iTransitBuddy – a robust, easy to use public transportation schedule application. Multiple cities including Chicago.
enCamp – BaseCamp application for the iPhone. Best of breed so far.
Facebook – We hate and love this app. Mostly love it.
GuitarToolKit – Guitar players this has chords, an accurate microphone-based tuner, metronome and more. Very cool.
Kindle for the iPhone – You don’t carry your Kindle everywhere but you carry your phone. The UI is super easy and readable.
NowPlaying – Movie listings, ratings and more.
OmniFocus – It’s expensive but nothing does GTD better.
PhoneFlix – Netflix client for iPhone. Very useful when a movie idea hits you on the train.
Skype – VOIP for your iPhone. We eagerly await SMS capabilities in the upcoming releases.
SpeedTest – Cuz we’re paranoid that our bandwidth is less than it should be. This app tests WIFI and EDGE/3G bandwidth speeds.
Tweetie – Absolutely the category killer for twitter clients. Worth the money.
Weatherbug – The best weather information we’ve seen to date.
Wordpress – If you’ve got a blog post that needs to be up now. This is the app for you.
FSS Hockey: Because when you’re waiting for half an hour to be seated at a restaurant, it’s time for a few games of air hockey.
ICanHasCheezBurger: Lolcats and LOL generation optimized for the iPhone.
Labyrinth – the most beautifully designed game application. This person knows physics.
Remote – if you have wifi, this app works with keynote.
CTABusTracker – really a web page, but use it alot and is very accurate.
Shazam – this music analyzer works surprisingly.
New York Times – they have made it more sophisticated, but it is also more unreliable.
Pandora – use it every day and very easy to use.
WunderRadio – great streaming radio application.
Units – the best designed measurement application
Bejewelled 2 - It’s addictive like crack.
Ocarina. $.99 turns your iPhone into a flutelike musical instrument.
Honorable mention (not quite applications)
TrafficGauge – Very easy to digest traffic info for your favorite major metropolitan areas. I use this web app EVERY day.
Meebo – use it every day
Do you have favorite apps that you can’t live without? Do share!
New and exciting concepts that merge the physical and digital are showing up every day. You know how excited we are by the premise but perhaps these will get you juiced as well.
Playstation 3 uses AR to enhance physical EYE OF JUDGEMENT (imagine deep movie voice guy reading that name) trading card game.
Another strange fetish-like avatar whose name translates to Cyber Figure Alice (ya, I know… CYBER?) from GeishaTokyo.com
Dennou Coil is an interesting Anime series that illustrates an augmented world. Finding the videos online is like a video game where you have to dodge popups and malware (be careful). Here’s the first episode.
Last week I attended a conference at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela. The International Congress of Aesthetics (Simposio Internacional de Estetica – Arte, Ciencia es Technologia) brought together philosophers, writers, scientists and others together to discuss the role of written text, ideas and their ability to create aesthetic experiences through semiotic analysis.
Professor Edgar Yanez Zapata invited Aleksandra Giza, a professor of design from Northern Illinois University and myself to give several lectures to faculty and students of the School of Art and Design as well as present at the international congress.
Merida is a town nestled at the beginning of the Andean mountain range and runs along a ridge that is overseen by Pico Bolivar, over two miles above the city. For over 450 years the town evolved into a small city of about 20 square kilometers. The University of the Andes is the main function of the town and its impact is felt at all levels of life and activity.
There were four presentations given:
1) Introduction to Design Methods focusing on a contemporary perspective of design methods building on the original discussions in the early 1960’s and the publication of John Chris Jones seminal 1970 book “Design Methods.” Misunderstood and often maligned as a concept, design methods began as a way to question purely scientific post-war advancements and proposed a more integrated, multi-disciplinary perspective to integrate logic and intuition into a stronger approach to identify and solve problems. The presentation will focus on what design methods means in 2008, and how to structure and apply concepts to both problem solving and problem seeking.
2) Managing Ambiguities : The Role of Decision Modeling and Visualization focused on the development of diagrams and maps that described statistical and geographical relationships and the advancements of cognitive theories of how humans make decisions. The premise of the presentation focused on how the visualization of data through different content lenses can provide humans the needed cognitive and workload assist to provide options when faced with making decisions.
3) Urban Design Assistance Teams : A Different Approach
A Regional Urban Design Assistance Team (R-UDAT) is learning by doing, a type of accelerated practicum/charette to help towns and municipalities in distress. Teams interact with a variety of local stakeholders as well as to regional legislators in hopes of securing resources to implement UDAT recommendations. Randallstown, Maryland, a town of 30,000 residents in northeast Baltimore County was the backdrop where landscape architects, design architects and architects with experience in public policy, a traffic engineer, and a graphic designer mobilized to help Randallstown seek its potential.
4) Chicago : Innovation of the Past, Present and Future focused on the history of Chicago and innovations in architecture and engineering such as the modern development of the steel i-beam skyscraper and the load bearing cassion foundation which transformed a marshy prairie into one of the 25 largest cities in the world. The presentation highlighted the Village of Oak Park, 14 kilometers west of Chicago and home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s early architectural career as well as on key Chicago architectural icons that are not usually highlighted with a short discussion on the city’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The presentation for the congress was attended by about 150 people as there were concurrent presentation sessions. Most of the attendees were focused on written language that describes the world and can generate aesthetic experiences using Sassurian frameworks and models. My presentations focused on Percian semiotics which extended linguistic semiotics into any form of thinking (metacognition, visual and written).
The second presentation to the congress was part of a panel that Edgar Yanez Zapata put together that addressed the role of digital technologies in aesthetic thought. From my observations, most conference participants would read short papers to the audience. A few had electronic presentations that endeavored to share richer stories.
The last night of the conference there was a small dinner at a wonderful bar called Mogambo (Chama Hotel). We had the opportunity to sit next to three philosophers from the University of Venezuela at Caracas. As you may surmise we ended discussing issues of reality, meaning and how subjective or objective reality is (or is not). Over beer and wine (a necessary ingredient) we did not come to any firm conclusions, but it did raise some interesting ideas.
Over the weekend, Aleksandra and I were invited to an evening with faculty from the Art and Design department at the house of Argentinian architect Carlos Caminos and his wife Donna. Their home is nestled on the side of a hill designed by Simon, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate. The simple home is beautifully appointed with artwork, functional objects and the history of this interesting collaborative couple.
We talked late into the evening about design, culture and other topics as Aleksandra and I moved around the house. I would like to thank Leo Chacon, John Villarroel, Carmen Grisolia, Eduardo Araujo, and Julie Colasante for making time out of their hectic schedules to share cultural ideas. We also had a wonderful dinner with Nory Pereira Colls, Dean of the Art and Design school at ULA.
I would like to thank Edgar Yanez Zapata, Director of the School of Art and Design for suggesting the visit, coordinating all activities and making Alexandra and I feel at home in Venezuela.
I recently attended the Information Architecture Institute Idea 2008 Conference, October 7-8 in Chicago. The theme of the conference was ” . . . on designing complex information spaces of all kinds.”
What was intriguing about this particular conference was the diversity of people, both in professional and geographic terms. There were graphic designers, interaction designers, technical leads, managers, and oh yes . . . “information architects.” What was interesting about the attending information architects was that they came from so many backgrounds to become an information architect. There were actual classically trained architects that became IA’s, there were designers that were IA’s and so on.
When Richard Saul Wurman coined the term Information Architect in the late 1980’s, he was an architect that was designing travel books (Access Press) and came up with a term for designers that created information intensive artifacts. Since we cannot really agree on what the exact meaning of “information” and “architect”, I have come to the conclusion that merging the words into a concept would be difficult having hired several IA’s professionally. There is little agreement of what an IA is, and even what their outputs are. This was evident at the Idea conference, that there was no attempt in defining the term.
The first speaker was blogger David Armano who spoke on “Micro-Interactions in a 2.0 World.” A well-known and dynamic speaker, David took participants down a very rapid terrain of design, marketing and business through technological innovations. His central premise is that we are moving from passive consumers to active participants through existing social architecture technologies – not custom applications. Since all of our devices are internet enabled, the notion of a traditional browser experience is giving way to smaller more intimate digital apps that do one or two things. We as users cross-link these apps together. He used the term “life streams” to name this process of “engage, enable, and empower” our actions through a model of “usefulness, utility and ubiquity.” David also articulated new digital ecosystems such as the Nike Touch which uses “engagement” of “deposits” and “withdrawls” with several micro-functionalities bundled together. Social networks by their very nature amplify communications and he asked the audience what their “passion point” was.
Elliott Malkin, an artist from New York discussed “Information in Space.” His passionate and precise presentation went down a very indirect route that got me very excited. His initial metaphor was the hassidic concept of an eruv, or a physical demarkation between a secular world and a religious world using the same space. He referred to this psychographic space as having strong conceptual power for the intended group and for what for most people would not even notice. Unfortunately, I thought he was going to bring the metaphor back to digital technology and social architecture, but instead he discussed using digital technology to create a virtual eruv that could be monitored without rabbi’s going out to check if the eruv physical demarcations were intact. The implications of this metaphor in discussing how a shared space could have unique “functionalities” for different groups at the same time holds great promise.
Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path presented “Envisoning the Future of the Web.” They worked with the Mozilla Foundation in exploring the future of web browsers. Their concept is called Project Aurora. Now, when dealing with the future of anything, especially technology, it is difficult since we tend to use established conventions and behaviors and link it to a future that people can understand. Star Trek did it best by taking human behaviors and linking them to technologies that did not necessarily need to describe their inner workings. As viewers, especially hooked viewers, we understood the galactic federation model and the value system of the show to put the expressions and technologies in context.
With the future of a browser, Adaptive Path focused on augmented reality, or the overlay of digital information on the real world where there will be data abundance and the question will be how to we visualize, focus and manage all of it cognitively and socially. Processing power, storage capacity, bandwith and graphic capabilities of computers will impact how we interact with each other through the digital cloud. “Context awareness,” “natural interaction,” and “continuity” would allow for more natural collaborations. Each of us would have a semantic profile and with geolocation, would allow for very rich interactions between people where ever they are. Two main questions arose from the audience. What was the time horizon of Project Aurora? Jesse stated they had a 10 year window into the future (this would be the equivalent of 40 years in technological terms). He said they had to balance “compelling” with “plausible” in their vision. My view was that their vision was too contemporary and linked to current “plausible” scenarios. The second question was that their concept could be viewed that the browser was an operating system. Jesse made it clear that they did not want to address the operating system vs. browser question, but in my mind the two converge in their scenario.
Chris Crawford a former game designer for Atari presented an interesting perspective on “Linguistic User Interfaces.” His perspective on intelligent systems is that smart computers that could interact with humans using extensive language patterns is not realistic. This is due to the Sapir/Wharf hypothesis that inside the human mind language and reality exist together. Chris’ interesting take is that with games, a model for a computer to interact with humans is much more manageable since the worlds are much smaller. He further elaborated that software, verbs define the program and is core to the human/computer interface. With most current software, as the verb count increases, accessibility and expectability reduces. 100 verbs is the limit for most users. Chris is currently developing a linguistic user interface (LUI) for programs that can create stories. I found his perspective very compelling.
Alberto Canas, of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) presented a surprising presentation called “From Meaningful Learning to a Network of Knowledge Builders.” IHMC has created the popular language mapping program CMAP, which I have on my computer. What was informative about his presentation on CMAP were examples of its application (pun intended). Knowledge essentially are concepts that are linked together with prepositions to make a relationship (this was a wonderfully simple definition). Humans have created written language to describe concepts that cannot easily be illustrated. CMAP are concept maps linked by phrases to form propositions. I already knew this in principle. Alberto then showed the power of CMAP through an ongoing project with the Panamanian government giving school children CMAP to describe their lives. The power of CMAP is that users can link images and web page addresses to their maps and can also link concept maps to other concept maps. They are essentially mini-websites which are non-linear. I will not look at CMAP the same way and believe that its potential is not fully understood by a large cross section of users.
Jason Fried, founder of 37signals presented a lucid lecture called “Getting Real.” I had not heard Jason before, but am a heavy user of Basecamp and a real fan of its simplicity and how reliable it is. Jason is a real visionary and their development process flies in the face of every convention that most digital consultancies use. They do not “plan” anything, do no “specification” documents, and do not use “actor or personas.” They focus on building things and figure out how to do it over time. Keep things small, use sharpie markers as the finest resolution when sketching ideas, and only have a core set of functions (a simple core). Part of me was aghast, but I quickly saw the logic to their process. If you are designing for yourselves and then find users, the 37signals model is perfect. Unfortunately, if you collaborate with clients to define the problem and then facilitate understanding, then the 37signals model will not work. However (you knew there was going to be a “but”) I totally agree with his concept of “scratching your itch” and doing things with passion.
Aradhana Goel of Ideo gave one of the most thought provoking presentations called “Emerging Trends, Design Thinking, Service Innovation.” We have all heard of IDEO and it is one of the most influential innovative firms (along with Pentagram) merging design and engineering. Aradhana was trained as an architect and has only recently become involved with service design. Her perspective on human factors was clear and in alignment with my understanding. What was powerful was her ideas around linking human factors with trend factors. Human factors focus on digging into context, while trend factors find the context. She went on to compare and contrast these two areas and how service design is a logical next step in productizing intangible experiences.
Bill DeRouchey of Ziba Design gave a very direct and engaging discussion on “The Language of Interaction.” His deconstruction of everyday visual clues that we take for granted and their constant reinterpretation and reapplication to other situations was informative, common sense, but insightful.
Overall, there were several key themes that all speakers seemed to focus upon:
1) Browsers are giving way to other internet enabled experiences
2) Windows, Icon, Mouse, Pointer system is under stress
3) Transaction is more than money
4) Link several apps, not one killer app
5) Focus on experiences, not just interactions
Upon reflection, I found this conference very fulfilling and reinforced certain convictions, challenged others and provided a very positive mental workout for me (which is what good conferences should do). I would like to compliment IAI for the organization of the conference and the lunches with different groups of people was enjoyable. There were twelve speakers in two days, interspersed with group lunches around the Chicago loop.
The IAI did not go down an exististential vortex of what an information architect is or is not (though it came close at times), which would have been a divisive and somewhat unimaginative exercise. Instead they linked together several strains of interesting ideas and left the participants to decide what it meant to them.
As reported by Kiplinger.com [UPDATE - Here's a NYTimes article as the Kiplinger article is offline] and many other sources, Target has settled with NFB on the class-action lawsuit that has started a shift in the thinking with regards to web accessibility. This settlement will put a lot of pressure on e-tailers throughout the United States and while that seems like a good thing, we are not satisfied with the likely result. 508 compliance must evolve, the blind and visually impaired deserve better than digital hand-rails and ramps. You’ve heard our rants before. Just like Oscar Pistorius used technology to turn his disability into an advantage, we believe the man / machine dyad can be optimized for anyone. Here’s a question to Target and the other e-Tailers out there: If product color descriptions and product images (i.e. a photo illustrating the cut, shape, fit, and color of a pair of pants) aren’t helpful to the blind, what good does it do to make sure they can access them?
Adam Kallish, Delivery Director for Tanagram Partners has been shaping the design industry for 15+ years. A few years ago he collaborated with good friend Nate Burgos and decided to publish a Wikipedia post defining Design Methods. As active citizens of the internet, we here at Tanagram have partaken in far too many discussions about the value of the information presented by a system that can be manipulated by anyone. Despite the fact that this debate will continue forever, we can’t ignore the fact that good content can be found on the Wikipedia site. The Design Methods article is one of those pieces. Adam tells us when he and Nate were posting to Wikipedia the adventure occurred on the discussion tab. Both tabs are amazing reads.
While there has always been a constant drone of advancements from the multi-dimensional camp, it seems these days the drone has become louder. From movie promotionnew display technology (and this), and even hacked Wii’s. Are we really going to escape from the two dimensional WIMP interface in the next few years? Here’s to hoping this spike in noise isn’t an anomaly.
That’s right, we’re coming home today. China has been an interesting host and we’ll thank her kindly for the hospitality (I’ll share stories in another forum) but we are excited to return home. Our flight departs today at 4PM and arrives today at 4PM in Chicago.
Yesterday my presentation, “Designing for Augmented Cognition: Problem Solving for Complex Environments” was well received by everyone. A good portion of the presentation dealt with the pilot-cockpit research we’ve been working on for the last 2 years. After my presentation, I had an interesting discussion with a gentleman about the value of the old-school steam gauges that are still in use in the majority of today’s general aviation fleet. I think I’m going to need to better document my justifications for revisiting the cockpit interface metaphor. I’ve talked about the acceptance resistances exhibited by expert users of bad interfaces in the past and if this discussion is representative of the aviation community as a whole, I’ve got my work cut out for me. More on that later.
For the most part I am finding myself re-invigorated by our cockpit research. I’m planning on doing a little more work and then releasing our UI to the public as an open source initiative. I’m excited to participate in a larger open discussion. For now, though, I will spend a little more time dreaming. Now where’s that bottle of Ambien? See you all soon.
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