[Connecting Bits] Simplicity in this Economy

After dinner at a Chinatown restaurant the day before Thanksgiving, I happened to crack open this fortune reading. It was funny initially but quickly turned into a firm reminder, especially in these economic times. The angle that I took away from this little missive was: Simplicity. Mark Hurst recently wrote about simplicity’s media moment (unrelated to the moment in the fortune reading). Though the feeling about the state of the economy may assume the simple forms of artist Jeanie Riddle, some refuge can be found in practicing simplicity. Online destinations like Unclutterer and 43 Folders strive for a sense of economy in life and living, including business. Such sites make clear how simplicity is worth every “media moment,” from this year into the next and afterwards.

Kurosawa and Designing the User Experience

Image by for love or exp, Flickr

I’ve undertaken a personal view-athon of films by Akira Kurosawa, I started with Ikiru, which I highly recommend for its anthem of Carpe Diem, and have worked my way onto Seven Samurai, and, last but not least, a most recent watching of Yojimbo. In a documentary that accompanied Yojimbo, Kurosawa said, “A truly good movie is enjoyable, too. There’s nothing complicated about it. A truly good movie is interesting and easy to understand.” There’s clearly a stripped-down tone to this statement, and Kurosawa’s elemental on-screen storytelling readily applies to the design of products and services. Kurosawa, as his statement expressed, emphasized de-cluttering, comprehension and pleasure. Sounds like designing the user experience.

Designing the User Interface of MetalMiner IndX(SM)

Making a webapp is hard work. Yet, with all the coverage about the advancing potential of webapps—their development and adoption—collaborating on the design of a webapp is a decidedly cool thing to do. My friend Lisa Reisman gave me this opportunity. Her business, Aptium Global, specializes in materials sourcing: helping companies save and better strategize on the spending of natural and artificial resources used to manufacture their products and services. One kind of material that Lisa is especially passionate about is metals. From her company’s blog, “This may sound sad, but it’s true: We lie awake at night thinking about how manufacturers could save (or avoid spending) money on their metal purchases. It’s a strange thing to think about, but alas, someone has to do it.” Yup, Lisa’s a bona-fide metals geek. And geek is chic, totally, in this case.

Lisa shared her idea about a pricing tool for metals. Dubbed MetalMiner IndX(SM), this webapp would provide cross-country pricing data about a variety of metals, from aluminum to steel. The goal is to help metal analysts, consultants, and financial services firms to make better decisions about acquiring metals. While the premise is simple, as filmmaker Martin Scorsese has claimed, “There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard work.”

Lisa provided a description and sample data points of the webapp. I took what I could understand and began sketching. Jason Fried of 37signals wrote a piece about drawing user interfaces with a markie. But I’m used to using a pencil or a pen to paper. Speaking of which, a blank sheet is my preference, rather than graph paper. Sketching on paper without lines is a better canvas to me. User interfaces are essentially layouts. With each iteration I played with the arrangement of the elements, while trying to keep in mind what’s sensible. I wanted the layout to be divided into two parts: The primary space would be for the criteria to adjust and search for pricing a particular metal; the other space would be dedicated for displaying the results.




Next, I interpreted one of the sketches via a digital format, not Photoshop, a page layout program. May sound backwards, since UIs are screen layouts not page layouts, but I’m honing in on the general content placement, whether it’s a form field or text.







Building the webapp based on these sketches, we watched the user interface evolve as the actual visual and interactive factors were incorporated. Such changes are part of the process from sketch to reality. MetalMiner IndX(SM) launched last month. No Beta in the webapp’s name, a straightforward launch, and an exciting one at that!

[Nifty Idea] Hang Out with Dino

Lincoln Kayiwa released his latest product design called Dino, a witty take on clothes hangers. Their name fits their visual and functional character, as you can see. Also check out Kayiwa’s thoughts on design via his answers to the Designer’s Quest(ionnaire), a Design Feast initiative.

[Easier said than practiced] Quotes about Change

“Doing a new logo isn't going to change a thing. You need to change your company, you need to change your structure, how you talk to people, how you behave, how you interact with the community. You need to change. You can’t change and stay the same.”
—Carlos Segura, Designer, Segura, Inc. (via Business POV)

“I don’t have the physiology for being a poster boy. The standard of poster boy is you’ve got to be unimpeachable, right? That’s a fool CV. The right thing to do is to be one step behind the poster boy, so he gets knocked on the the had, and then you learn from that and adjust. On the other hand, when you hear, ‘After you, after you,’ and nobody moves, eventually you’ve go to close your eyes and jump. Maybe that’s absurd. But I have to try.”
—Jeff Swartz, CEO, Timberland (via Fast Company, September 2008)

“Rules are overrated. They need to be changed by every generation. That is your most important mandate: If it’s not broken, break it. One way of coming to terms with the prevailing language of a cultural orthodoxy is to reject it. It may be necessary to invent tools and methods about which you know nothing, to act in ways that allow you to utilize the content of your personal experience, to form an obsession and to cut through the weight of your education. Obsession is what it comes down to. It is difficult to think without obsession, and it is impossible to create something without a foundation that is rigorous, incontrovertible, and, in fact, to some degree repetitive. Repetition is the ritual of obsession. Don’t confuse the obsession of repetition with learning by rote. I am suggesting a form of inquiry, a procedure to jumpstart the indecision of beginning.”
—Richard Serra, Sculptor, 2008 Commencement Address, Williams College (via DesignNotes)

Designers of the World, Unite!

A much anticipated U.S. General Election day has passed, and among the many striking aspects to an unprecedented election season, are the prolific works by designers who were clearly motivated by the exciting presidential campaign:

• The current version of Everymoment Now explored news coverage of the 2008 presidential race as a dynamic information graphic.
• The design team at NYTimes.com captured particular attributes of political history, for example, presidential physique, in addition to the words that describe the people’s “election mood.”
• Designers Lindsay Ballant and Ian Boyle created Behind the Candidates (via Swissmiss) which takes on the angle of policy advisors behind the candidates.
• Coudal Partners wrote a bold call of mindfulness and action.

Like many others, I feel good to be a part of history. I voted, posted a couple of pictures to the Polling Place Photo Project and watched the results. It was a change-charged day.

Designer’s Quest(ionnaire): Duane King, Creator of Thinking for a Living™

The Designer’s Quest(ionnaire) is a Design Feast initiative embracing the perspective of a designer in a succinct format. Duane King created Thinking for a Living™, “an ever-growing platform dedicated to the concept of open source design education,” in addition to running design group BBDK. Read about Duane’s insightful take on design and designing.