Samanunga

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn’t realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade – a bland grey.(…)

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

full article @ news.bbc.co.uk

First thing I am going to look into after my PhD is EBD for User Research. The first time I heard about this approach was when Marc Hassenzahl explained the similarities between usability specialists and GP’s in his keynote at the CHI-NL conference 2007. Rob Tannen convinced me again of the fruitful approach in User Centred Design.

Read his article @ Use8

Colleagues in method research: Frank Long found that using persona’s is more effective than working without them, they help designers to maintain a user centered focus. Adding pictures results in an even stronger focus, because they resort stronger empathy than a description without pictures.

Interesting results!

full article @ frontend.com
Thanks to Arthur Clemens’ post @ visible area.com

Any kid who’s ever been intrigued with Google’s playful holiday logo-decorating antics can now get in the act–with the potential for winning lots of loot for the best efforts.

read full article @ www.fastcompany.com

Have you ever heard of the "cognitive load" of a city? It is not finding your way, not the city night life but just being there!
Architects and usability specialists have much in common, as they both design for users. The first for users of space, the latter for users of interactive products. The similarities are much closer than I thought, after reading this article
"How the city hurts your brain".

Scientific findings can be visually appealing. Probably you are familiar with the beauty of for example fractals. But what about design with nano-technology to create hairy nails. Tissue engineering brings beautifully grown steaks, or leather coats without spilling a drop of blood. Design for debate brings dolls forward with which we can explain modern practice in human fertilization like IVF. TED just released Paola Antonelli with her introduction into the state of the art in design by science of december 2007: “Design and the elastic mind”.

Watch the video at ted.com

How ‘s that?

People are at their most creative late at night with 10.04pm the most likely time for a eureka moment, research has shown. Brainwaves are least likely to strike in the afternoon, according to a survey that suggests office workers have little chance of solving problems after lunch. The least creative time in the day is 4.33pm, with 92 per cent of people admitting to feeling uninspired in the afternoon.

Read the full article in the daily telegraph.

Designing interfaces for the art of music. Sound generation has become independent of form (acoustics being taken care of digitally). What should a musical instrument look like? WIRED presents eight examples. Take a look at the BEAMZ, the Boing Boing or the Gypsi MIDI.

Great overview of design tools. Nice web-design as well.

Design and Emotion

(have to fix my pic-upload system, broke since wordpress 2.5. Will do one of these days.)
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update: fixed it. The .htaccess-solution did the trick.