Donald Norman's column about the analogy between "queues and interaction design" was very thoughtful: "What is a buffer? It is a holding space between two systems, sometimes in space, sometimes in time, allowing the objects or information from one system to await the next system. (...) We can see b...
Metro pass surfaces
To access the underground: To recharge your card/pass: (Seen in Paris last week) Why do I blog this? I just wanted to point the size and color of the contact area (coherence and homogeneity). This big violet circle is intriguing and as you can see on the second picture there is a sort of "tail" m...
Foresight session at LIFT08
Still a struggle to find time to blog my notes from the LIFT08 conference. Here are some notes from the session about foresight. Scott Smith As defined by his complany tagline, Scott talked about "seeing change differently" or how to help people to see change more clearly. He defined foresight as "...
Notes from Paris digital city conference
Some notes from the urban computing symposium I attended in Paris last week. The whole thing was about what the organizers call "Villes 2.0" (i.e. City 2.0) based on the assumption that the transformation the Web have seen (from its first use to a second generation much more participative) is an in...
So transparent that you need to make it visible
Sometimes, transparency is so well achieved that you have to put a sign that something transparent is really there. In the example above, the glass is so transparent that a sign has to be put indicating the presence of "glass" (in french, it says "Beware! Glass"). Why do I blog this? This example ...
Maps as abstraction
Current discussions lately have led me to have a glance at the "critical cartography" field. Reading An Introduction to Critical Cartography by Jeremy W. Crampton and John Krygier was a good introduction to that. The part that interested me most was the one about the critiques of maps, as shown by ...
What appearance means...
as shown by satellite antennas In Swiss Mountains, they can be decorated as typical housing add-ons. In the example below, the owners have put a sort-of typical paintings (with cow going up the mountains, a sort-of "poya"): At Reuters Headquarters in Geneva, the situation is different and antennas...
Talk in Paris about the invisibility of the digital city
Yesterday, I was in Paris to attend a Villes2.0 event (a sort of urban computing symposium) organized by the french think tank FING. The theme of the afternoon was "Cities and mobility: new urban perspectives. It was a quite packed conference with lots of interesting speakers coming from different ...
Nintendo DS+iphone band
iBand is a curious Nintendo DS+iphone band: Check the YouTube video too. Why do I blog this? although it is very basic, I found the minimalism appealing (small instrument, small band, minimal tunes). And I love Elektroplankton. Somehow related to device art. ...
The user experience of broken artifacts
The other day, looking at toys in a kid store, I ran across this robotic horse and my attention was instantly attracted by the missing left ear: Why do I blog this? My interest towards the user experience of broken artifacts. This poor robotic pet has lost an important body part. But important for...