iPad: WTF?
As a designer, I wanted to try to comprehend the many dimensions and impressions of what really is a captivating “blank slate”. My main focus in this small research piece was to attempt to define the iPad. By trying to resolve what the future of this device is, and what is this device in the future, I was hoping to begin to grasp the notion of the iPad in the present. I didn’t really uncover a universal understanding of the iPad – I suppose somewhat predicatably I was uncovered more questions, and questions about questions. Still, for your reading and visual pleasure I’ve put packaged my exploration up into a PDF of bite size words and images. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Georgie.
CLICK HERE to download the visual essay “iPad: WTF?”
(pic from designbymotion.com)
Watching TV is an experience that’s better shared and obviously the social nature of viewing has generally been through talking to, laughing with and occasionally jumping up and down with people who are physically in the same location as you. This shared experience is a strong reminder to us that we are social beings. When we laugh, cry and interact with a show, it’s the sensibility of the audience that gives the experience meaning rather than simply the TV show itself. But other types of social engagements are now evolving around TV. Now when we watch a show we have our laptop or iPad in front of us where we are talking to friends over Facebook, using hashtags on Twitter or googling an actor. There is an emmerging opportunity to expand this social interaction, to create digital experiences that unify people watching the same show in the interest of making the show actually better.
Book publisher Gestalten profiles some interesting designers on their Motion site. Below is an excerpt from an interview with New York Times designers, mainly talking about the process of working with the web. Interesting for me was mention of the constraints of the paper being a safer place for designers (“finite space forces you to edit”).
We just came across this neat Layer Tennis iPhone app called Layer Freak.If you’re not familiar with Layer Tennis, go check it out at Coudal’s site. It’s a well established way of designers pinging Photoshop files back and forth, adding visual twists and turns as they go (seems to have become a bigger deal with Adobe’s involvement). Anyway, the app is a great way to checkin now and then with how the season’s progressing and relive great moments in previous seasons. I always thought that Layer Tennis was good example of how a simple, working collaboration work: exploring new areas and perspectives simply by adding additional elements along the way and seeing where it takes you. Obviously not very objective-orientated but certainly allows for surprises.
Check out Layer Freak via iTunes.
This is a neat effort by Audi. In an effort to perpetuate a discussion about ‘efficiency’, the auto manufacturer created a Twitter meme that asks users to create a film summation in 140 characters or less. It’s a tenuous link to the company’s new efficient diesel powered A3 TDI but it’s a widely distributed (and cost-effective) idea that lets people have fun with the message..
Write your own: http://www.efficientfilms.ca/
UPDATE: My Sunday: “Final cynical cash-in on celebrity voiceover contracts for ogre-like family film #EfficientFilms”
The Guardian according to Gyford
UK-based creative technologist, Phil Gyford, has neatly interrogated the Guardian’s API to create a stripped back version of what an online news experience could be like: Today’s Guardian. The readability is enhanced by a layout which is quite similar to that achieved by hitting Safari’s new Reader button, and a sense of ‘completion’ (or percentage thereof) is shown by Tufte’s Sparklines at the top. Of course it lacks colour and movement, but who’s missing that?
Needless to say, this fits nicely into an iPad’s ideal column reading width. Phil hasn’t thrown in swiping yet but the one touch on the left and right columns make it pretty zippy on the pad anyway. This kind of site isn’t going to suit everyone – but it is going to suit a hell of a lot of people I expect.
More commentary from the designer the rationale here: Today’s Guardian (Phil Gyford’s website)
State of Design Digital Panel: July 22
Good friend of the Royals, Lou Weis, has invited me to be on panel at the upcoming State of Design Festival. The event at ACMI will look at how cities, organizations and companies can develop and articulate their digital strategies. It will also feature Dan Hill and Sam Davey so it should be a stimulating hoot. We’ll probably gather somewhere afterwards so let me know if you’ll be coming along.
David Lynch: Playing films on your telephone
A gentle reminder from the web’s great weatherman.
Welcome to Twitter, this is the news.
It all started when they changed the question from “What are you doing? to “What’s happening?”. Or more likely, the Twitter powers-that-be were addressing a trend they’d been noticing for a while: most people were using Twitter as a news platform, rather than a social network. I’ve heard plenty of people say (in various ways) that Facebook is for people you know, while Twitter is for things you know – ie. the latter being a platform for subscribing to a vertical list of subjects you’re interested in, via people.
Recently, four Korean researchers who collected all of Twitter’s data over a month’s time released their research on it. This is the first quantitative study of the entire Twitterverse. They analysed “.. the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets.” Impressive. They did this in order to see if the way people use Twitter’s mechanics (follow, retweet etc) set it apart from other social networks. Secondly, they wanted to see if the results demonstrated characteristics of news media.
