abstract

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring.

The Electronics Tattoo film expresses the visual power of sensitive technology applied to the human body. The film subtly leads the viewer through the simultaneous emotional and aesthetic transformations between two lovers.

abstract

Tattoos and physical mutilation are amongst the oldest forms of personal expression and identity. Subcultures have used tattoos as a form of self representation; a visual language communicating personality and status. Philips Design examined the growing trend of extreme body adornment like tattoos, piercing, implants and scarring.

The Electronics Tattoo film expresses the visual power of sensitive technology applied to the human body. The film subtly leads the viewer through the simultaneous emotional and aesthetic transformations between two lovers.

proposal

We suggest proposals should provide information in the following
headings:

Title         - One line summary of the proposal.
Justification - Justification for consideration of the proposal.
Problem       - Description of the problem the proposal is
                attempting to resolve.
Proposal      - The proposed alteration to the current working draft
                of the standard. This should give the page and the
                text you wish to delete and/or add.
Typical Use   - Examples of how you envisage the proposed technology
                being used.
Remarks       - Additional comments, implementation comments,
                side-effects, etc.
Experience    - Examples of current practice, experiences with
                the proposed alteration.
Comments      - Comments of support from others.

• Tailor It. Too many proposals are generated automatically using pre-prepared text (aka boilerplate) that may or may not be appropriate for a particular client. With a little tweaking, you can transform your boilerplate materials so that they specifically address your client’s needs and environment.


• Recognize That It’s Also About Them. Our proposals are naturally about us-–the products and/or services that we provide and how wonderful we are. But we sometimes forget why we are preparing a proposal (in addition to wanting to win the business). In essence, we are preparing a proposal to help a client meet a need or solve a problem. But clients’ needs and problems often go unmentioned in our zest to tell them what we can do for them. This goes hand-in-hand with the tailoring mentioned above.

• Be Concise. Drop the fluffy stuff and meaningless jargon. Get to the point in the first paragraph of each section. Use short, bulleted lists to highlight important information. Don’t make the client read through pages and pages of boring text to figure out the point you are trying to make. They may never read to the end.

• Be Businesslike. It doesn’t matter if you are a one-person show or a multinational company. In my view, proposals should never be casual; they should be formal business documents that use businesslike language. Proposals must incorporate good grammar and perfect spelling. If you’re not a good writer (and many people aren’t), get someone to review and edit your proposal before you send it. You never know-–the person who receives your proposal might be a grammar freak. Remember those teachers with red pencils?


• Be Straightforward. Don’t beat around the bush. Clearly explain what your product or service is, what its features and benefits are, and how it can help clients achieve their objectives or solve their problems.

• Make It Attractive. Attractive doesn’t have to mean fancy. But your proposal should be pleasing to look at. That means having margins that are even, headings or subheadings that stand out from the text, and good use of whitespace throughout your document. Use black and white or color graphics, when appropriate, to break up the text. Put a header at the top of each page that incorporates a small version of your logo. Be consistent in your use of fonts and formatting.

• Don’t Bash Your Competition. A comparison of the features and benefits of your company’s product/service with those of your competitors is fine, but negative language isn’t--it’s tacky and unprofessional.

haque :: design + research

haque :: design + research

somewhere i read

Expect to work hard, expect to fail a few times, and expect to be rejected.
No matter how cool your computer rendering is, no matter how brilliant your essay is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if you can’t output it, distribute it, and make it known, it basically doesn’t exist. Orient yourself to output. Schedule output. Output, output, output. Show Me The Output.

life is too short for the wrong job

some genius ads.

radiator water wear rubber - amazing ad

Improve your flexibility.
Not as thick. Just as warm. All the rubber you need.

Caroline's Corner: How not to get a Job

A very nice article of a conversation between an employee and employer.
check thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifis out.
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1841.asp

creating the portfolio for the graduates

A key part of our field is understanding the audience, understanding the user. When you design your portfolio - it is not for your friends. Look at the types of places you really want to work - and mimic the tone, design, language. Create your portfolio for the place you want to work. I once really wanted a job as an IxD for a company in town. I redesigned their entire site, with critique, and sent it with my resume and a cover letter describing what I had done, and why I wanted to work with them.

By Dan Saffer
Sure, you need to have enthusiasm, smarts, and be able to talk about your work. You need to be a personality fit for our company. You need to have the temperament of a designer. You need to have some experience (school or professional). You need to have something interesting about you.

I want to hire people more talented than me, with better ideas than I have. I am a person with good ideas and skills you can use. I'd rather you present one mind-blowing project than two
mediocre ones. Ok, TWO mind-blowing projects (to make sure the first isn't a fluke). :)

Microsoft Helps Developers of Clinical User Interfaces Improve Efficiency, Patient Safety With Free Toolkit

Healthcare developers will be able to increase patient safety and clinician effectiveness with the new Microsoft(R) Health Common User Interface (CUI), available today from Microsoft Corp. The guidance and software code are available to download at no cost, and are designed to support the delivery of safe patient care across a healthcare system.
http://www.examiner.com/p-37868~Microsoft_Helps_Developers_of_Clinical_User_Interfaces_Improve_Efficiency__Patient_Safety_With_Free_Toolkit.html

ten best design websites

Here you can find a list of ten best design websites. These are author's personal view about the websites, though i agree in some cases.
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/10-best-designed-web-sites.cfm

manager vs leader by john maeda

Ever since I wrote this I have been thinking about the distinction between a leader and a manager. Today on a drive to music school with my daughter we discussed this concept within her world view as the "line leader" for her classroom (meaning that whenever they have to go somewhere in the school, they form a line/queue).

A manager is the person that designs the construct of a line, sets the expectations for the line to form, thinks through how the line might be best composed and prioritized, and ensures that the queue is executed per spec. On the other hand, a leader is the person that is able to take the line forward in an orderly fashion by setting the example for others, providing the vision for how the line fits into the larger scheme of things, and engages the line-followers in a respectful manner. The manager sets up the win with perfection for her team; the leader executes the win with passion. What is common across these two different roles is that both people need to implement or execute their plans in a participatory nature, otherwise they will surely fail. Because in the end, a manager never manages alone; and a leader surely cannot lead alone either.

8 golden rules of interaction design

8 golden rules of interaction design
1. strive for consistency (managing expectation)
2. cater to universal usability
3. offer informative feedback
4. Design dialogs to yield closure (satisfaction of experience)
5. Prevent errors
6. permit easy reveral of actions
7. Support internal locus of control (especially for experienced users; balance between automation and control)
8. Reduce short-term memory load

Is this device full or empty?

A flash USB drive that changes size depending on how much data is stored on it.

Recognizing gestures: Interface design beyond point-and-click

The most basic and simplest gesture is pointing, and it is an effective method for most people to communicate with each other, even in the presence of language barriers. However, pointing quickly fails as a way to communicate when the object or concept that a person is trying to convey is not in sight to point at. Taking gesture recognition beyond simple pointing greatly increases the type of information that two people can communicate with each other. Gesture communication is so natural and powerful that parents are increasingly using it to enable their babies to engage in direct, two-way communication with their care givers, through baby sign language, long before the babies can clearly speak.

http://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6466206

4 definitions of interaction design

4 definitions of interaction design

Physics - a mutual or reciprocal (bilateral, two-sided) action or influence

Transfer of energy between elementery particles/fields

A way of exchanging information and tell your wishes (to the thing you as a user are interacting with)

inter - prefix meaning among or between
action - something done, beeing active, a natural process, series of events that form a plot or a story

A dailogue; outspoken or partly subconcious (taking place in the real world but consequences of the dialogue may exist i your mind)

Good interaction is more like a dialogue - the more input the better result - more interactivity. This differ interaction from reaction. How to use more senses than just your eyes - information that's tangible, physical, or social interaction through technology.

Come Fly With Us

An installation made by me at dotdotdot,Italy.
My favorite one.

ibar-the largest multitouch screen

Though this video is very old, but still a nice one.

What is the world coming to..

Check out this site to see which part of the world you want to stay away from http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php

India innovates: Nivio - a Windows based online desktop

Having been in the services space for about close to 4 years now I have always been waiting for the software as a service concept to become more of a reality in our day to day lie and apart from all the great things that Microsoft has done and is in the process of doing in this space reading about Nivio today certainly made me feel that we are one step closer. What excites me more is that its a bunch of Indians from Delhi who did this. An on-line windows based desktop which could help the user roam his complete desktop including applications and data across machines. It also gets the user out of the buiness of installing and maintaining different applications and dealing with a lot of computer maintenance issues. How they would monetize this is yet to see, but for a beta release it surely seems quite promising, only unfortunate to see all the open office stuff available for free but then again its open office. But the way I look at it, it does have a lot of potential mainly in the small business, student and even a regular PC user of today.. this can open up a complete new avenue for subscriptions, ad sales, application sharing, networking.. the applications are just infinite if done right. Given all these advantages, I guess I would like to see how the whole aspect of security and privacy shapes up in this space.

Although I must say, its quite frustrating that Microsoft could not come up with something like this even after the fact that we actually bought Softricity.. I would blame to the same problem I see in Microsoft - time to market is way to long.. maybe its the bureaucracy or just the way we plan this, it just scares me sometimes. I just hope nobody else beats us to this.

As for now check out more on Nivio at
http://www.nivio.com/

New Social website from Yahoo called Yahoo Mash

The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.

Please visit: www.mash.yahoo.com
Let me know if anyone requires invitation to create profile...so that I can invite them.Please send me your email address so in order to send you invitation.

New stuff - Popfly from Microsoft, create your own webpages etc online ..

Popfly is the fun and easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, and Web pages. It’s made up of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups and a social network where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users

Look at the beta version of Popfly launched yesterday at Web 2.0 Summit.
http://www.popfly.com/overview/

bad design

A few days back, on IXDA discussion list there was a nice discussion about "bad designs".
And quite interesting tag i found was " a badly design site about bad designs". Have a look.

http://www.baddesigns.com/examples.html

tangible interaction

check out the presentations from Sketching in Hardware 2007.
It's a who's who of the people working on the front lines.
http://www.sketching07.com/participants.html

lift 2008

Lift 2008 program is out.
Nicholas Nova-Editorial Manager
check this:
http://www.liftconference.com/lift08-program-page

microsoft's mind reading patent

Microsoft applied for a patent to monitor user's brain waves to understand how good (or bad) their interfaces are. Filed on August 9, 2007, the patent application, #20070185697, describes a method of classifying EEG data in a way that separates the wheat from the chaff. From the patent application
microsoft's mind reading patent

steve jobs presentation on new OS leopard

Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote preview of Mac OS X “Leopard” from San Francisco's Moscone West.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc06/