Tree Diagrams and Other Nice Routing Examples

Route [root, rout] noun, verb, rout·ed, rout·ing.

 

noun

1. a course, way, or road for passage or travel: What’s the shortest route to Boston?

2. a customary or regular line of passage or travel: a ship on the North Atlantic route.

3. a specific itinerary, round, or number of stops regularly visited by a person in the performance of his or her work or duty: a newspaper route; a mail carrier’s route.

verb (used with object)

4. to fix the route of: to route a tour.

5. to send or forward by a particular route: to route mail to its proper destination.

 

In this post, I make a start with exploring the first visualisations of the toolbox. The aim is to create something that gives a quick and clear overview, but also gives the user the opportunity to easily make a selection based on their project needs. More detailed information can be added through augmented reality such as Layar.

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This Is Water – David Foster Wallace

If you really learn how to think, how to pay attention, then you’ll know you have other options

-David Foster Wallace

User Centered Design versus the Superstar Designer

Various forms of this question pop up every now and then. On the one (extreme) hand, there is co-design, using focus groups to dictate the design space, and methodological design to fit the creative process into standard work. The other extreme would be the superstar designers of today, who repeat their hit tricks to produce a never ending stream of attractive looking products.

I think it is important to keep a sense of perspective over the co-design/user focus/design ‘stars’ question. Democratic design is not an attractive alternative to ‘hebbedingetjes’, as it will produce bland, unoriginal solutions. We need people who have the guts to come up with inspiring, intensely beautiful, society-shaking visions, who are not afraid to translate those ideas into systems and products.

At the same time, designers should not be so arrogant to think they know it all. They should  emerge themselves in the environment they design for, like anthropologists, to truly understand what impact their ideas would have on the people that experience them. At least they should take notice of what has already been done. There for the taking is a vast and growing body of scientific literature on mindsets and behaviors of various focus groups, and methods for doing user experience research.

In my opinion, the reason we should practice user research and co-design in the design process is not to validate our own ideas or to hand over the reigns to the user altogether. Designers should treat literature, user experience research and ethnography not as a ‘client’ or brief, but as a source of inspiration. Be inspired and produce great design that inspires others.

User Evaluation Serendipity

A nice bit of unofficial user research just thrown into my lap. A few days ago, I created an automatic photo blog to store the pictures from the LightScribe App prototype. I put a few existing pictures on it to test the setup. I was very surprised when it started raining ‘likes’! Hint: go to the bottom of the post and click on the star 🙂

At first it was just nice to feel appreciated, but then I decided to check out which picture had the most likes. And it turned out to be exactly the one I had already chosen to be the basis of my GUI design! So have a look and see if you agree.

Storify

Two weeks ago, we had a workshop by Berke Atasoy, about his co-creation tool named Storify. It is a really nice technique that takes you through a user-inspired ideation process. For most professional designers and design firms, the steps may be obvious, but I like it because it de-mystifies the design process and allows non-designer participants. Plus it provides you with really nice, inspiring stories!

A Long List of Ideas that May or May Not Have Anything to do with Light Scribing and May or May Not Exist Already

1. Fire making model- hard work at first, but then easy to share
2. Holographic film inside real world
3. Group knitting
4. Dome of light- personal space
5. Capture cityscape light/ traffic in pictures
6. Trail follower games
7. Lightscribe app: making and sharing pictures
8. Crayon graffiti
9. Lightscribe photography competition
10. Recipe email chain letter

The Shape of Sharing

After Dr. Tilde Bekker’s example, I started work on my own ‘web of parameters’. At first it was quite messy, but after some rounds of pressure, a neat little five-sided diamond emerged.

Interaction Design: Tilde’s Web of Parameters

Today, dr. ir. Tilde Bekker was telling me about interaction design, how several different parameters are connected to each other in something like an elastic web. If you change one aspect, it influences the others as well.

Colour Changing Light Source

If you would play this video on your smartphone while Lightscribing, I am sure it would give a nice effect.

And why not program the phone to generate a random color sequence, like the screensaver this video was taken from?

Introduction video: Hanging around

Just some combined possibilities for spending a free evening or weekend…

Are there things you recognise? What do you do once you are done with school for the day?