so cool! i booked a hotel room for the weekend and during the online booking process i was given the option to offset my carbon impact of the trip. directly in the online shopping cart web page i could choose to pay a little extra that goes to a non-profit company who plants trees.
i’m assuming they use a gross average for the carbon estimate, but the amount is relatively small so i added it to my trip and now feel significantly better about the travel. simple, seamless, good emotional affect — how cool is that? cudos to the designers and the company for integrating that so well. is there something like that you could add to your online service? a few cents to offset the carbon cost of shipping packages? or manufacturing?
i tried out a new gardenburger at the local fast food joint. so rare when they support vegetarians like me that i also took the time to send the company an email. what they sent back was pure, corporate porn. i love love this adjective riddled language and hyperbole, like “bursting with wholesome … grains”.
Dear Davee,
Great to hear from you! Thank you so very much for generously taking the time to write in and share your experience with us. We are exceptionally grateful for your feedback and truly consider it a gift because it is vital for us to know how we’re doing and what we can improve on in order to better serve you.
I’m thrilled to hear that you are a fan of our new Oregon Harvest Burger! We love the Oregon Harvest Burger because it’s bursting with wholesome, organic vegetables and grains that offer big flavor and hearty nutrition. We are committed to providing our guests with high-quality vegetarian fare and are proud to serve this locally-made, dairy, egg and gluten free veggie burger.
Thank you so much, Davee, for sampling our new Oregon Harvest Burger and for offering your valuable feedback. We hope you will be around to try our new Spicy Anasazi Bean Burger in the near future and would absolutely love to hear what you think of it. Please let me know if you have any questions and I will be glad to serve you in any way I can. I hope you have a terrific day!
Warm regards,
[redacted]
Guest Communications Coordinator
The Holland, Inc. / Burgerville
i’m tempted to pen a corresponding reply, and i’m so excited to find out how they can “serve me in any way they can”! i hope they have a terrific day too!
the best part? the email came from an email address named “Trust Us”
my friend bob went to china recently to study cantonese. his teacher brought him to a makeshift karaoke spot then made him sing a song; after only a couple weeks of study. impressive! super brave and super cute; great job, bob!
finally watched gary hustwit’s documentary film helvetica about the typeface and then typography generally over the last fifty years.
this film is primarily for fans of design but even if you don’t consider yourself a fan but just have a nerdy interest in design i recommend it. it ties together a number of things, the pacing is a little slow in spots but mostly it moves along. the interviews with some of the biggest names in typography are wonderful, one can get a real sense of the people and their philosophies behind the designs.
one dimension that it connects with is the influence of modernism and post-modernism in typography, and then the reconstitutive overtures occurring more recently. another dimension is a political sense of corporate capitalism and the evolution of brand identity, globalization, and mass market. we hear one designer refuse to use helvetica because it represents the corporations that got us into the vietnam war, for example. and the movie spends much time on aesthetics and dances with the idea that only a fine line exists between powerful or bold and plain boring.
this entry, in honor of the subject, is rendered in helvetica. you’ll notice other entries in this blog currently using verdana, and the designer of verdana is interviewed in the film.
i decided not to attend the portland lunch 2.0 today thinking i have too much to do before this weekend. the lunch was concerning openID which i’ve been somewhat skeptical about. but ironically i had my first really positive experience of openID today.
i posted a comment in a blogger.com blog, but instead of using my blogger account to prove i was not spamming i could chose my livejournal account instead. i tried that out of curiosity, and validated the comment using to account from the other web site — and the experience was simple, fluid, and successful.
part of my skepticism of openID has i think been uninformed but from thoughts like:
a sense that adoption would be poor, and without wide adoption it’s not compelling
that it requires customers have a more complex mental model for identity, and identity is already somewhat abstract for people (with usernames and passwords) and unlike the real world
when an abstract system requires education to use effectively, it is bound to fail unless there is a really compelling motivation to endure the education
the devil is in the details perhaps, or a good implementation. my playing with openID previously had felt awkward. today’s experience solved a real problem and was so fluid i barely noticed i was going to a different site to connect my identities. that aspect of “barely noticing” is really a good sign i think. if it’s mundane, then my concerns above are exaggerated. it didn’t feel like i needed to understand the more complex mental model, especially if i stay signed into the related sites and authorization is just a button push. if only one of my staple sites implements the standard, then i can continuously use that one as my core identity and sign-in credential. and in a task based situation like that, i didn’t need any education for what openID was, I could just discover how to use it successfully while completing the task and receive positive feedback.
mao zedong wrote, “In class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class.”
this is just my casually considered opinion, but i suspect class bias is impacting design. i lived in the egalitarian mecca of silicon valley, california for a long time. class is apparent there, but there’s some sense that anyone can become rich. at least they can get lucky with some decent stock options, and not just those with degrees. some google masseuses i hear are now multi-millionaires, and how many companies do you even know that have masseuses? that culture i sense creates a denial of class, and the denial creates a blind spot. startup companies are in particular at risk when considering product designs. these firms are filled with upper middle class, well educated people. can they really overcome that kind of bias of viewpoint? i do think it’s possible but it requires we start by talking about class more openly, and with greater consideration. and it requires real ethnographic research to understand your customers, before designing the product.
the main take away for me was that within the context of a site, having measurable things like progress, connections, signs of expertese and establishment (customizations for example), etc. can be viewed as a kind of game and provide positive affect not only from functional or direct value but also secondarily from our innate desire to play games, accumulate things, and receive feedback. also having ways to progress in a site is a way to avoid boredom. that is to say to keep one’s involvement at a point where one feels engaged and challenged, including competition potentially.
design ethnography is also more generally known as user research for product development. i’m increasingly appreciating the term ethnography, because the word user is conflated for me with the pejorative term drug user and because user implies more of a kind of tool use instead of a rich, two-way interaction. not all products are designed to be used like a tool, some are designed to be seamlessly integrated into one’s environment, lifestyle, or perhaps even to make use of us more than the other way around. so discarding the term user seems appropriate. especially within a software product, please stop calling your customers users in interfaces and documentation.
design ethnography is a relatively new specialty — though with solid roots that go back to the ergonomics research of the 1950’s — and in my experience it is greatly undervalued at silicon valley startup companies designing the most interesting new products. it’s shocking really how many of the hottest new companies have no idea what their target customers are like. they take a serious shot in the dark. some larger businesses i know there have extensive ethnographic research teams or at least appreciation of the discipline, but in the startup environment where i mostly consult it seems barely understood and only occasionally valued.
in terms of training, one friend recommends id.iit.edu in chicago where she studied. she graduated with a masters in design and now works full time as an ethnographer. but i’m starting to see specific training degrees appearing on the landscape. a program starts this year for a one year masters in design ethnography, at dundee university’s design group in scotland. the university of north texas even has a three year, part time online masters degree in anthropology that can be applied toward this and one faculty member there specifically focuses on human computer interaction research. my expectation is that over the next few decades it will increasingly be understood and valued as a unique discipline. This will be driven by product development targeting more diverse international markets and products incorporating digital underpinnings and thereby richer interactions.
i’m somewhat worried now that a constitutional amendment, in california or at the federal level, will be an unwanted backlash from what i view as progress in this ruling. but the trend is clear, just from demographics, younger voters more strongly support gay marriage. it’s just a matter of time now for this to stick. i hope those who oppose it will instead learn to accept it, any victory by those opposed to gay marriage — like the 2000 ballot initiative that was just overturned — is only going to be temporary.
UPDATE: here’s an interesting analysis about how the court voted in the l.a. times.
Former Vermont chief justice Jeff Amestoy weighs in on the ruling for the christian science monitor, and suggests that california change the terminology for all couples to “marriage union” instead. he offered good insights i thought into why this ruling was different from other states.
the pictures are horrific. i can only imagine what it must have been like there. buildings near the epicenter crumbled, including one school with 900 students inside. so so sad.
monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
