less humans, more robots

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:51:48 +0530

“If you wanna meet with me… come to the garden… with your...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:12:09 +0530

“If you wanna meet with me… come to the garden… with your shovel… so we can plant some shit.” — Ron Finley

“the funny thing about sustainability is you need to sustain.”

Information Software and the Graphical Interface - Bret Victor [pdf]

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:01:55 +0530

The ubiquity of frustrating, unhelpful software interfaces has motivated decades of research into “Human-Computer Interaction.” In this paper, Bret Victor suggests that the long-standing focus on “interaction” may be misguided. For a majority subset of software, called “information software,” He argues that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users’ goals can be better satisfied through other means.

#Information software design can be seen as the design of context-sensitive information graphics. Victor demonstrate the crucial role of information graphic design, and present three approaches to context-sensitivity, of which interactivity is the last resort. After discussing the cultural changes necessary for these design ideas to take root, He addresses their implementation. The essay also outline a tool which may allow designers to create data-dependent graphics with no engineering assistance, and also outline a platform which may allow an unprecedented level of implicit context-sharing between independent programs. The essay concludes by asserting that the principles of information software design will become critical as technology improves.

#Although this paper presents a number of concrete design and engineering ideas, the larger intent is to introduce a “unified theory” of information software design, and provide inspiration and direction for progressive designers who suspect that the world of software isn’t as flat as they’ve been told.

Contents

What is software?

Of software and sorcery. Is “interaction design” the cure for frustrating software, or the disease itself?
What is software design? Software is not a new and mysterious medium, but a fusion of two old ones.
What is software for? People turn to software to learn, to create, and to communicate.
Manipulation software design is hard. Creating software for creating is tricky business.
Most software is information software. People spend more time learning than creating.

Graphic design

Information software design is graphic design. People learn by looking. Looks are all that matters.
Demonstration: Showing the data. Redesigning Amazon as an information graphic.
Demonstration: Arranging the data. Redesigning Yahoo! Movies as an information graphic.

Context-sensitivity

Context-sensitive information graphics. Software trumps print by showing only what’s relevant.
Inferring context from the environment. The outside world can suggest what’s relevant.
Inferring context from history. Memories of the past can suggest what’s relevant.

Interactivity

Interactivity considered harmful. The user can suggest what’s relevant, but only as a last resort.
Reducing interaction. Approaches to easing the pain.
How did we get here? The popular focus on interactivity is a vestige of another era.

Intermission

Case study: Train schedules. Designing a trip planner as an information graphic.
Demonstration: Trip planning redux. Redesigning Southwest Airlines as an information graphic.

Changing the world

Designing the information software revolution. Five steps from artifice to art form.
Designing a design tool. Dynamic graphics without the programming.
Engineering inference from history. How software can learn from the past.
Engineering inference from the environment. A platform for implicit communication between software.
Information and the world of tomorrow. Why all this matters.

10th anniversary of the first major ‘loss’ in my...

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:10:15 +0530

10th anniversary of the first major ‘loss’ in my life. – View on Path.

seat14a: NEW: The Tech Blues - $99 | http://seat14a.com/ Hey...

Sat, 18 May 2013 02:13:37 +0530

seat14a:

NEW: The Tech Blues - $99 | http://seat14a.com/

Hey S14a! When are you ‘soft launching’ in India?

"Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:04:00 +0530

“

Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new product in to the market, it’s a marketing problem,..

You have to explain everything you do, and people have to understand it, within seconds.

…In the mobile context, you need to explain what you do in 30 seconds or less because people move on to the next shiny object. There are so many apps and people are vying for your attention on the go. It’s the one context in which you’ve got lots and lots of other stuff going on. You’re not sitting in front of a computer; you’re at a bus stop or in a meeting.

”

- Kevin Systrom, Instagram [30 second rule for app success]

This graph says ‘US healthcare is an embarrassment’....

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:56:11 +0530

This graph says ‘US healthcare is an embarrassment’. Help me find a word to explain ‘healthcare in India’ — – View on Path.

What Peter Thiel taught us about startups

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:51:00 +0530

1. Globalization is not (all there is to) progress.

2. It is better to be right than to be contrarian.

3. Secrets exist.

4. Capitalism and competition are antonyms, not synonyms.

5. People lie.

6. Much of life is a power law.

7. A bad plan is better than no plan. A good plan is even better.

8. Foundations matter. Beginnings are special.

9. Founders are different.

10. Find a frontier and go for it.

There is something importantly singular about each new thing. There is a mini singularity whenever you start a company or make a key life decision. In a very real sense, the life of every person is a singularity.

The obvious question is what you should do with your singularity. The obvious answer, unfortunately, has been to follow the well-trodden path. You are constantly encouraged to play it safe and be conventional. The future, we are told, is just probabilities and statistics.You are a statistic.

But the obvious answer is wrong. That is selling yourself short. There are still many large white spaces on the map of human knowledge. You can go discover them. So do it. Get out there and fill in the blank spaces. Every single moment is a possibility to go to these new places and explore them.

There is perhaps no specific time that is necessarily right to start your company or start your life. But some times and some moments seem more auspicious than others. Now is such a moment. If we don’t take charge and usher in the future—if you don’t take charge of your life—there is the sense that no one else will.

The Design+Startup reading-list, for this week

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:49:00 +0530

The Biggest Problem in Design [by Julie Zhuo, Product design director @ Facebook]

Good Design is Honest [Omar El Amri, Computer Scientist]

Wasted Talent - Arranging deck chairs on the Mars rover. [Matt]

Do Tomorrow What You Decide Today [ Anders Thoresson]

What kind of a designer are you? [ Tuhin Kumar, Product Designer @Facebook ]

How, When and Where Will The First Truly Great Digital Design Studio Emerge? [Murat Mutlu, Designer]

What Startups Are Like -- curated by Mark Birch

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:17:21 +0530

Here is a collection of uplifting and heartwarming words of encouragement from the most sage voices in the tech startup world as you begin your own entrepreneurial journey.

Throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. - Reif Hoffman
Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death. - Elon Musk
Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood. - Sean Parker
Startups are hell. - Penelope Trunk
It’s like we’re married, but we’re not fucking. - Y Combinator founder via Paul Graham
I kept busy by thinking about how running that marathon was much like doing a startup. - Dan Martell
People say doing a startup is like a marathon. It’s actually a roadtrip at night with no headlights. You think you’re going to Toledo but you’re actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren’t driving well. - Ben Silbermann via Jason Shen
This is what running a startup is like…every day (cue video). - Jason Calacanis
Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly. - Paul Graham
In my tiredness, my scars, and my strength I have noticed that launching and running a start-up is a lot like war. - Ryan Wood
Running a startup is like having all the bad guys from Die Hard attack you, but you’re way more scrawny than Bruce Willis. - Aaron Levie

Missing the train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success...

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:42:00 +0530

Missing the train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that is what you are seeking. – Read on Path.

Responsibility to yourself means

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:39:11 +0530

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger.

It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions—predigested books and ideas…marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short…and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives.

It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”…The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.

Midas, Son of Gordias We are like them only, aren’t we? We...

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:42:00 +0530

Midas, Son of Gordias

We are like them only, aren’t we? We don’t want to follow the herd. We want to be the black-sheep. We don’t want to be ‘wrong’. We all want to be alone. We all want to be right. We all want to be Midas, son of Gordias.

But - was he right?

Reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:23:28 +0530

Almost all people answer that the opposite of “fragile” is “robust,” “resilient,” “solid,” or something of the sort.

But the resilient, robust (and company) are items that neither break nor improve, so you would not need to write anything on them— have you ever seen a package with “robust” in thick green letters stamped on it? Logically, the exact opposite of a “fragile” parcel would be a package on which one has written “please mishandle” or “please handle carelessly.”

Its contents would not just be unbreakable, but would benefit from shocks and a wide array of trauma. – View on Path.

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:02:00 +0530

Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.

The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.

Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.

Brilliant piece on medical ethics and innovation by Nick Bostrom. Read the full essay here.

We are gods.

Sun, 12 May 2013 01:25:13 +0530

Why has the growth in wealth and complexity been sudden and explosive rather than smooth?

Just what kind of an algorithm is evolution? What does it do?

Evolution creates designs, or more appropriately, discovers designs, through a process of trial and error.

One needs “design without a designer” to explain biological evolution, but why do we need ‘that process’ to explain the wealth creation?

Aren’t we the gods of our own economic creation?

Wealth, after all, is created by smart, innovative people coming up with new ideas for products and lots of hard work to make and sell them.

We are gods.

"Design has tended to be solution driven, but the problems are becoming more complex and..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:57:38 +0530

“

Design has tended to be solution driven, but the problems are becoming more complex and contradictory, and the solutions no longer so easy to define. The space before us is unresolved, full of dilemmas and trade-offs.

Yet, even here, designers are perfectly equipped to flourish. Understanding and accepting the complexity, and the messy loose ends, can provide cohesion through multiple possibilities. Tangible problem-solving design skills can be used to ask questions, interrogate existing frameworks, and generate a broad range of diverse alternatives, both positive and negative. The implications of technological cultures are revealed even as they are still in formation.

The requirement is imagination, and more importantly, the ability to trigger the imagination of others. Design proposals
are used as participatory tools, not only for a broader public of citizens or end “users” but also for “experts” and “decision makers.”

”

"“Can we ?” is an engineering problem. “Should we ?” is a design/UX/strategy..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 15:26:51 +0530

“

“Can we ____?” is an engineering problem.

“Should we ____?” is a design/UX/strategy problem.

Ideally, people on your team can handle both.

”

We are not a startup

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:06:00 +0530

At fusedcow, we are not a startup - we are a movement. A movement to help people create inspiring homes for themselves and their families. We achieve that with the help of technology, some really innovative computing which helps the end-user make his dreams comes true.

Human Centered Design:

The technology ecosystem ignored the end-user in this industry. Architects are failing to create/show value. Architecture - from the original ‘human centered design’- is moving to ‘architect/me centered design’.

Especially in India, everytime I talk to somebody who have hired an architect for any job is dis-satisfied with the architect. They think Architects are teaming-up with the local-contractor and pushing the budget up (to earn 10% of the total spend).

This is not a problem of the architect - 5 years of grad-school taught him to create ‘inspiring designs’ - not ‘inspiring and usable designs for the client’. The role models - whosoever, the Hadids to the Roarks - pushed the point “create iconic buildings” - never really focused on ‘usability’. — especially in interiors.

The end user is dumb/less-visionary than the architect - he wants a well-planned & designed space for himself and family and it should be under the budget.

The home owner never gets what he wants from the architect - and that is one of the reasons the 70+ home-owners bitched about the architect to me.

The Satellier Alumni and other things DESIGN:

Let’s change that. My friends and I worked on changing the way architecture is done about 9 years back, bringing collaborative technology platforms in large-scale real-estate development. At Satellier Inc, we worked with some of the best estate-developers in the world (especially in the US and UK) with a strong focus on the designer.

Not the end user. The market then demanded better tech for the designer. The market we know of is saturated.

Let’s bring the most- important stake-holder in the real-estate business: The home-buyer. That space is still craving for technology, design and innovation.

We are building a technology platform which will help you build a dream home, the CAD drawings you see will transform into magical-spaces, just the way you wanted.

If you are a recent home-owner, sign-in for the private-beta of fusedcow - thank you!

"….when it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of..."

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:25:39 +0530

“

….when it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

You live your life by a code, an ethos. Every man does. It’s your shoreline. It’s what guides you home. And trust me, you’re always trying to get home.

”

- When i die, my tomb-stone will say ‘Free WiFi’.

less humans, more robots

Photo

“If you wanna meet with me… come to the garden… with your...

Information Software and the Graphical Interface - Bret Victor [pdf]

10th anniversary of the first major ‘loss’ in my...

seat14a: NEW: The Tech Blues - $99 | http://seat14a.com/ Hey...

"Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new..."

This graph says ‘US healthcare is an embarrassment’....

What Peter Thiel taught us about startups

5. People lie.

The Design+Startup reading-list, for this week

What Startups Are Like -- curated by Mark Birch

Missing the train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success...

Responsibility to yourself means

Midas, Son of Gordias We are like them only, aren’t we? We...

Midas, Son of Gordias

Reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

We are gods.

"Design has tended to be solution driven, but the problems are becoming more complex and..."

"“Can we ____?” is an engineering problem. “Should we ____?” is a design/UX/strategy..."

We are not a startup

"….when it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of..."

"“Can we ?” is an engineering problem. “Should we ?” is a design/UX/strategy..."