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Those who know me, know that I eat copious amounts of peanut butter mostly straight from the jar. The downside of this habit is that I am often confronted with a sink full of peanut butter spoons, which are the worst to clean. Alternatively, I could go at that sweet jar of nutty deliciousness with a butter knife – less effective for consumption, but a hell of a lot easier to clean (pre-cleaning on the brim of the jar plus one solid wipe with a sponge). So the question becomes do I maximize pleasure (that massive mouthful of peanut butter) or minimize pain (cleaning those nasty peanut butter spoons)?

Why would I bother to share this dilemma? Because it is the same one that confronts you each time you set out to design a service. How do you choose to make the trade-offs between the optimal “holy shit – this is awesome” moment and the ask (money, personal information, contacts) that allows you to provide that moment?

Take Netflix as an example. Right now they have a free 30-day trial. Unfortunately, I still don’t know if Netflix is any good because I lost interest by the time I got to the third screen (credit card information). Since they are mailing out DVDs, I understand them wanting some collateral, but as a result, I never got to experience that mouthful of peanut butter that might have converted me to a long-term customer. They offered me the spoon, but I didn’t take it because they demanded that I clean it afterwards and I couldn’t tell if their peanut butter was any good.

Silly Netflix didn’t realize that there was a third option… The spatula. It’s not quite the full experience of the spoon, but it is pretty damn close and is just as easy to clean as the knife. Netflix should have offered me a free trial option where I didn’t have to put down a credit card, but only had access to the streaming service. If they offered a spatula, I would be streaming a movie right now instead of writing this blog post.

What’s your spatula?

Anyone who visits regularly knows I am a little obsessed with narrative and its ability to illustrate, educate and persuade. I came across this one today (thank you, Faramarz) and found its combination of brevity and poignancy to be pretty much perfect.

“When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

For his final year of his Masters in Architecture, Keiichi Matsuda has produced a short film exploring the new intersections of consumerism and architecture made possible by augmented reality. All I can say is that the experience being portrayed fills me with a tremendous amount of anxiety. If you subscribe to Kurzweil’s theories that we are merging with machines, how can we go about making that experience more human?

As much as I have fantasized about being a robot (not just growing up… like last week), the idea of having every interaction mediated by an interface that provides contextual data (accompanied by contextual advertisements unless you upgrade to the subscription service) sounds good in theory, but I suspect it would be absolutely soul-crushing in practice. As much as I feel one with both my laptop and my phone, I don’t want all my interactions to be mediated by an interface.

While I am sure the end game is to reach a stage where the C (computer) has all but been removed from HCI (human computer interaction), it will be interesting to see the path it takes. Are we reaching reaching a breaking point in terms of computer intermediation or will we continue to adapt to the point where the vision Matsuda presents or something similar is both comfortable and familiar?

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

At a glance, these stunning aerials by Christoper Gielen seem to celebrate man’s ability to shape his environment, but my gut reaction to seeing these familiar constructions from one thousand feet is disorientation. Is this really us? These configurations feel anything but human to me. As it turns out, that was precisely the reaction Christopher was seeking.

Christoph Gielen was born in Bonn, Germany, but has lived in New York most of his life. He specializes in conducting photographic aerial studies of infrastructure in its relation to land use, exploring the intersection of art and environmental politics. With his work, Gielen hopes to trigger a reevaluation of our built environment, to ask: What kind of development can be considered sustainable?

It is remarkable how often the familiar and comfortable becomes grotesque and disorienting when viewed through a different lens. That feeling of disorientation sparks the emotional reaction that makes the perspective shift such a powerful device. How can you go leverage these perspective shifts to build persuasive narratives (shades of the Ira Glass interview I posted a while back)? While aerial or macro photography is perhaps the most literal manifestation of this type of shift, what other forms does it commonly take? How is the perspective shift best optimized for specific contexts and power dynamics (campfire storytelling, art exhibition, client presentation)?

Technically, I probably came across most of these links in mid-June as the World Cup was kicking off so some may be familiar, but it seemed fitting to post this today.

World Cup Highlights in Lego

Legofussball has done an incredible job capturing some of the tournament’s greatest moments in Lego.

Nike’s Plastic Bottle Jerseys

Apparently, they were supposed to be more comfortable and breathable than their previous jerseys, but the disappointing performances of the teams wearing them (with the exception of New Zealand) might indicate otherwise. Nonetheless, I applaud the effort.

Each shirt comprises up to eight recycled plastic bottles, a move that reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent compared with manufacturing virgin polyester. Besides saving raw materials, Nike also diverted nearly 13 million plastic bottles (or nearly 560,000 pounds of polyester waste) from the landfill—enough to cover more than 29 football pitches.

Football Fields Around the Europe

Hans van der Meer has captured a series of stunning images of football fields around the world – a beautiful exploration of the diversity of contexts of play.

ESPN Match Trucks

ESPN takes home the award for the best pop-up concept of the tournament with their match trucks. Two decked out trucks (one in LA, one in NY) toured around the city, showing games and authentic street food inspired by the countries playing in the World Cup. I love the hand-painted graphics.

The Evolution of the World Cup Ball

Who knew that the classic black and white soccer ball design is only 40 years old? See the evolution of the World Cup balls in this New York Times piece. I would love to know how that design came to become the icon for the game.

Better late than never…

Locals and Tourists by Eric Fisher

By comparing the geotag of one’s photos with their profile location, Eric Fisher has created visualizations of many of the world’s cities that show density of photographs taken by locals versus tourists (tourists in red, locals in blue and indeterminate in yellow). Seems like an excellent way to discover local hot spots when traveling.

Some people interpreted the Geotaggers’ World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in piaces that tourists don’t visit.

Toronto

San Francisco

Warsaw

Boatanic

This concept was designed for cities with canals, but I could see them being an essential component of the revival of the waterfronts in cities like Toronto.

As Damien O’Sullivan, a designer in Rotterdam, walked the waterways in Amsterdam, he noticed that the typical tourist boats would make fantastic greenhouses—they are ideally suited to gathering heat and light with their large glass windows. If tourists were replaced with vegetables, and if the boat was retrofitted with some farming and energy harvesting equipment, these little ships could make excellent, small-sized, mobile urban farms.

This is the backbone of Boatanic, O’Sullivan’s new proposal for a distributed urban farm set to debut in 2011. Boatanic will offer fresh, year-round seasonal produce, sold directly from the quay and by subscription. Bike delivery services will be available to local restaurants buying wholesale. The system also proposes a return to commerce in inner-city canals, which have become less popular as citizens favor roadway transportation.

We Used to Wait

I love the Arcade Fire. I love this track. I am determined to catch them live at some point this summer.

And it seems strange… How we use to wait for letters to arrive, but stranger still… Is how something so small can keep you alive.

Investment in Human Powered Transportation

Good comes through with another pretty infographic showing how the US Department of Transportation has stepped up their investment in projects for pedestrians and cyclists. I am hoping that a proportional increase in trips taken by foot and bicycle will occur, but the cynic in me says that it will take at least generation of education and cultural transformation and that the increase in trips to date are the same people increasing their frequency.

Underwater Base Jumping

This isn’t real, but I wish it was…

That’s pretty much it… I have a stand beside my bed that was built by the guy who lived here before me. It holds my books and my mini-pharmacy.

That bucket on my desk there is a water purifier. Sitting inside of it is a clay pot that the water seeps through into the bottom. On the bottom the type of tap you would find on those old school coffee dispensers you would find at PTA meetings.

On the right are two doors – One that leads into the rest of the hut and then my door to the outside, which is locked from the exterior with a padlock. The lack of ceilings and shared tin roof makes it very much a shared living space acoustically (read into that what you will). The walls are built by stacking tree branches and then layering on mud, which hardens into a sort of stucco.

The chair (you’ll see this exact same design/construction everywhere in Pignon) is a little Van Gogh-esque, no?

La Cabane Perchée

These guys build luxury tree houses all over Europe… You have no idea how badly I would like to invite someone to spend a weekend at my treehouse outside Geneva.

All different, all hidden among the branches, built without driving any nails into the trees, without wounding them, respecting of their shape and integrity, striving for harmony between the tree-house and the host tree.

BetaCup Winner Announced

I love that the winner of the contest was not only not a cup, but also a remarkably simple solution. I think there are two lessons here:

1. Sometimes you need to take a step back from the product and look at the user’s motivations, behaviours and the ecosystem surrounding them.
2. Strive for simplicity. Technology can be a distraction.

Nokia Bicycle Charger Kit

This kit starts charging your phone when you are cycling at 6kn/h or faster and at 12km/h will charge your phone at the same speed as a plug-in adapter. I don’t know what the unit price is on this guy, but I could see them gaining widespread adoption in places like Pignon, where bicycles are pretty common, but outlets to charge cell phones and the energy supply to those outlets are at a premium.

Fontstaches

Something to consider whenever I decide to shave this beard… I wish I could grow a Mr. Jeanne Moderno OT.

desigNYC

desigNYC’s mission is to improve live in NYC by connecting nonprofits, community groups and city agencies serving the public good with passionate, professional pro bono designers. In January, we launched our first 12 pilot projects, and this summer we’re celebrating their progress and impact with an exhibit hosted by Pratt Manhattan Gallery.

I named him Petey.

Like nearly every other country in the world right now, Haiti has got World Cup fever. Even in a town without electricity 90% of the time, you can always find a place to watch the game. Here I am watching in the local night club (more on that in another post) on televisions powered by a gas generator. The satellite feed they picked up was from the Dominican so they turned off the sound and had radios blasting play-by-play in Creole from the local radio stations, which they eventually gave up on after the crowd expressed irritation with the 10 second delay on the call.

It was 10 Goudes to enter (about 25 cents US) and there was no shortage of cold beer available (often difficult to obtain in Pignon – not beer, but cold beer). The night club is outside (definitely the best option in a town where air conditioning does not exist) with two large tents with a couple televisions under each. In case you’re wondering, Haitians tend to support Brazil (Brazilian flags everywhere).

UPDATE: There is also a strong contingency of Argentina supporters here. I would guess the split is 70/30 Brazil. I have not come across a single local who is cheering for a team outside of those two.