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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?

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.

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.

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.

Now that I am back at the blog again, I thought I would go back to posting my weekly doses of randomness…

Slate Interview with Ira Glass

I am a firm believer in the power of storytelling and Ira Glass is a master. Whether writing proposals or product scenarios, doing pitches, or conducting workshops, so much of the work I did at Idea Couture revolved around constructing narratives. It is definitely a skill I want to develop further. This is a must read for professional and aspiring storytellers alike.

Evacuated Tube Transport

Yes, this concept is perhaps a little less than credible (the FAQ is good for a laugh at several points), but the future belongs to dreamers and the dream of day trips to Beijing (in 2 hours at 400 mph) has captivated me.

Packing Tape Spider Webs

Viennese/Croatian design collective For Use/Numen creates spider web-like structures that support human weight… All with packing tape. I would pay a ludicrous amount of money to be able to explore one of these in a full Spiderman costume.

Winnner of 2010 Buckminister Fuller Challenge Announced

Operation Hope, a solution combating one of the major causes of climate change has been named the winner of the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge with an award of $100,000. At its core the winning strategy transforms parched and degraded Zimbabwe grasslands and savannahs into lush pastures with ponds and flowing streams, even during periods of drought. Operation Hope is an initiative of the Africa Center for Holistic Management, which currently operates under the Savory Institute.

Macintosh iPad Stand (via @lucascarlisle)

In every encounter I have had with the iPad, I have been left awkwardly fumbling it as I try to figure out a good way to hold it. The ergonomics just don’t feel right unless your have a surface to place it on (not the case with my KOBO… Just saying). I don’t think this is the solution, but I love it conceptually and aesthetically.

You build a better goat.

In order to keep the goats out of buildings and gardens, Haitians have taken to attaching this three stick structure to goats (and the occasional pig) to keep them from passing through entrance ways.

When designing systems, at what point do decide to modify the users or their behaviour rather than to continue working on the system mechanics or dynamics surrounding them?

Just like everyone else with a pulse, I am a fan of IDEO so I was pretty excited to see that they have launched two new blogs:

• IDEO Labs – Various folks at IDEO are sharing some of the cool they are working on. They already posted on how they made their own multi-touch interface and posted the Flash API to Google Code.
• Design Thinking – Tim Brown is thinking about design thinking for an upcoming book on said topic. I found this post about what design thinking feels like to be particularly thought provoking. There’s also another post where he identifies himself as maybe the only person on the planet who loves (not just likes) Cuil.

The fact that I haven’t posted about this site yet shows how negligent I have been with this blog. Not too long ago, a friend of mine and a few of his buddies launched a site called Cameesa. Cameesa could be best described as Fundable meets Threadless. It works as follows (I hope they won’t mind me stealing this graphic from their site):

While the site hasn’t taken off yet, they have managed to produce one completely crowdfunded shirt and a couple others are real close (the Day of Bad Rain and Skulls are Still Kool! are 90% funded) and the number of good designs continues to increase. Each week there seems to be a couple more shirts added to the list of production candidates that are definitely worthy to wear. Their community also appears to be growing at a healthy rate with lengthy threads attached to many of the designs.

While I don’t see Cameesa threatening Threadless anytime soon, I think the fact that they have produced one T-shirt and are on the verge of a few more shows that their model could work if they are able to sustain growth. It may also signal that the North American market may be ready to see more commercial crowdfunding applications and perhaps that is the most exciting part of Cameesa, by building this site, they have created a crowdfunding platform that could be leveraged across multiple verticals. While I do like Fundable, I think the first commercial crowdfunding application to gain mainstream traction will be one that will be focused on a specific vertical or function, allowing for a more straightforward user experience. Whether or not Cameesa, strikes it big, I am expecting exciting things from the team behind it in the coming months (you can follow their adventures on their blog).

With the launch of their new website, Modernista shows they do (disclaimer: judging by a Google blog search I am pretty slow on this). Rather than displaying their content within a typical agency site format, Modernista took the concept of a social media hub to the extreme, allowing (arguably) the best in breed site for each type of content do the heavy lifting for them with just a simple DHTML overlay allowing the user to navigate between them.

Once I realized the conceit of the site, half the fun became guessing which service they would use for each type of content (spoiler: they made all the obvious choices). Their print work is all displayed through Flickr, categorized through the usage of albums and tags to allow users to navigate the work by client and category. Their television spots are brought to you by YouTube with playlists allowing users to view the videos by client. Similarly, all their interactive work is presented through a link to… you guessed it… del.icio.us, again using tags to categorize their links. Finally, their about and news sections are brought to you by Wikipedia and Google News respectively. One of the best things about this site is that as Modernista is taking you through all these sites, you can hit their escape button and be released into the familiar comforts of whichever social media space you happen to be in. In addition to a great conceit, the site creates a fantastic social media ecology, drastically increasing the reach of Modernista’s content (they could have improved the strength of this effect by cross-linking all their channels to one another rather than just back to their own domain and by using some of the third party Facebook applications to bring their other channels into their Page, but that could be nitpicking on my part).

One critcism I do have of the site is Modernista’s use of “web” spelling in the menu, which may indicate a bit of a shortcoming in understanding of the interactive space on Modernista’s behalf. People only intentionally spell things like that if they are a fledgling start-up and the correctly spelled domain will cost a fortune or if they are a really cool 16 year old on MySpace. Other than that, I really have to applaud Modernista for a fantastic concept with a strong execution.

Update: Wikipedia clearly doesn’t like how Modernista has co-opted their service, but instead of taking the entry down, they have posted a large warning on the top of it. I find this surprising given how protective Wikipedia’s admins are over the neutrality of the site. I would guess they haven’t taken it down because the way Modernista has used the page isn’t occurring within Wikipedia and therefore is not covered in their terms of use.

It appears that Facebook will be adding tabs to profile pages in an effort to tidy the site up. The main driver of this appears to be the clutter of applications that have polluted most people’s profiles. Looking at the screenshots, it appears that they have decided to combine the mini-feed and the wall, which makes sense as it will provide a consolidated view of what is going on with that person over the past few hours or the past six months (depending on how active they are on Facebook).

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