Meandering writings about the web, business, code, design, people, life, the universe and everything. If you're here for a reason, forget it.
A Quick, Personal Guide to Problem Solving
(This is mostly a personal reminder, based on personal observations. I’d be interested to know if your experiences are similar/different.)
We’re all capable of producing brilliant solutions to challenging problems, which is good, because this is exactly what the world needs more of. In my own experience, however, it’s easy to allow the problem solving process to become compromised, and accept solutions that are not as good as they could be.
The Do Lectures
I recently attended the Do Lectures – an annual event held in a stunning location in West Wales, often referred to as a conference, although I don’t think that word describes the experience very well at all. Since then, I’ve been asked numerous times what it was like, and haven’t been able to explain it – there’s a lot to say, and a lot that can’t be said. So, in an attempt to tidy up my thoughts, I’ve written them down here.
One of the things that makes Do special is the intensity of the whole experience. Attendees, speakers and staff all sleep in tents. They drink local brews together in an exceptionally small pub. They gather around the campfire into the early hours, listening to the music of talented local musicians. They get little sleep, yet they enthusiastically attend ten lectures a day, and eagerly launch into conversations with complete strangers – the kind of conversations that many would only dare to have with old friends.
Semantic Markup for a Single Page Web App
PHRASE is our recent entry for 10k Apart. It uses analysis of the characters in user inputted text to generate circular patterns, like these:
Whilst writing the markup for the application’s single page, a few interesting decisions came up regarding semantics and the use of HTML5 elements. Here’s a brief run-down:
Beautiful Things: Painting with Molten Glass
Everything about this beautifully shot short film is wonderful. It’s the work of Filmmaker Alistair Banks Griffin combined with the art of Etsuko Ichikawa. The film was commissioned by The Anthpropologist and you’ll find some very nice still shots along with quotes from Etsuko on their website.
#163 365 Ideas: The New Challenge is Discovery
The traditional music industry is a good example of a flawed system of discovery: Artists have bodies of work, and perhaps very local, very small audiences (relatively speaking). A large record label selects an incredibly small percentage of these artists, whose body of work they promote and distribute to a much larger audience. This is how the majority of audiences currently discover new music – via the marketing efforts of a large organisation (directly or not) that has little to do with the artist-audience relationship, other than a profit motive.
When music had to be transferred using physical items, such as records or CDs, record labels made sense: they distributed these physical goods. This is now taken care of in much more efficient ways, and artists can distribute their work to whoever wants to hear it, instantly and almost free, via the internet. The problem of dscovery – making the connection between artists and listeners – still exists, however, and although there are some attempts at a solution, I think we’ll look back on these as rudimentary and largely ineffective.
#162 365 Ideas: Comments
I recently came across this challenge on Mozilla’s Drumbeat.org and it struck me that the whole idea of “fixing” content commentary misses the point somewhat. Commenting isn’t broken, it just isn’t happening in the way that content publishers want it to.
Commentary on content is the healthiest it’s ever been. Huge, broadly used social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, smaller niche forums, and even local pubs and coffee shops all accommodate these conversations extremely well, and they’re happening more and more. As they happen more, the quality of the discussion inevitably expands in both directions—getting simultaneously better and worse—and people have more opportunity to engage in whichever parts of it interest them the most.
Beautiful Things: Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop by Mikey Burton
Beautiful, simple and bold identity work from Mikey Burton for Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop—a small comic book shop in Ohio. You’ll find more shots here, and more of Mikey’s work at his portfolio site. Lovely stuff.
#161 365 Ideas: The “What We’re Working On” App
In the midst of being hopelessly distracted by this list by Jonathan Hoefler of Hoefler+Frere-Jones, it struck me that sharing the things we’re working on could be a good basis for a new app. There are plenty of very broad platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and even ListGeeks, but I think there’s plenty of room for services at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a more specific purpose. Here’s how this might work:
Users register, create a list of things they’re working on—with attached external links where appropriate—and publish the list. A published list can be easily syndicated via RSS, as well as via an HTML or JavaScript snippet for pasting into websites, and various plugins and extensions for popular publishing and social platforms. Each list item becomes a forum thread for discussion, which can also be syndicated.
Beautiful Things: Kill Your Timid Notion Identity by Jez Burrows
The other day, I came across this lovely work by Jez Burrows for the 2010 Kill Your Timid Notion festival, two examples from which are shown below. I especially love the iconic diagrams that he created to represent different events and ideas contained within the festival.
You’ll find more from this project on Jez’ website, which is well worth some browsing time. Also interesting are upcoming publications from Sing Statistics. Oh, and if you know Radiolab, look into this too.
A Holistic Approach: Idea First, Then Content, Then Device
Once there were web pages, then came varying screen resolutions, and now we have mobile devices, screen readers, and the Retina display. Content and the delivery of that content are necessarily becoming more and more detached. Several thoughtful, experienced and clever people have picked up on this increasing gulf between content and device, and are talking about how it may be good for the design process, and might better serve the content.
Mark Boulton‘s post, A Richer Canvas, provides a good summary of his presentation at New Adventures in January about designing from the “content out,” rather than “canvas in” (well worth a watch, when the videos are released). Just the other day, Jeremy Keith posted Content First, which discusses the importance of starting with the content, rather than the device.
