Archive for February 2008

Edit: This post deals with a theory about the movie Fight Club. In discussing the theory, the ending is revealed (after the jump). If you haven’t watched Fight Club… well, why haven’t you? But you may want to avoid reading this until you have.

As someone who has an outside-the-norm view on a few movies, I really enjoyed reading this interpretation of Fight Club. It’s almost seven years old, but it was new to me, and I thought it was great.

The idea is that the movie Fight Club is a continuation of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strips, some 15-20 years later. The author offers a lot of great comparisons, and overall it’s very enjoyable reading.

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One of the health-related blogs that I follow had an article today about a new Welch’s ad in People Magazine that allows you to actually lick a panel on the magazine to taste the product.

I’m not sure what I think about this new marketing strategy… but I’m curious to see if it will catch on.

Given how popular both of these games are in the blogosphere, even suggesting something negative about either one makes me think that something like this will happen to me in the near future.

But as a designer, I’m constantly faced with people suggesting (often quite obscurely) that software should be more like a video game. There was even an article in the New York Times last year to that effect.

So here we are in 2008, and Spore and Super Smash Brothers Brawl are two of the most anticipated games of the year. What can they tell us about UI Design? My first impression is that they are each taking on quite a bit, albeit in different ways. Software designed this way is sometimes referred to as bloated, suggesting that the scope is too broad and not user-focused. Bloated software often falls victim to slipping on its release date, as well (Cough. Cough).

Time to scope out these games. Is the future of video gaming aligned with the future UI design? Or are these games falling victim to the same usability issues that UI designers have known about for years? I’m diving in after the jump.

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One of the first things you learn in an Information Design curriculum is how to communicate a message across different distances. What do people notice from far away? Are they compelled to come in for a closer look? How do you hook your reader into coming closer to examine the entire piece?

I’m always impressed by pieces that can do this without using any words… they establish a compelling macro view that is equally interesting at a micro level, when you’ve stepped right up to it. Yesterday, I received a link to some recent Chris Jordan work, and I was really impressed by the message behind these visualizations. They can be enjoyed as they are, but they become even more powerful when you read the caption associated with each piece.

Enjoy!

I read about stickK this morning on TechCrunch, and I was instantly intrigued. The quick explanation is that the site, like many others, helps you to set and track goals. Some of the big ones listed are losing weight, exercising more, quitting smoking, etc.

What sets stickK apart is that, as you set up a goal, you set up a contract with yourself. And you put money against it. So every week you don’t make progress to your goal, you have to pay up (all the money goes to charity). The contract is legally binding, so once you sign up, you’re in it for the long haul.

I love this concept. I’ve been trying to get back on the 20/20 program since I moved to Boston, and incorporating a contract forces a few things into the equation:

1. Preparation. It’s easy to say, “I’ll start tomorrow.” But have you taken the necessary steps to get there? I almost set up a contract this morning, and realized, “Oh crap! I better go grocery shopping and get everything I need to really make this happen first.”
2. Accountability. They give you a buffer to enter your information every week, but you have to do it every week. If you don’t, it counts as a week where you didn’t meet the goal, and you pay up.
3. Drive to stick with it. The contract is binding until you meet your end goal. So giving up because of one bad week really isn’t an option. I think the contract refocuses the problem in a positive way: It pushes you to brush off bad weeks and get right back up again, which is so critical when you’re trying to meet a difficult, long-term goal.

So I’m going to give it a try. Ask me how it’s going in a month. If I’ve paid out a ton of money, I’ll probably be unhappy. But as stickK’s founders say, money is a great motivator!

If you haven’t heard the news, we recently had our much-anticipated office move. These days, we’re working out of The Meadows in Framingham, Mass, which is really an awesome building.

One of my favorite things is the art that they have in the hallway. I feel creative as soon as I walk in the door, and since it’s all in the common space between the different companies, I can go wander around and get inspired any time I want.

Apparently they have an arrangement to rent the art from a local museum - and I saw them swapping out the paintings two days ago. There’s a new piece by the sandwich stand that’s super awesome… if I had the money, I’d totally buy it for my place.

I got curious, so I started looking around for programs that allow you to rent art for your home or office. I instantly found that the Seattle Art Museum and the MOMA in San Francisco have programs like this. It seems like a great way to get exposure to a lot of cool modern artists. Anybody have experience with a program like this?

The first iteration of the category subtitles on this blog wasn’t… ideal. I received a ton of feedback on it (including Vince’s subtle comment), prompting me to find a font that still had a certain decorative quality to it, but was still very structured and appropriate for what I was trying to achieve.

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When Bank of America came out with their Keep the Change program last year, I thought it was really clever. They simultaneously targeted people who (for whatever reason) aren’t proactive about saving, and made the barrier to entry super low.

Then during the this year’s Superbowl, Wachovia came out with Way2Save, which is the same basic idea, except instead of rounding up the purchase, a full dollar is transfered into your savings account with each purchase. The commercial even ends with the line, “More than just change.”

Oooh, snap.

But is the secret to this marketing strategy simply “more is better?” There’s some interesting Psychology here that I just had to explore.

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My free time for the past two weeks has been spent building the new WordPress theme that you see here. Now that I’ve finished the project, I’m starting to reflect on my experience, and while I found a ton of great resources, it wasn’t entirely positive.

Frequently, there was information that I wasn’t able to find - either because I didn’t know where to look or because the information didn’t exist. My only path forward was to crawl through the WP-Includes folder to gather how things work, step-by-step. Coming from someone who used to run API usability tests, I can say this far from the ideal developer experience.

Well, I can’t do anything about the WordPress framework. But hopefully some of the things I learned will help other people, so I’ve captured them here.

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I was ecstatic to hear that Dragon Quest: Swords was releasing one week early, meaning that the title will be releasing in just one week!!

I’ve been a long time Dragon Quest fan, well before I was even aware of the Final Fantasy franchise, which has led me to buy any Dragon Quest game that comes along, even the blatant Pokemon ripoffs. But there’s plenty to be excited about with this game.

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