The Ideas Bazaar

Defuse

For Dublin, or Ireland based readers, this event might tickle your fancy: 

The Ignite* format event will take place at 7pm on November the 3rd 2009 in the Sugar Club and will feature talks from 12 of Ireland's leading experts in the field of Interaction Design. http://defuse.ixd.ie

Excluded

I'm not able to attend Include 2009, which starts today in London at the Royal College of Art, but the paper I wrote with Nina Warburton from The Alloy is included and she's presenting it on behalf of us both. 

You can download it here.

It's about the limits of Web 2.0 in the design of online collaborative, social environments for older people.

Oldr

I've got a piece just out in the latest edition of User Experience Magazine (Volume 8, Issue 1, 2009) entitled  "Web 2.0 for an Older Population: Exploring the Limits". The article grew out of my sense that whilst everything Web 2.0 is taking the interweb by storm, and that it (?) represents great opportunities for tackling some of the challenges older people face, many of the concepts embedded within Web 2.0 type executions are pretty foreign to older people with little technology savvy - and if something is conceptually difficult to grasp then questions of usability are rather secondary.

Here's the abstract -  

The personal computer is in many ways a rather inaptly named device. From the earliest days computers have been about sociality and community. The staples of everyday computer use, email and internet, are intimately social. As the internet evolves its uses become ever more implicated in relationships between people. Indeed, one of the most widely used piece of web jargon at present – Web 2.0 – refers to designing the web for, and developing with, intensively social uses in mind. In recent years socially oriented websites have become hot properties attracting both significant user communities and venture capital. Facebook, MySpace and many others have become must visit destinations on the information superhighway. For many younger users these sites define what an internet experience is all about. At the same tine the populations of the developed world have begun to experience the rapid ageing of their populations. Can an online world increasingly focused on supporting rich social experience provide realistic avenues for dealing with some of the threats and opportunities that an ageing world presents? How can we use Web 2.0 to support the sort of experiences that older people want to have on- and off-line?

It's not available for non-members but if you ask nicely I might send you a copy of it. I submitted a similar, but slighty fuller and more specific paper on the topic to the Include 2009 conference based on some work we did during 2007, written with Nina Warburton from The Alloy. Hope you find it useful/relevant/thought-provoking 

Look closer

Via Nicolas Nova's blog, pasta and vinegar, a picture (flickr url) of a supermarket trolley with built in magnifying glass to assist shoppers who have trouble reading labels etc. This seems particularly useful as looking at ingredient lists and nutrition infographics becomes a key part of the discriminatory process of food shopping. Nice to see something lo-tech too. Good, low-cost inclusive design.

The only question is where is the implement to help arthritic hands open the jam jar or peel back the wrapping on the processed meat container when you get it home?

Today

This book is a perfect little addition to that pile of books next to the toilet which require little concentration but demands something absorbing (if not also absorbent): Indexed.

It joins that ever-growing section of the bookshop which is 'Books that were formerly read as Blogs' (anyone remember Belle de Jour?)

Indexed is a one-a-day index card with a ideograph. Simple idea, cleverly and executed regularly i.e., daily. Here's a few which seem to nicely summarise things.

First today in my bit of Intel towers

Second, my area of interest as seen from the perspective of this point in the economic cycle:

And finally, a nice take on recent state intervention in the banking sector

Oh F*ck

Capturing perfectly the eloquence and succintness of The Economist this version of their front cover (from two weeks ago?) sums up this moment in time rather nicely...

via

Do One Thing

via

A bunch of researchers

"How a bunch of Intel researchers, called ethnographers, came up with the innovations..." Tony Salvador explains more on thew work of the researchers and what they ended up with.... [there's more here - I like way this group uses You Tube]...

 

Escher in India

During all my travels in India I never came across these wells in Western India - "known as stepwells, also called bawdi (Hindi बावड़ी) or baoli (Hindi:बावली), are in essence wells in which the water can be reached by descending a set of step".

Quoting wikipedia...

"All forms of the stepwell may be considered to be particular examples of the many types of storage and irrigation tanks that were developed in India, mainly to cope with seasonal fluctuations in water availability. A basic difference between stepwells on the one hand, and tanks and wells on the other, was to make it easier for people to reach the ground water, and to maintain and manage the well.

The majority of surviving stepwells originally also served a leisure purpose, as well as providing water. This was because the base of the well provided relief from daytime heat, and more such relief could be obtained if the well was covered. This led to the building of some significant ornamental and architectural features, often associated with dwellings and in urban areas. It also ensured their survival as monuments.

Stepwell construction is known to have gone on from at least 600 AD. Most existing stepwells date from the last 800 years. There are suggestions that they may have originated much earlier, and there are some suggestions that precursors to them can be seen in the Indus Valley civilisation."

Would be interesting to speculate on the links between Echer's steps

Turns out there is no evidence of Indic influence direction, but more Moorish...again quotes from Wikipedia's entry on Escher.

The mathematical influence in his work emerged around 1936, when he was journeying the Mediterranean with the Adria Shipping Company. Specifically, he became interested in order and symmetry. Escher described his journey through the Mediterranean as "the richest source of inspiration I have ever tapped."

After his journey to the Alhambra, Escher tried to improve upon the art works of the Moors using geometric grids as the basis for his sketches, which he then overlaid with additional designs, mainly animals such as birds and lions.

If you go down to the beach today

don't drop litter. Wonderful poster making this point by designer Klas Ernflo, for the Catalonia govt (via Curate).