I just finished reading Lolita; it was my first time reading it, but it was not my first Nabokov novel (having already enjoyed Pale Fire and Ada or Ardor). It was a 1955 American hardback edition, the first year Americans got their hands on the book. I don’t understand why anyone buys new classic books … Continue reading Reading Lolita On Paper
Whenever news of an earthquake hits, we are told that the quake had a magnitude of, say, 3.2 or 5.0. Or 7.0, as was the case yesterday in Haiti and use retin-a. We all understand that 7 is worse than 5, of course, but I fear that few of us really understand or appreciate the … Continue reading Drop the Richter Scale
Yours truly in 1989. This week is my 20th anniversary as a resident of New York City. I moved here in September 1989 at the tender age of 18, excited to begin studying art at Cooper Union but largely ignorant of how much New York itself would teach me for the next two decades. What … Continue reading 20 Years in New York City
Someone recently pointed me to an interesting book, Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places, by Toby Israel. The book’s thesis is that a designers’ childhood environment profoundly affects their professional and adult design choices. The environments and objects children see and touch in their formative years will, according to Israel, … Continue reading UX Origins: How childhood experiences shape design choices
Let’s say you own a big building full of valuable stuff. How do you make sure that the night watchman patrolling your factory floor or museum galleries after closing time actually makes his rounds? How do you know he’s inspecting every hallway, floor, and stairwell in the facility? How do you know he (or she) … Continue reading Who Watches the Watchman?
One of the problems faced by designers trying to integrate their work with most software development processes, even (or possibly especially) with Agile development, is that the literature makes no distinction between software development and software design, or at least no distinction that makes any sense to dedicated user experience designers. The common complaint among … Continue reading Are We Designing Interactions or Designing Software?
In his Time Magazine Person of the Year interview, Barack Obama said “it turns out there’s some spending that has to be done on information technology, for example, that we can do very swiftly.” If recent speeches by the new President are any sign, I sure hope he’s talking about rural broadband access. Like many … Continue reading Tubes for the Sticks
I loved this picture so much I just had to find a way to look at it every day to make the moment last. And now, if you have an iPhone, you can, too. Presenting the Farewell George Bush iPhone Wallpaper! Download it. Credit for this image is “Reuters AFP/Saul Loeb/Pool” (UPDATE: Full credits in … Continue reading Farewell
Newsweek invited four “hot” design firms to “reboot” the brand of the Republican party to appeal to younger voters. Not an easy challenge. And while the design work itself looks good, I think each of them missed the big picture objective by failing to speak to core Republican values. First up is Pentagram. Pentagram proposes … Continue reading Grand Old Redesign