Typically Apple’s reputation for innovative design is associated with industrial designer Jonathan Ive. Oft overlooked however is the design of the Mac’s operating system. Cordell Ratzlaff led the team at Apple that developed the design and interaction model for OS X. He’s interviewed in the book Designing Interactions about this and his other exploits at Apple. You can view an excerpt of a video that’s included on a DVD here.
The National Weather Services mission statement states that it exists to provide its services to aid in the “protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.” Not a small responsibility.
Why is it then that they haven’t updated their communication standards to include upper and lower case in their text advisories. While severe weather is severe weather, WIND ADVISORIES scream at you as much as a TORNADO WATCH. In both cases I’m still likely to PANIC WHEN I READ ALL CAPS and HAVE A DIFFICULT TIME READING IT which FURTHER ADDS TO MY PANIC. In these new days of the Interweb we’re consuming more and more of our timely information on our computers and our mobile devices - all caps doesn’t read quite as well as it did on our old teletypes which we abandoned about 30 years ago.
When people panic they make bad decisions, and bad decisions lead to acts that work against what this agency strives to protect.
Toxic assets, balance sheets, insolvencies, mark it to market ... the media is hurtling jargon and concepts at the public to try to explain to us what’s going on with our banking system.
If you’re like me you’re probably having a hard time making heads or tails of it all. The big ideas are pretty clear: people irresponsibly borrowed money to buy houses that the banks irresponsibly lent them, people are loosing their jobs and defaulting on their mortgages, housing prices are dropping, banks are in danger of going under.
However if you pick up the paper or turn on the TV you’ll see our nation’s leaders and the leaders of these financial institutions constructing phrases that are meaningless, and quite frankly intimidating, for the rest of us.
The authors of Made to Stick call this the “Curse of Knowledge” - this is when people who’s lives are immersed in complex concepts try to explain things to people who’s lives aren’t. This is a common problem of marketers - us agency folks often find ourselves guilty of it too.
This week’s episode of This American Life does a great job of breaking things down and explaining them in a way that we can actually understand. At the beginning of the program they claim that by the end you’ll understand things enough to formulate your own opinion on the current state of affairs, rather than just sit in front of your computer and watch the market drop with each frightening headline.
In fact they manage to explain to us what a balance sheet is in an entertaining way. The understanding of this fundamental (and very boring) financial concept is the first step in understanding everything else that’s happening. Not all of us have taken a class in economics folks.
This is a great example of how understanding and empathizing with your audience can lead to simplifying the complex for a more powerful (and even entertaining) delivery of your message.
You can download the podcast for free here.
Last week Microsoft premiered a vision of the future titled “2019”, and it’s pretty cool.
Not surprisingly surface computing plays a big role — but doesn’t it always in these future stories? It’s typically pretty easy to find flaws in the interaction design of these explorations, but that’s not the point. They provide great inspiration to get the gears fired up and the imagination cooking.
There’s a longer version of the video and some screen shots of the interfaces here — the commenters on this site are a bit skeptical of Microsoft’s ability to deliver on this future.
I am just wondering of they seem to be so good at predicting the future yet always under deliver…
… there seems to be a serious communications breakdown somewhere between innovation and realization…
Let’s cut them a little slack. They delivered Surface - so hey, there’s a shred of proof that good ideas can ... um, surface.
Taken on the B train in the NYC subway. On the window is what’s known as scraffiti - graffiti scratched into the windows.