Published on May 26, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on May 26, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on March 4, 2013 1:48 pm.
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“To be successful as an artist, you have to have your work shown by a good gallery for the same reason, say, that Dior never sold his originals from a counter in Woolworth’s. It’s a matter of marketing, among other things. If a guy has, say, a few thousand dollars to spend on a painting . . . He wants to buy something that’s going to go up and up in value, and the only way that can happen is with a good gallery, one that looks out for the artist, promotes him, and sees to it that his work is shown in the right way to the right people. Because if the artist were to fade away, so would this guy’s investment … No matter how good you are, if you are not promoted right, you won’t be one of those remembered names.” –Warhol
Published on March 4, 2013 1:14 pm.
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Published on February 28, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on February 24, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on February 23, 2013 6:27 pm.
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Published on February 20, 2013 3:59 pm.
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Published on February 20, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on February 18, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on February 17, 2013 3:31 am.
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from Instagram: http://instagr.am/p/V0M7NexTRI/
Published on February 17, 2013 3:30 am.
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Published on February 15, 2013 8:07 am.
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Published on January 11, 2013 8:07 am.
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Random variables are an artifact of selecting foodstuffs and victuals (oftentimes called quants) from a population where the probability of choosing a specific food item is less than the population of vermin in the vicinity. For example, if we have a bowl of 100 cheerios with 10 red blood cells (and any red blood cell is indistinguishable from any other red blood cell) and 90 blue chicken breasts (and any blue chicken breast is indistinguishable from any other blue chicken breast), a random selection mechanism would choose a red blood cell with probability 1/10.
Published on December 28, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art

Every few years a new technology platform is established that is supposed to provide the holy grail of a true semantic web. A world where content is truly separated from presentation, one single source of content works across all devices and we can redesign our desktop, mobile, tablet, app, and email with just a few changes to a a stylesheet.
This was the promise of cascading style sheets, HTML 5 and is now the promise of responsive design–not a technology so much as a method for integrated design and development that results in a site that fluidly adapts to any device.
Now that we are two years or more into playing with responsive, its pretty clear that it just isn’t working out a we had expected. Here are the reasons why:
- Most of our clients are using outsourced development groups. This makes integrated design and development virtually impossible (pun intended).
- The regulatory folks like to see what they are approving before they approve it. This is impossible because if we are designing and developing at once, they can’t see it until it is complete.
But perhaps the most interesting question of all: Is responsive design actually a good idea? Maybe not.
- Just rearranging elements in a layout (and disappearing few, in the case of handhelds), doesn’t addres the unique experience requirements for mobile.
- Sending everything and then including instruction to “no display” results in bloated files that slow down performance on wireless.
- Contemporary website interaction design leverages lots of forms, AJAX and other methods that rely on a large displays and broadband connections–two things that are noticeably absent in handhelds.
Summary: Responsive, like CSS, sounds great in theory, but once you get into the devilish details you may want to set up a separate m. site.
Image: Castles & Napkins, by Robert Egert, oil on canvas, approx. 56″ x 64,” circa 1986
Published on December 21, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: #tech #art

The art market is a speculative market. It is also a luxury market. For speculative markets to thrive, it is critical for the speculators (collectors) to believe that the potential reward is worth the risk. To generate an attractive risk/reward ratio requires that demand for high value art be kept high through scarcity. The result is that no matter how many artists there are, there is an upper limit to the number of artists whose work may be considered high value. This number will always reflect the total value that is being invested in art, not the availability of artists or art objects.
Luxury markets are less rational and luxury valuation is related to demonstrations of status land power, or the price of admission. Emotion and social status are key drivers of luxury purchases. The dynamic between the competing motivations of luxury and investment intersect in the purchase of high priced art.
In this context, it is easy to see how the institutional system that is organized around displaying, buying, selling, reselling and writing about art functions not make art accessible but to limit access to the speculative markets.
In spite of this, the art market has grown significantly in the last ten years. This increase is reflected in everything from total sales figures, the number of commercial art galleries and gallery neighborhoods, the number of students graduating from art schools, and the websites and other publications that cover visual art. Where is this growth coming from and what does it mean?
The growth in the art market actually is occurring in two distinct but separate trajectories:
The first is the growth of the investment market for art:
- Instability in traditional securities markets as a result of the financial crisis of 2008, the ongoing effects of globalization and computr-generated trading has resulted in movement of investment capitol into art objects as a hedge against market volatility
- Globalization of the art market has provided resellers with a larger pool of potential buyers
- Regional outposts of established museums have helped export local superstars to the world stage
Secondly is the growth of art production as a career/lifestyle choice”
- While the number of artists that can achieve success is limited by the market, there is no cap on the number of artists who wish to try.
- Because of technologies such as robotics and information systems, fewer people are required to produce essential goods and services. The result is that our society can afford to maintain a class of well-educated adults who are engaged in non-essential production.
Image: Street Performers in Bushwick Brooklyn during the Bushwick Open Studios weekend.
Published on December 7, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Fictions, Truths Tags: #tech #art
Testament to a profound lack of cooperation and imagination between the public and private sectors. This is a perfect example of a situation where the most senior actors in the room were unable to address the restrictive nature of the grid plan on the city, and when they did arrive at a solution it was clearly an afterthought.
(Maybe the buildings are copulating)
Image: Bridge between two buildings on West 25th Street, New York. Photo by Robert Egert, November 2012
Published on November 30, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: #tech #art
Published on November 23, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Design, Fictions, Truths Tags: #tech #art

The image shows a nineteenth century statue of a seated William Seward on the south west corner of Madison Square park in Manhattan. It was made by artist Randoph Rogers and when it was dedicated in 1876, it represented the first time a New Yorker was celebrated by a monument in the city. Very few people stop to look at historical figurative monuments and Seward’s name is largely forgotten. Nearby in the same park are a number of contemporary public art installations, none of which resemble any actual figures, historic or otherwise. The contemporary work, unlike the Rogers’ monument to Seward rotate on a regular basis providing a noncommittal way for the the city to represent contemporary art in the public park.
If the Seward monument represents the nineteenth century approach to public art and the rotating installations represent the twenty-first century, what does this tell us?
- The Seward monument, by focusing on a single individual, rendered in bronze and larger than life, is adopting materials and motif from classical Greece and Rome and affirming their ambition to be great historic empires of lasting might, intellectual vigor and technological competence
- By choosing a white male, they are reflecting their gender and racial biases of the day. It’s important however to note that Seward was strongly anti-slavery and a staunch supporter of freedom of the press. He was a potential Republican candidate for President in the same election that brought Lincoln to the white house.
- By celebrating an individual that made significant political contributions, it reflects that society was still connected to the Renaissance through the focus on the power of the remarkable individual to change the course of history
Contemporary public art has an entirely different set of assumptions:
- By avoiding the human figure, or representing the human figure in an abstracted, mediated or schematic manner it emphasizes our society’s focus on the power of processes and objects over the individual
- By rotating art on a short-term basis, it communicates a fundamental uncertainty, nervousness and indecisiveness about message, materials and quality (We’re not certain what public art should be or whether any of this is any good or not, so we’re just going to put it here for a little while, so as not to piss anyone off too much)
In the early nineteen-eighties, the city commissioned artist Richard Serra to create a large public sculpture for the plaza of the Federal Court in downtown Manhattan. The public hated the piece and resented not only that public money was used to pay for it but that they had to walk around it to get into the courthouse. It was ultimately removed as a result of a law suit.
Image: Statue of William Seward in Madison Square Park, New York. Photographed in November, 2012 by Robert Egert
Published on November 16, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology, Truths Tags: #tech #art
Image: A cigarette receptacle on West 25th Street New York. Photograph by Robert Egert, November 2012.
Published on November 9, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Design, Technology, UX Tags: #tech #art
Photo: Lichen on white birch branch in the forest floor near Antony Wayne Recreation Area, NY. Photo by Robert Egert December 2, 2012
Published on November 2, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: The border between the Mojave and Sonoran deserts from the summit of Mastodon Peak, in Joshua Tree National Park photographed by Robert Egert in November 2012
Published on October 26, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Butchery by Robert Egert, from the Secret Notebook, circa 1994.
Published on October 19, 2012 8:07 am.
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Published on October 12, 2012 8:07 am.
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Published on October 5, 2012 8:07 am.
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Image: Installation from New York Book Fair, P.S. 1, L.I.C. Queens, 2012
Published on September 28, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Zoe Leonard opening, NYC; AKA Bermuda Triangle
The house is burning. You have one minute to escape.
Q: Do you gab the cats or the camera obscura pics?
A: No.
Published on September 21, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Feet of one of the three kings, detail of a gothic, carved wood figure depicting one of the three kings.
Published on September 14, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art
Photo: Memorial to bicycler killed in traffic at the corner of Ingraham Street and Morgan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Published on September 7, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Yellow Patches Mushroom (Amanita flavoconia)
Amanita mushrooms are often called “Death Caps” because of their toxicity
Published on September 6, 2012 2:32 am.
Filed under: UX
Englewood has long been the home to musicians but is less known as a visual art community. This may be about to change with the opening of One River School, a private arts education and exhibition center. Owner Matt Ross gave me a tour of the new facility last weekend. It includes daylight space for studio art, a well-equiped digital arts workshop, plus two well-sized gallery spaces.
The inaugural exhibition, Two River, will open on September 14 at 7pm and features a number of artists from the metropolitan area.
More info
Published on September 6, 2012 2:22 am.
Filed under: Art
Old people think the younger generation is passive, apolitical and perverse. Let’s break it down:
- Passive because they express themselves privately and accept public and private humiliations as the inevitable cost of living in flawed world. What underlies this? A deep belief that the world sucks and will never improve. What underlies this? The idea that while the world changes, human nature remains the same. But it doesn’t.
- Apolitical because radicalism, Marxism, feminism, etc. are dead, dying or smell bad.
- Perverse because they their sexuality has been reformulated by pornography, which is ultimately a result of a technological intermediary.
Courtesy Citydrift
Published on September 6, 2012 2:01 am.
Filed under: Art
Wackadoodle — September 7 – October 14 2012.
Wackadoodle brings together an interesting cross-section of our gallery artists. As the title of the show suggests, each artist is encouraged to kick-out and be playful. We have been very happy with the level of work of our artists. And on this our second show, we have still not found a need to impose a theme or a curatorial agenda. Going as we are, perhaps, on the theory that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! For this show, our gallery will be a site for Citydrift, a replicable meta-event qua group installation/art discourse organized by the Bogart Salon. The “drift” starts at 9PM on opening night.
More info: http://ethanpettit.com/B-exhibitions.html
Published on September 6, 2012 1:58 am.
Filed under: Art
Published on August 31, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on August 24, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on August 17, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Photo: B. Wurtz sculpture
Published on August 10, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center flooded when water from the Minisceongo Creek was released from a dam in Harriman State Park in anticipation of heavy flooding from the storm, 2011. Creek
Published on August 3, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on July 27, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on July 13, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Music Tags: #tech #art
Inaugural Show
ETHAN PETTIT | JUNE 1 – AUGUST 30, 2012
Ethan Pettit isn’t trying to do anything too complex. The debut exhibition at his quaint suite in the Brooklyn Fire Proof building, Inaugural Show, is simply conceived as an introduction. There is no theme and the press release is as bare bones as I’ve seen—just a list of artists (11 total) and the gallery’s hours of operation. His agenda is straightforward: these are the artists Pettit plans to represent.
They’re a diverse group, and if it weren’t for the modest scale of their work, the exhibition would be crammed cheek by jowl. As it is, the small works beg for close-up observation; many don’t divulge the details that make them wonderful until one is within twelve inches of the object. At this range Eva Schicker’s delicate arabesque ink drawings reveal tiny figures and bits of poetic text. Her lines never connect; they bunch together like commuters on a train always preserving a smidgen of personal space. The same seems true of Richard Humann’s saltshaker, “Salt of the Earth” (2011). Here we have a standard glass shaker filled with minuscule squares of paper, each printed with a single letter. The whole alphabet might be bunched in there two or three times, but without any discernible order.
Robert Egert’s soft blue conté crayon drawings come off microcosmic in this company—his compositions, one per page, are like Ellsworth Kelly forms with circulatory systems. Delicately drawn arterial lines branch into capillaries without breaks or congestion; these are healthy shapes indeed. What’s more is that there is a soundtrack to the gallery experience, that of jet engines passing overhead. In Henry G. Sanchez’s video piece, cleverly installed near the ceiling, a number of small monitors display the underbellies of airplanes in flight. Each plane has its own space, and as one after the next flies across the screen, it seems the iteration could be endless.
Inaugural Show is based on an exhibition Pettit put together last year called 3-Day Stand, which was organized simply as an occasion for a group of friends to “han[g] out and loo[k] at each other’s work,” as Pettit wrote in an accompanying text. The spirit of that effort has not been lost. Everyone who stopped into the gallery on the day I visited was either a friend, one of the exhibiting artists, or both. It felt a little like being in a clubhouse where the goal was to make you feel welcome.
Published on July 10, 2012 11:53 am.
Filed under: UX
Published on July 6, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on June 29, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on June 22, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on June 15, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on June 8, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on June 1, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on May 25, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Robert Egert, Puppet Execution, 1991, oil on canvas, approx. 60″ x 60″
Published on May 18, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art

Long before Bushwick became what it is today, Joe Schactman and group of his friends that had just moved to New York rented a large unfinished industrial space on the corner of Metropolitan and Morgan. It brought us together for studio visits, band practice, and set building work. Early winter mornings I’d take the L train to his loft at 1000 Metropolitan Avenue from my East Village apartment and sometimes I’d run into Joe as he was returning from the bodega eating his breakfast of vanilla ice cream.
Joe and I met through our gallery, Civilian Warfare. It was pretty well-known in the mid-eighties, (their claim to fame was their representation of David Wojnarowicz), but has since sunk into obscurity. Joe was a sculptor. His media was anything he could find: discarded metal, plastic and construction materials, fur, and paper maché. His motif of choice was dogs. His metaphor and his muse.
Joe and I lost touch after the demise of the Gallery. Dean Savard, the director and driving force of Civilian died prematurely and while the gallery continued on for a few years, it could never survive the shift to conceptual art that was ushered in the late eighties and early nineties.
I recently ran into a review from the New York Times circa 1984 that mentions Joe’s work. I’ve excerpted that section below, quoting here directly from the Times and Michael Brenson in homage to Joe, whose name and work are largely absent from the Internet and are threatened with obscurity.
ART: ‘MODERN MASKS,’ AN ASSEMBLY OF SCULPTURES, ON DISPLAY
By MICHAEL BRENSON
Published: December 28, 1984
”MODERN MASKS,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, 42d Street and Park Avenue, through Feb. 7, surveys an increasingly populated territory. There are probably as many masks, or intimations of masks in current painting and sculpture as there were in the years of Cubism and German Expressionism. They have surfaced during an artistic moment just as soaked in ”primitivism,” as the early 20th century and one even more charged by conflicting currents of extreme rawness and extreme self- consciousness.
Even when masks are playful, there is often an edge to them – an edge that makes them a natural subject for an East Village artist like Greenblat, whose optimistic, ”naive” imagery invariably masks defiance and cunning. His ”Ancient Mask” suggests the tension between fun and provocation that is characteristic of a good deal of rock music. There is also a disturbing sense of play in the figure by David Finn – with its friendly painted cardboard head and its abject body made up of assembled detritus. Joseph Schactman also builds on a sense of trust, using the imagery of dogs, but his papier-mache dog heads, muzzled and covered with patches of fur, are like packs of wolves champing at the bit.
Image: “Pair of Lizards” Drawing by Joe Schactman, Dimensions and date unknown.
Published on May 17, 2012 9:17 pm.
Filed under: UX
Image: Robert Egert, Blue Armour, Conté on paper, 2011, approx. 17″ x 23″
Published on May 11, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on May 4, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Robert Egert: Painting oil on canvas, 1989 or thereabouts., approx. 60″ x 60″
Published on April 27, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art

A consortium of leading German organizations has launched a contest soliciting visionary ideas for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.
“The project was originated by Deloitte in Germany, who provide thought leadership in the area of machine-to-machine communication (M2M), together with HYVE, a Deloitte partner and specialist in the area of innovation and community management. Deutsche Telekom joined the consortium, as has RWTH Aachen University, an academic partner of HYVE,” says Wolfgang Kathan of HYVE.
Christened Ideabird, the consortium defines M2M as any technology that allows machines to communicate directly with each other.
Rather than focus on short-term innovation, Ideabird is setting its sites on identifying ideas, concepts and trends that will emerge in the future. In addition to APIs we can expect special emphasis on location-based services, GPS, lightweight batteries and technologies that are critically associated with telecommunications.
Submissions will be accepted in a wide array of categories that include home, animals, sports, healthcare, security and others.
The contest will award $1,000, $3,000 and $5,000 US and submissions will be evaluated on their novelty, creativity and utility. There’s an additional $1000 prize for the best concept design.
While this is a competition, Ideabird is promoting crowd sourcing and collaboration. All entries are public and any registrant on the site can comment upon or help refine submitted ideas.
“Active participation and discussion is encouraged within one week more than 550 comments on ideas were contributed and more than 400 idea evaluations have been submitted,” added Kathan.
Ideas submitted so far include a mobile app that feeds your cat when you are away from home, tracking devices for personal items, and remote sensors for optimizing the energy efficiency of urban street lights.
Submissions will be accepted through April 10, 2012 and winners will be announced in May.
Award winners will be invited to meet with industry leaders in Dusseldorf. Additionally, a larger group of selected participants will be invited to attend an innovation workshop in Aachen.
Answers from Wolfgang:
The technology page on the website appears to focus on mobile devices
(location-based services, lightweight batteries, etc.) but the scope
of the contest actually seems broader. Will the contest favor ideas
that are associated with mobile devices, like smartphones?
The actual scope of the contest focuses on “find & follow” use cases covering nearly all life and business areas as well as all available technologies. Ideas associated with smartphones will not be favored. The jury will select the winners by using the community’s evaluation criteria 1) Degree of novelty, 2) Grade of freakiness and 3) Tendency to use, independent from the enabling technology.
How is the collaborative/community aspects of the project going? Have
people been participating in dialog around ideas and have any
submissions evolved as a result of the discussion?
As a general goal for such an open innovation contest community it can always be said that an active participation and discussion is encouraged. As for the “ideabird” contest it can be said that members are very active. Within one week more than 550 comments on ideas were contributed and more than 400 idea evaluations have been submitted.
The result of these lively discussions can be seen in the constant development of the ideas. The idea owners always have the possibility to acknowledge comments about their ideas and edit them accordingly.
y degree of freakiness we basically mean how “unique” and new the concept of the idea is. In other words, how radical is the innovation and can this idea be considered part of a “thinking-outside-the-box” approach.
Image: Jaqueline Shatz, Puff, mixed media, approx. 27″ x 24″, 2011 – 2012
Published on April 24, 2012 12:50 am.
Filed under: Technology

California-based Zurb is turning the dry science of usability on its head by using Twitter and Facebook APIs to socialize user testing.
User testing has long been the domain of usability experts who utilize carefully controlled focus groups, panels and one-on-one interviews to assess software and websites.
Zurb’s suite of socially connected testing products let anyone quickly and easily create a test and gather insights from Twitter followers and Facebook friends.
“Zurb’s Verify is all about rapid testing and decision-making,” says Customer Advocate, Louis Corso. “Sometimes you have a gut feeling and need some validation.
With Verify you can create a test in five minutes. If you are good about distributing over social media, you can get forty responses in two to four hours from people who you really trust,” added Corso.
Usability sciences are based on human reactions and interpretation. Most organizations that provide usability testing services conduct them use high touch modalities that typically require recruiting of test subjects and scripting of test questions before testing can even begin.
Zurb’s use of social media APIs to facilitate social testing and results collection radically accelerates this process and puts the testing procedure in the hands of non-specialists.
This immediate, API-driven testing methodology is a perfect match for agile development environments that are driven by rapid test and release cycles.
Zurb isn’t the right solution for every testing need. For example, when working with highly targeted audiences, or any audience that doesn’t match the demographic of your friends and followers, the results may not stand up to scrutiny.
Zurb currently offers Notable and Verify as paid apps and has two additional products, Solidify and Influence, in private release. They anticipate full release in the first half of 2012.
ZURB.com/apps
Image: Photo by Robert Egert: Meaning is non-symmetric
Published on April 24, 2012 12:46 am.
Filed under: UX

As Google continues to set the bar for website analytics, Hootsuite, the social media management service, is promoting its ability to create sophisticated visualizations based on data available through the Google Analytics API.
In the crowded world of social management and analytics tools, Hootsuite is poised somewhere between a multichannel social publishing platform and social analytics tool. Their recent focus on data visualization shows just how important the analytics part of the business is. While Hootsuite offers a free entry-level service the advanced Google Analytics integration is only available to paid subscribers.
Hootsuite already supports a large array of social media APIs, including the major players Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and some of the key sharing channels such as YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and others.
Hootsuite’s Analytics integration includes Sparklines, a data visualization system (available as a JQuery plugin) that generates abbreviated charts that present KPI data in a dashboard environment. Sparklines differ from conventional charts in that they leave out all extraneous information in favor of concise visualizations that can be read at a glance.
Hootsuite will also support goals and funnels, two key features of Google Analytics. Goals allows site administrators to establish desired actions and evaluate their sites performance against visitors success rate at reaching those goals. Funnels tracks visitor path through a site in relations to an established goal.
Google Analytics and their API have destabilized the field of website metrics by making their robust service available freely. However, it is only a matter of time before brand managers and media buyers clamor for a single integrated tool to conduct social monitoring and website analytics.
Image: Charles ATlas Installation at Luhring Augustine, Bushwick, April 2012
Published on April 24, 2012 12:44 am.
Filed under: Technology, UX
Image: Shari Mendelson, After a Syrian Bottle, 2012, Plastic, acrylic medium, “magic sculpt”, wire
Published on April 20, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Street Art on the corner of Flushing and Scott Avenues, Bushwick Brooklyn. Photo taken on May 19, 2012. If you know the artist’s name please comment it below so I can add the attribution.
Published on April 13, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on April 6, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on March 30, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Bill Allen, Queens Street Names
A set of 15 oil paintings made from 18×24 street sign steel to present a grid, each panel autonomous but part of a larger ‘story’ – the story of Queens’ streets, from its earliest inceptions to today.
Published on March 30, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: R.M.FIscher, Sculpture, from Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, GReenpoint, Brooklyn. Photo taken May, 2012
Published on March 23, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Published on March 16, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art

Aviary, the web-based image editing solution, is now available via their image editing API to Mailchimp users.
Mailchimp wanted to streamline the email design process. Previously, users would typically exit the mailchimp website to edit images in software applications such as iPhoto or Photoshop. Besides being time-consuming, this fragments the user experience and breaks the workflow.
With the Aviary API, Mailchimp users can now perform basic image editing tasks such as cropping and resizing as well as some more advanced tasks such as rotation and applying creative filters without leaving the mailchimp interface.
“You can now crop, resize, rotate, and enhance your images right inside MailChimp,” says Co-founder Ben Chestnut. “This is using some new API tricks from Aviary, and we really want to thank them for helping with this. When I write my newsletters, the worst part is always when I have to stop and edit an image. I have to open up Photoshop or Fireworks, resize, crop, and upload. Hate it. Now, the experience is fast and seamless. I love Photoshop, but I hate waiting for it to open when I just want to finish an email,” he added.
While many APIs are designed to share assets or expose data to third-party applications, the Aviary API is truly unique because instead of making data available or supporting a sharing function, it provides editing tools, which is closer to a SaaS model than a conventional API.
“Users stay on the site, ensuring a positive workflow from a partners perspective, as well as allowing them to keep their users on their site – which is a win for both parties,” says Nam Nguyan of Aviary.
As more users access their email via mobile devices it will be increasingly important for senders to manage the size of email images. Large files drain bandwidth and perhaps more importantly can cause unexpected email layout problems.
Mailchimp has long pursued a broad API integration strategy and besides having an open API of their own, they’ve actively encouraged developers through their $1 Million Integration Fund since 2010.
Aviary image editing is also available as a web widget and can be embedded into web pages as a JavaScript snippet.
Published on March 14, 2012 3:29 am.
Filed under: Technology

The Cloud Security Alliance Summit brought together a panel of security experts on February 27 in San Francisco to examine the threats posed by API and cloud-based computing. But rather than providing guidance on how to mitigate security risks they focused instead on the uncertain nature of security in an environment that is increasingly dominated by applications that use APIs to transfer data across the cloud.
One of the key benefits of APIs is their anonymous nature. In fact, it is their anonymity that is helping drive their growth. But the ease and speed at which API-based applications can be created has enabled many independent developers to operate without significant attention paid to security.
Meanwhile, the biggest threat to personal Internet security is not APIs or small, independent developers but rather large companies “that collect massive amounts of data from people, including photos, documents, video, search and buying patterns”, says panelist Bruce Schneier.
Panelists pointed out the importance of the token-based authentication system, OAuth, in enabling personal users to authenticate with applications without rendering their credentials. Because OAuth limits access to only one application at a time with limitations of time and scope, it enables authors of applications to provide personalized services without having to independently manage security.
While OAuth may answer the security questions for individual use, as more businesses look to APIs to connect their applications across the cloud, it is only inevitable that security concerns related to enterprise applications will arise.
Panelists included Philippe Courtot, CEO, Qualys; Don Godfrey, security consultant, Humana; Matt Johansen, Threat Research Center manager, WhiteHat Security; Patrick Harding, CTO, Ping Identity.
Image: Lothar Ostenberg, Diorama, dimensions and date unavailable
Published on March 14, 2012 3:27 am.
Filed under: Technology

Fountain Art Fair, which was held last year on the Frying Pan, a retired light ship docked on the West Side of Manhattan, graduated this year to the 68th Armory building, on 25th Street. The irony is that the “Armory Art Fair” is held at the piers at 55th street while the scrappier “Fountain” is in the actual armory building.
This year’s Fountain attracted over ten thousand visitors in three days, according to publicist Brianna Green, and had a packed opening that featured a 17-minute aerial performance led by performance artist Seanna Sharpe. “The opening night party was stupendous and packed to the gills. There was a line around the block to get in, and we did get Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith at our booth!” said artist Patricia Fabricant.
Fountain takes its inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s famous sculpture of the same name (It consisted of a urinal inscribed R. Mutt) that was exhibited in the original Armory show of 1917–a signal event in art history, where European modernists like Picasso, Duchamp, and Cezanne were first introduced to American audiences.
Since its first incarnation in 2006 in a FedEx warehouse adjacent to the West Side Highway, Fountain has moved through a number of venues and locations. “Obviously the Armory is a step up from last year’s Frying Pan, with twice as many galleries, very big booths, and a very accessible location,” said Daniel Aycock, one of the founders of the event.
“Since the current Armory Art Fair (on the pier) is not related to the historic Armory Art Show 99 years ago, we thought it would be in the spirit of Duchamp to stage our own rebel fair across from the institution and use his “Fountain” as our logo,” added Aycock.
In this big, brightly lit venue, it was a lot easier to see what was hanging on the walls than on the dimly lit Frying Pan–a blessing for some and curse for others. Twice as large a space, there were twice as many galleries represented this year. It is a relief to get away from pristine white galleries and overproduced art extravaganzas and at Fountain you could take comfort in a simpler, direct approach to exhibiting. But bright lights revealed both strengths and weaknesses, and even the best work can be difficult to discern when it’s crowded or poorly hung.
Nevertheless, Fountain represented an opportunity for some lesser-exposed but excellent artists to garner some well-deserved exposure. Among the independents, Brooklyn artist Patricia Fabricant’s spellbinding biomorphic gouaches were a stand-out from among the Hullabaloo Collective booth as was Seuol-based surrealist artist, Soo-Young Moon’s, otherworldly Some Dream 24.
A few galleries stood above the rest as well. Such as Front Room artist Thomas Broadbent’s large watercolor paintings of books (yes, the paper kind) and Stephen Mallon’s images of retired subway carriages in the process of being dispatched to their watery grave. Kesting / Ray gallery presented layered resin-embedded drawings by Stephanie Dobson and the offhand, effervescent canvasses of Danni Rush.
Next February will mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the first Armory Show, which was officially known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art and rumor has it that Fountain organizers hope to hold the exhibit at the armory building again next year.
Image: Soo-Young Moon’s Some Dream 24, size and date not available.
Published on March 14, 2012 3:18 am.
Filed under: Art, Reviews Tags: Art
Image: Wood Dogs, Photo by Robert Egert, 2012
Published on March 9, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: #tech #art
Image: Ellen Harvey, The Nudist Museum Gift Shop, Installation at Dodge Gallery, NY 2012
Published on March 5, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art #apps #social #pharma #pw
Image: Retna, Wall painting in progress on Houston STreet corner of Bowery, NY, 2012
Published on March 5, 2012 8:07 am.
Filed under: Art, Technology Tags: #tech #art #apps #social #pharma #pw

Damien Hirst new paintings represent an oppressive combination of cynicism and opportunism that should make us all run for fresh air.
These painting are in the continuing tradition of production-oriented work that (arguably) begins with Duchamp, continued through Warhol, and on into the present day.
Located at the confluence of image-making and social critique, this modality is exemplified by factory-like production methods and disregard for craft. But more importantly, it engages the means by which value is produced: Its true subject is the mechanism by which society assigns a dollar value to art.
The production of value is ultimately the only subject.
Hirst’s dots would be impossible without this tradition, yet they go beyond for sheer opportunism and disregard for meaning. What was disruptive about Warhol’s factory silkscreens in the 1960′s has apparently become a vulgar trope for a well-established artist bent on cashing in while the money is good.
It is one thing to challenge accepted conventions and another to simply take advantage of them.
Given the degree of wealth-hoarding among the rich, and our rapid path toward a two-class society, these paintings have a moral repugnance that surpasses even the interspecies degradation that Hirst relied on in the past.
As the collectors line up to purchase the dots we can only imagine the financial advisors behind it urging the super wealthy to put a larger percentage of their investment into art to avoid the hyper volitility of the stock markets. Given that Hirst’s work is represented in so many major collections, there’s every reason to believe that these pieces will become canonized too. This, because the investor class has a vested interest in keeping it that way.
And here come Hirst to the rescue, having his art elves produce objects devoid of all meaning save as receptacles of financial value.
Photo: Robert Egert
Published on February 20, 2012 2:21 am.
Filed under: Art, Reviews

Its hard to remember the days when search engines were the first killer web apps.
Before anyone was talking about the programmable web, search engines were functioning as the meta-applications that worked across the web, bringing content and people together in a meaningful way.
Flash forward to 2012 and the search paradigm has exploded and along with it the thinking around how to match people with things has fragmented. This not only impacts how advertising dollars are spent but also impacts how consumers will find consumer goods and services.
Here are just a few of the current models that are in play:
Video as search
More and more people are starting the search queries in youtube, vimeo and other video portals instead of traditional search engines. This is not only when they are looking for entertainment. Whether it is research for a school project, health information or trying to find reviews of consumer products, Youtube is rising in popularity, especially among younger demographics who are developing a higher regard and reliance on video than print.
Social as search
Social recommendations are playing an increasingly relevant role in driving search behaviors. In some instances, searches are begin essentially replaced by socially assembled content—content that has been collected through the process of recommendations from friends, followers or networks. Besides the direct application of this on sites such as Pinterest and Quora, we also see how Google has integrated recommendations from friends into the search results, creating a hybrid result that is part search algorithm and part social push.
Predictive search
Predictive search has been around since the beginning of ecommerce, and like Boolean search will likely be around for while. Its strongest application is around selling products to consumers based on their purchase history or related behaviors, such as shopping cart contents or product viewing history. This technique is more useful to marketers or publishers (who want to keep their audiences engaged for the advertising or subscription revenue).
As the programmable web becomes more sophisticated it’s likely we’ll see more fragmentation and experimentation–hybrid solutions that synthesize different search paradigms together.
Image: Kenny Cole, ”Dwight Knew,” 2008, ink and gouache on paper, 22″ x 30″
Published on February 20, 2012 1:29 am.
Filed under: Technology, Truths, UX

User Interface designers face unique challenges in an agile development environment but with the right design approach and production stream great results are still possible.
First let’s look at team structure. Agile teams are usually smaller than traditional development teams and–importantly for UI designers—the engineers play a more decisive role than in traditional development groups.
In this context, there’s a lot of variability in the role of ux. Because requirements and beta are in flux it’s just not possible to create a complete design and then hand it off to the development team. Instead there’s a fluid process that requires coordination and sensitivity to time constraints.
Just because the engineers lead the charge doesn’t mean that UI design has to take a back seat. Quite to the contrary, it is even more critical for the UI designer to establish key patterns and visual memes that will be recognized and understood by the user.
One key learning is that developers and ux look at application design from entirely different perspectives: The developer looks at the system from the bottom up as a result of the fact they have to create functional components one at a time. (I am not aware of any top-down method for development, but perhaps someone can clue me in if there is.)
Conversely, ux designers have the responsibility to look at the design from the outside in: How to surface concepts and processes in way that is transparent to he user. Software design is one field where form does not follow function.
For example, developers in an initial build will often construct a pyramid like trajectory for end users: users enter information through a series of data-centric steps before they get a glimpse of the end result.
Our role in ux is, in a sense, to invert the pyramid and allow users to literally or conceptually see the end result from the beginning so that they are motivated, and engaged throughout the process.
Image: Steve Buckley, Untitled pastel on paper, approx. 18″ x 27″, 2009-2010.
Published on February 10, 2012 6:08 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: agile, creative, Design, programming, software development, ui, UX

As agile methodology gains traction, challenges to adapting are emerging.
Today at any given moment I am simultaneously working on projects with agile and waterfall methodologies. As a consequence, my teams need to switch mindsets and approaches as they move from project to project. This adds an additional layer of management complexity to our workflow and communications. And a big part of it is about managing responses and expectations.
“Now, not only do we need to balance multiple accounts, working groups and projects, we also need to change the way we respond to design challenges.”
In the projects that adhere to traditional waterfall method our response usually begins with scheduling a meeting while int he agile method we immediately jump to problem-solving. The former is consensus-based while the later is improvisational.
“The agile teams that I work with are smaller and more accepting of individual creativity.”
In an agile environment, individual members of the team are more empowered to solve problems without getting approval or seeking consensus in advance. And importantly, rarely is any formal documentation required. Instead the team-member comes up with a solution, implements it and then asks the rest of the team to review and comment. Most often, the other team members will adapt their own work to the new development and integrate this into the project on the fly.
For organizations that derive revenue from change orders, account management and recurrent meetings this can obviously create challenges. In the more traditional designed and planned projects, the team is often stuck seeking approval and consensus in lengthy meetings for a new idea, enhancement or revision. Downstream there must be documentation updates.
“While part of this is a consequence of working in a regulated environment (healthcare), it is also related to the fact that the development teams are fragmented and geographically separated.”
It’s probably not possible to create using an agile method in an environment where the development and design teams are on separate continents and time zones, but it sure would save a lot of time and money.
Image: Patty Fabricant, Diamond Fade, 2003 Watercolor 22″ x 30″
Published on February 5, 2012 1:57 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Technology, UX Tags: agile, Design, IA, ID, interaction, Technology

Inhuman working conditions within Apple’s manufacturing supply chain stand in stark contrast to the superlative usability of Apple designs. It should give ui designers and software design engineers pause—especially those of us that talk about user-centered design.
“As our society becomes increasingly focused on accessing and manipulating information and on communicating digitally, it’s very easy to lose site of the physical reality right around us, let alone on the other side of the planet.”
Right here in New York we use our iphones amid crumbling infrastructure while the best design and engineering talent is applied to the next generation of handhelds and software.
Now we learn that the sleek Apple products we’ve come to love and depend on are produced in factories with exploitative policies and dangerous working conditions, routinely exposing workers to toxins, dangerous machinery and numbingly long shifts that exceed reason.
The fact that these conditions are an integral part of Apple’s pricing structure—and, thus, their profitability—has been widely commented upon. What has not been discussed is how this implicates the design community.
Q: What does it mean to talk user-centered design philosophy and then ignore the manufacturing and supply side of the process?
A: It implies an inherent bigotry embedded in the assumptions. It would seem that we believe that users of the products are entitled to the best possible user experience while those involved in manufacturing the product are not entitled to any consideration whatsoever.
And it points out the extent to which user experience design has become obsessed with the interaction between some humans and computers at the expense of other humans and the physical world.
Public knowledge of working conditions may build and exert pressure on the industry to clean up its manufacturing act.
Physicists and basic technologists are on the path to developing ever-smaller transistors, and progress in nano-tube transistor technology is moving ahead as I write this. It is predicted that one day soon processors will be small enough and cheap enough to embed in everyday objects, allowing us—perhaps—to truly realize an intelligent world.
“Perhaps this will enable us to reconnect the world of pure information with our physical infrastructure.”
And perhaps the brilliant designers who are now working on yet another redundant mobile app will turn their focus to making our physical world more humane.
Published on February 1, 2012 7:13 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Looking at the path the internet has taken over the last ten years, a repeating pattern is emerging. The pattern starts with the establishment of a new asset or application class. It proliferates throughout the web. Then the aggregators come along and start skimming the cream off the top and presenting the best in single package. This pattern began with pages, moved on to shopping, news, reviews and downloads.
Today, with the proliferation of stand-alone applications, the environment is ripe for the next level of aggregation.
A Glimpse
An early entry into this space is If This Then That (ifttt.com). ifttt is a meta application that allows users to build custom programs that uses separate apps as triggers and components.
How It Works
Using ifttt, you can create a task (or recipe) that automates a process that you used to do manually. For example, take a Facebook status update as a trigger to create a tweet, a new blog entry and update a photo automatically. Or, it might use a weather report or new information on an RSS feed to trigger a series of actions across personal sites, social networking pages, email or micro-blogging. While it is still rudimentary today, don’t shrug it off as just a novelty item.
Going Beyond the Individual
Consider instead how an application like this could integrate with Google’s social graph. The potential to trigger actions that are rules based, broadly social and widespread are staggering (and potentially virus-like).
While we shouldn’t underplay the concerns about security and the stultifying effect that automated messaging can have on human-based social interaction, the promise of this next phase of aggregation is beginning to come into focus.
Image: The Librarian, oil on canvas, Archimboldo, ~1566
Published on January 27, 2012 11:50 am.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: API, holons, ifttt, Oauth

What is Post-humanism?
Let’s start here: What does it mean to be human if we are disembodied?
As someone who is active in both technology and the arts, I think I’ve got a unique perspective on this. The postulate of the post-human movement is predicated on the belief that the mind can be abstracted from the body and housed within a machine. The scenario was played out in science fiction but is now thought by adherents to be within reach. The human subject is connected to a powerful computer and all the thoughts, memories, beliefs and associations are extracted through a digital process and recorded in a computer. The subject continues to think, communicate and exist but without a body. If you hook the computer up to a system the extracted brain can be used to run operations.
I suppose you can consider this a kind of singularity.
Let’s examine the underlying assumptions that support this model:
Our experience of the world manifests to us vis-a-vis the brain and the brain is just like an awfully powerful computer. Given the ever-increasing power of computers, we should soon be able to create a computer that can function equivalently to the human brain. Once this has been achieved we can extract our sentient selves and live, in perpetuity, in machine form.
This is not a technological fantasy: it reflects religious, social, and economic beliefs.
The post-human belief system is based on a shared social understanding of what it means to be human. It may frequently be expressed through a technological fantasy of the computer-based human but it is just as visible in the way that we picture our selves.
But where does identity reside if we are disembodied? Look no further than social networks to envision what this can look like. A new framework to understand and contextualize friendship, social membership and human contact. And with it the awkward reconnects with high school sweethearts now grown so different as to be barely recognizable and the friends whose context is the network and not corporeal.
Reconstructing Social Systems in Our Own Image
Google’s social graph attempts to quantify and operationalize our emergent identities. In the industry we tend to see this effort as a marketing opportunity or, to put it more kindly, a more accurate way to deliver meaningful and relevant content and experiences to people. In addition to that we may see an emergent phenomenon: With the introduction of highly integrated social applications that respond to and build upon each other (i.e., ifttt, storify) the door opens for automated connections and consequent actions that are not triggered by individual actions but by the collective action of multiple systems.
It promises to be increasingly easy to lose control, not only of the posts that display in your Facebook timeline, but in the actual social connections, recommendations and communications that are generated on your behalf.
Why it Really is Post-human(ism)
It’s an easy shot, but just for laughs and giggles, compare the fifteenth century immaculate conception with the twenty-first century version that displays at the top of this post.
The Renaissance version by Bellegambe depicts the fetus as a vision, a thought in the process of becoming. In Bellegambe’s day anatomy was in its infancy, yet more importantly, it didn’t represent the truth that mattered. What did matter was theological and interpersonal. Hirst’s may be purely anatomical, (and it is modeled after scientific models used by medical students) but, intention is important and the title, Virgin Mother, is Hirst’s way of pointing us back to the religious subject and forcing the comparison. Students of art history will see this as a trope in the Dechampian tradition, but viewed in the context of the post-human movement it could just as easily be our David.
Views and attitudes are never final nor are they ever independent of the social conditions from which they emerge.
Image top: Virgin Mother, Damien Hirst, 2005 Bronze, approx. 33′
Image bottom: St. Anne and the Conception of Mary, Jean Bellegambe, c. 1515, oil on wood, 36 x 26 cm
Published on January 25, 2012 11:16 pm.
Filed under: Art, Technology

The surge in start-ups is bursting out all over.
I’ve seen a vast increase in the number of people with good (and some not so good) ideas, looking for input on ux, ui and technology. I love it. It shows that web services technology and especially the availability of open protocols and APIs has lowered the technology bar while enabling execution of sophisticated interactive concepts envisioned by subject matter experts vs. technologists.
This is a democratizing movement enabling doctors, dancers, fashionistas, psychologists and other professionals who have no special knowledge around technology to develop viable business models. Whether these are financially viable is another question. But that aspect of the technology world has always baffled me. So many fantastic applications have no clear path to profitability that I can discern.
Perhaps they will rely upon the old model of building a viable and dedicated user base and then selling to the highest bidder that covets the user population. Perhaps there’s an advertising or subscription model lurking under the covers just waiting for critical mass to emerge.
In the meantime, the creative juices runneth over and the inclusion of mainstream, non-technical participation in building our digital environment is a welcome addition to the hardcore techies that have run the show so far.
Image: Anselm Keifer: “Aperiatur Terra et Germinet Salvatorem” (“Let the Earth Be Opened and Send Forth a Savior”) 2006
Published on January 24, 2012 5:40 pm.
Filed under: Technology, UX

What do you get when you add Open Authorization to web APIs and then combine with social networks? The next phase in the evolution of the interactive culture.
For a glimpse of what this may enable, look no further than the logical engine ifttt.com (If This then that.)
Using open protocols for authentication, ifttt allows non-technical users to build logical arguments that trigger and execute actions. Ifttt calls them recipes to make them more accessible and they’ve done a smashing job of making them easy to understand and use. A recipe might automatically generate a twitter message when someone follows you, or update your WordPress blog when you post a status to Facebook. Many of the recipes are true time savers. While others suggest a runaway world of robotically-generated chatter.
Perhaps what’s most interesting for the UI/UX design and for anyone concerned with user experience, is how open authentication protocols allow us to carry our social identity, as it exists online, with us wherever we go.
Like the proverbial movable feast we no longer leave our friends. Instead, everywhere we go, our social network is with us.
In the same way that AJAX technology moved us away from the concept of the web as a series of static pages, open authorization moves us away from the idea of browsing. Instead we travel with our posse ever present and perhaps more importantly, ever visible to others.
Image: ifttt (if this then that) allows users to build automatic tasks based on integration of social channels.
Published on January 16, 2012 3:41 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX

In the last two years smart brands have turned themselves inside out to focus on what customers are saying about them instead of focusing on their own marketing messages. This has begun a slow but steady sea change, shifting marketing focus from creative ideas to smart analytics.
Agencies (both traditional and media) are challenged to step-up to the plate and deliver insights based on social listening. Media agencies are often in a good position to take advantage of this opportunity since they have an infrastructure already in place around analytics—extending that to include social listening is a lot less challenging than establishing a new service.
The marketplace is overflowing with analytics tools that range from high-priced industrial strength products to free, web-based products that are open to anyone and new entrants are emerging ongoing. The products vary in quality and some have a deeper feature set, more expansive options or inclusion of third party research data that adds to the depth of the insights and comparisons that can be made as well as contextualize insights against demographics as well as media saturation and spend.
As this market expands and enters the big league what is really missing are industry standards. Conduct a sentiment analysis of the same terms in two or more different platforms and you can expect to get wildly varying results. The reason is partially inherent in the subjectivity of language. (What is social listening if it isn’t linguistic analysis?) But at every step along the way: rules that govern how data is collected, sample size and finally the analytics engine itself vary from platform to platform.
In the race to develop the best product we run the risk of undermining the value of the service if we don’t address the need for standards.
Image: Robert Egert, 1992, Pinocchio, 72″ x 72″, oil on canvas, collection of Mary Ziegler
Published on January 16, 2012 4:12 am.
Filed under: Branding, Healthcare, Mobile, Technology

What’s Wrong with this Experience?
They say this exhibit is breaking attendance records at The New Museum and it’s been described as an amusement park since it includes a 102 foot slide that cuts through the floors of the building as well as a mirrored merry-go-round. The problem (well, one of the problems) is that if it were compared to an amusement park it would fail in comparison to even the poorest amusement park you have ever seen.
But it gets worse: the exhibit is filled with objects and constructions that are supposed to deliver a physical, emotional or sensory experience but in fact, most of them fail to deliver much of anything.
- A glass vial filled with a liquid that was supposed to elicit a feeling of emotion similar to love: no smell and no effect whatsoever
- A mirrored merry-go-round was slow and boring
- An electronic vibrator that, when applied to the arm and in combination with holding one’s nose, was supposed to simulate the feeling of having a long nose: Users following the instructions got no result
- A fish tank with platforms that allowed visitors to stick their head into the tank presumably to simulate being in with the fish: I felt like I was on a platform with my head stuck into a hole and I could barely see the fish.
In sum, the Höller exhibit was more like an old, neglected children’s science museum than an amusement park—the kind of science museum that hasn’t been well maintained and simply doesn’t work.
Ever since Duchamp brought the urinal into the art gallery we’ve accepted the notion that context is everything. Accordingly we judge objects in a gallery by an entirely different standard than equivalent objects out in the world.
Judged as art, in any conventional sense, the Höller works are poor. Judged against a true amusement park or thrill-seeking enterprise, they fare even worse.
Perhaps it is time to apply higher critical standards.
Published on January 3, 2012 5:29 pm.
Filed under: Art, Reviews
Well, this is an n of 8, but telling nonetheless
Published on December 22, 2011 12:56 pm.
Filed under: Reviews, Technology

From data to design: building a user-centered navigation
One of the biggest challenges to developing websites for large organizations is managing the needs of vastly different target audiences. Given the need for speed to market there’s a very real need to develop lightweight and rapid methods for understanding constituent audiences, what their goals are, and merging them into a comprehensive user experience design.
The questions that the method needs to answer are:
- How do we rapidly segment audiences in a meaningful way?
- How can we identify primary and secondary goals for each audience?
- How much emphasis should we put into satisfying user needs vs. pushing brand messages or goals?
- How do we serve all of our audiences needs while still keeping the result simple and easy to use?
How do we rapidly segment audiences in a meaningful way?
Audience segmentation is a process similar to pattern recognition; two individuals can look at the same information and both correctly discern entirely different patterns. It is also a function of the objectives of the initiative. Here are some conceptual ways to frame an analysis of user types:
- What is the objective of the initiative? Is this an application, a corporate website, a marketing initiative, a networking tool or a lightweight single-purpose app?
- In examining the marketing site it is conventional to think about audiences in terms of brand sentiment or progress along a purchasing continuum
- If it is an organizational website, it is more helpful to think about constituents; e.g., customer types, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, partners
- For applications, users are typically defined through task analysis; what is the individual trying to accomplish and how must the system respond to the user to enable them to satisfy their needs?
- For social networking tools, functions need to considered against to coordinates; the social platform into which it will integrate and the user’s goals
Regardless of the type of initiative, it is critical that the audience segmentation is as concise as possible. Ideally, aim for no more than seven user types. But if you run higher keep in mind that once you go on to break down the primary and secondary goals you may find that some segments are so similar that their distinction is not significant enough to justify maintaining the separation.
Photo: MAURIZIO CATTELAN, Super Us, 1998 (detail). 50 acetate sheets, 29.8 x 21 cm each
Published on December 19, 2011 2:39 am.
Filed under: Design, UX

One of the biggest challenges to developing websites for large organizations is managing the needs of vastly different target audiences. Given the need for speed to market there’s a very real need to develop lightweight and rapid methods for understanding constituent audiences, what their goals are, and merging them into a comprehensive user experience design.
The questions that the method needs to answer are:
1. How do we rapidly segment audiences in a meaningful way?
2. How can we identify primary and secondary goals for each audience?
3. How much emphasis should we put into satisfying user needs vs. pushing brand messages or goals?
4. How do we serve all of our audiences needs while still keeping the result simple and easy to use?
How do we rapidly segment audiences in a meaningful way?
Audience segmentation is a process similar to pattern recognition; two individuals can look at the same information and both correctly discern entirely different patterns. It is also a function of the objectives of the initiative. Here are some conceptual ways to frame an analysis of user types:
1. What is the objective of the initiative? Is this an application, a corporate website, a marketing initiative, a networking tool or a lightweight single-purpose app?
a. In examining the marketing site it is conventional to think about audiences in terms of brand sentiment or progress along a purchasing continuum
b. If it is an organizational website, it is more helpful to think about constituents; e.g., customer types, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, partners
c. For applications, users are typically defined through task analysis; what is the individual trying to accomplish and how must the system respond to the user to enable them to satisfy their needs?
d. For social networking tools, functions need to considered against to coordinates; the social platform into which it will integrate and the user’s goals
Regardless of the type of initiative, it is critical that the audience segmentation is as concise as possible. Ideally, aim for no more than seven user types. But if you run higher keep in mind that once you go on to break down the primary and secondary goals you may find that some segments are so similar that their distinction is not significant enough to justify maintaining the separation.
Image: Christopher Wool, “Untitled” (1988) courtesy of the Broad Art Foundation
Published on December 8, 2011 5:36 pm.
Filed under: Design, UX

As much as I believe in user testing I find it difficult to advocate for it.
In the last few years it seems like most of our projects are on a compressed schedule that doesn’t allow for formal testing. We compensate by designing variables (A/B testing) into the launch, randomly displaying two versions of the same interface to see which one performs better. The result most of the time: no significant difference. In a few occasions we’ve conducted eye-tracking studies with essentially the same result.
Most of us can quickly recognize a well-designed interface from a poor one, can recognize the established patterns and combine (and recombine) them to form complex systems. THe result is that doing ux produces predictably usable results. This is a result of patterns becoming ingrained not only in the practitioners of ux but also in our audience who are essentially internalizing behavioral interface patterns.
What’s the most fascinating thing to me is that some of the most popular websites still have poorly designed interfaces that are extremely difficult to use (amazon, ebay, google ex-search). And what this proves to me is that the role of familiarity often trumps good design.
Photo: Sol Lewitt wall drawing instructions, late twentieth century.
Published on November 26, 2011 2:21 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: Design, testring, usability, UX

Working with my team today on a new interface that uses a horizontal transition between pages. The entire site is designed using just HTML5 and JQuery so there’s no Flash to worry about.
It’s another example of how interaction design can largely abandon the concept of pages in favor of a more responsive interface. But how did we get here?
When I was first educating myself on software design, one of the first concepts that I cam across was the idea of control systems. This generally refers to hierarchical relationships between key parts of a logical system that govern which parts of the system give out orders and which parts respond to those orders.
This is what prevents a malicious website from taking control of your computer. It works because in the hierarchy, the operating system is above the browser, and in turn, the browser software is above the website. The OS can’t be controlled by the browser but the browser can be controlled through the OS. (You launch or quit and application via the OS, not the other way around.)
From an end-user perspective, these relationships are somewhat intuitive through common convention, however from a ux designer’s perspective these hierarchies are what delineate the possible from the impossible in design.
The recent history of interaction design can, in large part, be described as the blurring of these hierarchies.
The two key factors at work in this process are asynchronous web programming and app culture. The first eradicated the concept of the web as a series of pages in favor of a dynamic display that can be continually refreshed based on user actions (vs. hyperlinks), and the second changed the act of downloading and installing new software into a casual act from what was previously a considered purchase.
Illustration: Dominance hierarchy of a single population of elephant seal males during the mating season, from From Marianne Riedman, The Pinnipeds, page 206.
Published on November 16, 2011 6:41 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, Truths, UX

The pace of change in content distribution is even faster than Moore’s law and the pace will only increase as cloud-based distribution becomes the norm.
A quick look at the Spotify model for music distribution is a perfect example. One service with a flat, monthly fee provides unlimited access to the world’s music library across almost any device whether you are connected or not. The math is simple: if you purchase on average than one CD per month (or ten songs on iTunes), it pays to subscribe to Spotify. (I write this despite the noise around Spotify’s relationship with Facebook. I’m only referring to it as a model for cloud-based distribution, not the particulars of their sharing features.)
What’s more, there’s no reason to think that this model can’t be applied to other forms of publishing including, yes, books. Amazon knows this and is already pushing traditional publishing agents to the side in favor of direct contracting with authors. Where the nonsense comes in is with the proprietary platforms for e-readers. If you have a Kindle or a Nook it is inconvenient or impossible to get access to all the books that you want to read. (As a Kindle reader, for example, I still need to purchase some books in their paper version since not all titles are available on the Kindle).
But we’ve seen historically that any proprietary system is vulnerable to an open source competitor. It is only a matter of time before an open source e-reader will provide a cloud-based library of virtually all titles. How this plays out financially for authors and book designers is a big question.
Book design. Yes, books do require design. Anyone who uses an e-reader knows that the typographical display, representation of images, photos, graphics and the general layout of books in an e-reader are generally of poor quality. We can assume this will improve but here are some challenges:
1. If books become a low-cost commodity, like songs, what will motivate designers of books to continue their craft? Book designers usually receive little or no personal credit for their work–just financial compensation.
2. Digital paper that is used in the Kindle and Nook are substantially different than the light-emitting displays found in tablets. Digital paper is easy to read in large part because it does not emit light. The downside of the technology is that it is very poor at displaying graphics. Light emitting displays found on tablets are wonderful at displaying photographs and graphics, therefore great for magazines, but I suspect that studies will show decreased use for long term reading due to the eye strain caused by the radiated light.
Photo: Damián Ortega’s “Controller of the Universe,” a 2007 sculpture in the Weapons section. P.S> 1, Queens, NY, 2008.
Published on November 8, 2011 3:07 pm.
Filed under: Technology, UX

I used to think of myself as a person with a lot of interests but I never thought that would become a liability. Today the fact that I’m active in different areas has become difficult to manage–not only because time is limited (that’s always been the case) but because like a lot of people, many of my activities have migrated to the public realm.
Social media is a two-edged sword: on one hand it has enabled us to share our activities real time with anyone who cares (or cares to look into it), on the other hand, it inevitably leaves a trail behind us that can be found easily enough, researched and used in imaginable and unimaginable ways.
In effect each of us has become a personal brand, with our various profiles, pages and accounts. Some of us try to be fastidious about managing this: associating particular aspects of our life with discrete channels. For example, you can limit facebook activities to friends, linked in to business, blog for your own creative output, etc. etc.
Where this starts to fall apart for me is that the edges aren’t always so clean. (By way of full disclosure, I also get anxious before hosting a party around the idea that people from the different world that I inhabit will see each other and essentially rat me out for the chameleon that I am.)
So now I find myself spending an increasing amount of time considering who will see which post, how my various publishing platforms interconnect, and questioning who I really am. We can argue that these categories are an artifact of the past; that we can reinvent ourselves from day-to-day, from moment-to-moment even. Perhaps so, but as the digital world has enabled a multitude of conversations and possibilities unthought of before, it has also burdened us with the knowledge that most everything we do or say in that giant network will leave its indelible mark and perhaps to haunt us in years to come.
Is it possible that individuals will need to own their own personalities as brands that need to be managed? It has been said, and it is my belief that nothing in the social sphere is natural–it is all socially learned. So there’s no reason to think that the next generation, schooled in Facebook etiquette from an early age will take to this naturally. And all that late twentieth century nonsense about the power of positive branding will perhaps finally pay off.
By the way, the painting above is by Pavel Tchelitchev, one of the great artists of the mid-twentieth century, little known today or in his day, but great nonetheless.
Published on November 8, 2011 2:47 am.
Filed under: Branding, Technology, Truths

Most designers will agree that the most successful interface design solutions are intuitive for users while being elegantly simple.
Simple as it sounds, actually developing a design with these qualities can be challenging and elusive.
There are a number of good reasons for this:
- The full range of functionality is not always included in the initial scope. As a result new features and functions get added-on later. This can bloat, break or simply confuse the interface.
- Application design today is increasing a collaborative effort where project sponsors, end users and others participate in the design process. The result often betrays the fact there is no single vision for the interface.
- Features that appeal or seem intuitive to some (but not all) make it into the final design and this can create mixed metaphors, obscure or inconsistent thinking.
While ux designers rarely can control the terms of the development process, (nor should they be) most of us would probably agree that the ux designer should take a leadership role to synthesize ideas around a coherent solution.
Using a Pattern-based Framework
To manage the design process effectively, designers need a solid conceptual framework. Without this, the design will be subject to unreasonable influence by individuals involved in the process who have a unique standpoint but can’t or aren’t willing to see the needs of the entire cohort of users.
• Using patterns allows ux designers to defend design decisions based on proven usability
• Used judiciously, patterns accelerate time to market and remove some risk
• Over-reliance on patterns, or patterns used in a cookie-cutter fashion can result in poor user experience
Why Patterns Work
Simply put, patterns work because they are in many ways the designers’ means to delivering an intuitive experience for end-users. Ultimately there is nothing intuitive about using computers other than the patterns of behaviors, expectations and visual appearances that have been established by previous experiences. By using well-established patterns, designers stand a better chance of “getting it right” than if they attempt to create a totally novel interaction design.
Balancing Innovation with Pattern Use
Developing innovative design paradigms is without doubt a critical component of the UX designer’s job. Without it there would be little opportunity for improvement over the current status quo. It can be argued that if we consistently stick to tried and true interface patterns design will become homogenous and boring—looking and behaving all alike.
By using patterns intelligently and critically it is possible to get the benefits of established patterns such as intuitive (which I would prefer to call habituated) use, ability to use or reuse existing functional components and a more speedy development process since the development team will be familiar with the functional patterns that are needed to support the UI. Slavish or thoughtless use of patterns will produce mediocre results. What makes pattern use valuable is the knowledge of when to use them and when not to.
Patterns and Customer Experience
Every pattern exists to solve a problem. Whether is to navigate a directory, conclude a purchase, register with a site or publish a comment, UI patterns build on the experiences that users have previously encountered completing similar tasks so that their ability to complete that task is consistent with their expectations. But a pattern is more than just a layout arrangement: Patterns exist as much in the end-users mind as in the display. No pattern can exist without end-user participants who have a cognitive memory of the pattern.
Breaking Patterns to Build a Unique Brand Experience
Consider for a minute what makes a particular brick and mortar experience unique and remarkable: Compare for example shopping at luxury clothing store vs. a local potter that makes handmade ceramics. Both stores offer unique products that can’t be easily obtained elsewhere and both have repeating patterns that we might refer to as:
• Enter the space
• Review/compare items for sale
• Get help selecting an item
• Purchase item[s]
• Comment on the experience
• Wrapping
• Leave the space
We’d all probably agree that the patterns repeat but we also know that the experience can be dramatically distinct. Part of the success of both of these sorts of businesses goes beyond the quality and choice of products but is also tied up in the customer experience.
Luxury brands must reinforce exclusivity and brand consistency. This is usually communicated in high design standards and perfect craftsmanship in the store facility and presentation of goods, excellent customer service with a high sales associate to customer ratio and attention to detail such as packaging, signage and physical appearance of personnel.
The local potter is arguably just as reliant on customer experience for business success but of a completely different type. Customers will probably expect to be greeted warmly and informally upon entry, perhaps by the potter herself. The wares might be displayed within easy reach on simple unadorned shelves. In keeping with the handcrafted spirit, the facility would likely have a handmade feel.
Breaking Patterns to Give a Unique Customer Experience
In the interactive versions of these businesses there are places where the common patterns can be leveraged “as is” and other places where they need to be modified or broken to conform to the unique customer experience that is consistent with the ideals of the particular business.
The luxury store might, for example, eliminate the pattern Compare Items because purchase of a luxury item is usually not driven by comparison or by cost and providing the functionality might actually undermine the brand.
By contrast, the potter’s store might focus product selection directly on cost since their customers would be purchasing gifts with a predetermined budget in mind.
Patterns Resolve Problems
Patterns success depends on how well it solves a problem. Pattern usage depends on how common the problem is encountered. It all comes down to understanding your audience and brands so you can apply patterns judiciously.
Identifying user tasks in the context of brand experience is a thoughtful task that should drive the identification of candidate patterns and the ultimate web of patterns that you employ in your design.
Published on November 2, 2011 9:29 pm.
Filed under: Branding, Design, Technology, UX

Christopher Alexander’s Timeless Way of Buildinglays a phenomenological foundation for pattern making in the real world that is easily adaptable to interactive patterns in the digital space.
Patterns, according to Alexander, are similar to good syntax: each pattern to be valid conforms to a specific set of rules, in a fluid but demonstrable way. One example that he unpacks is the patterns associated with a New England dairy barn. Why is it that each barn is immediately recognizable yet unique? This is explained by the fact that each builder (who are typically not formally trained as architects) reproduce patterns whose rules have been previously established and communicated socially and culturally. One pattern is the general relationship between the width and the length of the overall structure; another is the relationship of a cow stall with the posts that support the roof; yet another is the presence of a central aisle for hay storage and distribution.
Much building (whether architectural or digital) occurs without formal design or planning. This is increasingly true today under time-to-market pressures as well as the influence of contemporary development processes that can transfer the role of user experience design from the designer who has formal training to a group process that includes participants with diverse backgrounds and often no formal training in design. The same has been largely true in architecture as well: farmers, homeowners and other informal building has characterized much of architectural history.
Patterns don’t need to be formally documented because they’re internalized by the people who use the end product–the people who live in the structures that are created. Despite this there’s a lot of activity around formalizing pattern collections for UI designers, some of them quite nicely done. The challenge with a pattern collection is that patterns are tied to experience and experience is constantly evolving. Part of the interesting thing is how each instance that leverages patterns in architecture execute them just a bit differently in each instance. And here’s where architecture and interface design part company: Each building exists at a unique geographic site with unique traffic patterns, exposure to the sun and elements, topographic conditions, etc. Software by contrast is running a relatively small, discrete set of operating systems and devices.
Published on October 27, 2011 8:38 pm.
Filed under: Design, Reviews, Technology, UX

How we adapt to machines and computers is anything but intuitive despite our obsession with the term usability
Recently I have spent quite a bit of my personal time helping people look for jobs. Call it my contribution to the failing economy or just the fact that I hate to see single moms on the street. At any rate, as you might guess, my first point is to help friends negotiate professional networking sites and to generally make their profiles visible to the companies and recruiters that are seeking to hire people with their skills.
For those of us in information technology, advertising and other digitally aware industries, this is a no-brainer and generally understood. However it is not the case for many people who work in other fields such as education, healthcare delivery, and social services.
It is a constant source of surprise to me how many people have no clue how to use social networking sites to their professional advantage despite the fact that most of them are regular users of facebook. After spending time walking them through steps such as taking and uploading photographs, adding biographical and resume entries and creating keyword sets a single observation has emerged: It’s all about how you handle frustration.
We are all confronted with new interfaces that are challenging and disorienting. It is part of the process of UI evolution that new patterns and paradigms are introduced and before they can feel intuitive they must be learned.
There is nothing intuitive about interacting with a computer. It is all learned behavior. Systems can feel intuitive, but that’s because their conventions conform to a pattern that has been previously learned.
In fact, we are all learning and relearning how to interact with machines all the time. We are constantly updating our knowledge, expectations and sense of normalcy. Once a new pattern is introduced it must be learned before it can become internalized: similar to muscle memory that is experienced by a violinist who intuitively knows where to depress a string to get the right tonality.
What does vary is the way we adapt to new interactive patterns. Here are two examples of adoption and resistance to change:
• Blackberry user has adapted to using an input keyboard that is tactile and refuses to move to a touch screen interface because they have become accustomed to feeling the keys in their finger tips and cannot easily adapt to a visual-only feedback system inherent in the iphone and android model of text input
• Website user is accustomed to finding a particular function interface, such as a button in a particular place. If, as a result of redesign, the button is moved, they become agitated and frustrated when they need to interrupt their task to find the new pattern
These examples point out two distinct classes of user resistance: The first is based on an established pattern of feedback (in this instance it is physical but it could just as easily be visual or audio). And, even though I am no fan or Blackberries, it is completely understandable.
The second example is more interesting. It is about a tolerance for interruption and constant adaptation to new behavioral patterns (vs. physical feedback).
What I am positing here is that how a user responds to the interruption of a task is a good predictor of how well they will be able to adapt to new technology. A user that is able to pause and switch focus from the task they are trying to accomplish to the means by which that task is attained and then back to the task itself will be able to learn the new UI pattern. Other users find the interruption to be intolerable will find it frustrating and may interpret the challenge of having to change focus as a direct threat to their goals.
What this points to is the fact that all of us are constantly adapting to technology. As my tag line says, technology changes what it means to be human. Our reactions, interpretation and behaviors are formed in large part by our expectations of what results from our actions.
I think it fair to say that nothing on a screen is truly intuitive. Particular designs just seem that way because they incorporate patterns that we are accustomed to.
Published on October 13, 2011 9:04 am.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

A prototype of a wearable sensor to detect symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
The history of post-internet technology is littered with the corpses of companies that focused on selling products. With very few exception, the winners have been the owners and distributors of content and the innovators who overturned traditional means of distribution. If anything is accelerating, it is the speed at which once robust models collapse. Yesterday it was music publishers and desktop software, today its pay per text messaging and tomorrow it will likely be smart phones themselves.
Somehow while all this innovation and disruption has overturned our economy, the pharmaceutical companies are still operating in world where profits are directly tied to product sales. And what makes pharma even more vulnerable is that many paying customers have absolutely no relationship with the product they’re using. (Because of the way they are distributed many don’t even know what it is that they are taking.) While the second issue is a function of the regulated environment in which drugs are distributed, the former is an organizational attachment to a system that cannot persist indefinitely.
Marketers do their best to establish brands in the patient’s mind and have been very successful with products that treat large numbers of people but is this really viable with small population products? In the rare disease space it is much more likely that patients will have a higher level of knowledge about their disease–for rare diseases it is essential for them to become informed in order to pursue diagnosis. But does this knowledge translate to brand loyalty?
We need to start thinking about integrating drugs into larger systems of health support. The opportunity for us in the industry to think more broadly about how drugs fit into health systems. This includes social networks, financial support, education and employment. Disease impacts the total person and the whole of society. How can drug manufacturers and distributors envision their organizations embedding their products in these systems from conception and not just as a marketing function?
Published on October 11, 2011 3:45 am.
Filed under: Healthcare, Technology Tags: healthcare marketing, innovation

The Rockland Center for the Arts under the direction of curator Lynn Stein will be exhibiting works by Robert Egert in Gallery One.
Dates of exhibition: October 16th through December 4th
Opening reception: Sunday, Oct 16, 1-4pm
Robert Egert’s exhibition, entitled Unbuilt, consists of chalk drawings on paper and digitally printed texts created between 2008 and 2011. Two groups of work provide the focus for the exhibit. Unbuilt consists of drawings of imaginary sculptures in improbable spaces paired with text-based narratives. Red Chalk consists of drawings depicting everyday furniture engaged in human-like postures and poses.
Unbuilt is a exploration of the paradoxical nature of what it means to be an artist. To create a unique vision, the artist must create a space apart from the mainstream currents of society. In isolation the artist can create work that is true to itself and his or her unique vision. But the isolated space the artist works within is often inadequate in size and improbably static in relation to the unrelenting activity of contemporary life. Risking impracticality, absurdity, and obscurity, the artist endeavors to create an object that will, somehow, come to occupy a place outside the studio as either an object of provenance or as an image in memory. In Unbuilt, Robert Egert creates a series of narratives that, ultimately, reveal the indeterminate and risky nature of art and the uncertain life of artifacts in society.
Robert Egert was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1958 and studied fine art at Pratt Institute. Over the course of his evolution as a visual artist, he has worked in oil paint, sculptural assemblage, and mixed-media to explore the uncertain terrain of the conscious imagination. He currently resides in Engelwood, NJ.
For more information:
Lynn Stein
Tel: 845 358 0877
Email: lynnstein1@gmail.com
www.rocklandartcenter.org
Rockland Center for the Arts
27 South Greenbush Road
West Nyack, New York
Published on October 11, 2011 12:58 am.
Filed under: Art

I just started using Hootsuite as an indivdual user. It does an impressive job of providing an extensible platform to aggregate social network activity across channels for individuals and presumably for smaller more agile marketing and PR organizations. The web-based ui design is among the newer crop that straddles browser-based aesthetics with client app standards. (If this sounds like jibberish, just think of Panic Software’s application Coda, which, like Hootsuite mixes user interface conventions from both operating systems and browsers. The result is a new transitionary state that, like mobile apps, mixes web and application standards to produce a result that feels as responsive as a resident app while pulling data from the cloud in real time.
OK now the downside. The application is still way beta with bugs galore. This is excusable except for the security issues it brings up and the fact that it is extremely powerful in terms of its ability to ramify your message footprint. One false move (intentional or no can wreck havoc).
Published on October 6, 2011 8:19 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Reviews, Technology, UX Tags: analytics, hootsuite, social media

Turn back the hands of time, way back to the early days of the dot com boom. Web design in those days was devoid of templates real and imaginary. End users had no expectations and web interfaces ran the gamut from the audacious to the beautiful to the idiotic. Any new project was a chance to establish a new paradigm. And all bets were off.
Keep in mind that in the early days, web browsers were advancing and leap-frogging each other with a rapidity that made any design essentially obsolete within six months to a year. And even if it didn’t become obsolete, innovative new UI features, such as mouse-over effects, expanding menus, etc. were strong motivations for web sponsors to invest in redesign efforts.
I still remember vividly the ABC News site of the late nineties that featured the navigation on the right side of the browser. Eureka! More people are right handed, therefore this is a more convenient design. (They’d designed it to remain in sight regardless of the size of the browser window.) I was busy sharing the interface with my clients and team-members until one day soon after its release they flopped it back the left side, just like every other website.
It was a milestone day, like the day your favorite corner store closed and was replaced by gap or a starbucks. The day that conformity kicked in and a reign of standardization began.
Which leads me to my complaint about applications like Balsamic (For those of you who aren’t familiar, Balsamic is a template-based tool that allows people with no discernible visual skill to create UI mock-ups by arranging pre-made elements such as buttons, navigation tabs, form elements, etc.)
Balsamic has, depending on your point of view, opened up UI design to anyone with an interest, empowered sponsors to get hands on in the UI development process, or rendered the skilled UI/UX designers’ role irrelevant.
Perhaps it does all three of these things. But from my perspective, the larger issue is that it reinforces a standardized approach to UI design that will stifle UI innovation and further limit the kinds of interactions that we can invent or imagine.
Creativity is an essential component of innovation. And in order to remain relevant, designers must prove their worth by demonstrating true innovation, elegance and usability in the interfaces they envision.
Published on October 1, 2011 12:43 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Disappointed once again by the false promise of responsive design, CSS and syntactic design.
Our current project is nothing but a content-driven website–not an app or form-driven experience. So I wonder, why is it so difficult to create a mobile instance? Why is it that we need to create an entirely separate instance of the site? My goal was to implement the site using responsive design best practices; using device detection in combination with separate style sheets. But alas nothing is really quite so simple.
The developer team tells me that the time required to make a single set of files display correctly across devices will be so much greater than just creating a second set optimized for mobile.
But I know that doesn’t take into account the time and coordination required to maintain two separate sites down the road: when there’s a copy change, a new graphical revision, personnel changes, press releases, etc. Every one of them is going to require that each change be made twice and then edited and proofed. Everything times two. There’s got to be a better way.
I’m told the reason has to do with the fact that our site integrates JQuery and that means that once we start implementing across devices it’s going to get very buggy. I believe that too. But I just wonder, when’s the efficiency on cross-platform compatibility going to kick in on this?
Published on September 29, 2011 1:55 am.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: creative, CSS< device support, development, JQuery, Mobile, style sheets, UX

Consultants and agency geeks all know that preparing for a new business presentation is part strategic brainstorming, part marathon and part mind-reading. The truth is that no matter how much you know about the industry and the players you never really know what they are looking for. Requests for Proposal (RFP) documents are notoriously obtuse (they are designed to extract information from you). The onus is on you to do the research and come up with your own hypotheses.
Ultimately, the only course is to propose what you believe is right for the assignment. That means clear, measurable objectives and concise explanation of how you came to your conclusions.
Your job as a presenter is, like a good author, to bring the audience into your world–your way of thinking–and allow them to come to the same conclusions that you’ve arrived at. You can’t do that by preaching. The trick is to present your ideas with conviction and a clear rationale.
There’s always the chance that someone in the audience has already made up their mind before you arrived. They may have decided that they prefer to hire one of your competitors for any number of reasons. Alternatively, they may have another approach worked out in their own mind and are just looking for the agency whose presentation most closely aligns with their own thinking. This is why you need to build your argument like a lawyer addressing the jury. You need to build your argument on a strong research-based foundation, then present your hypotheses and finally point to examples or best practices to convince them to go in the direction you recommend. Your passion needs to be grounded in reality and needs to built from the ground up.
Published on September 23, 2011 10:11 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Truths Tags: agencies, agency work, presentations, proposals, strategy
Published on September 19, 2011 1:39 am.
Filed under: Art
Today I gave an informal talk on development process models. I started by explaining and contrasting waterfall method in contrast to the code and fix approach. Most of the people in the room had never heard of either of these terms which was surprising considering that they are either in project management roles or part of an interactive creative team.
What became apparent through the discussion was how we use a defacto code and fix approach for all of our internal projects and a pretty sequential waterfall for all our client work.
The real question is, how much of this has to do with formal reviews and how could that change?
Published on September 16, 2011 5:26 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX Tags: agile, code and fix, code and run, methodology, process, prototyping, Software, software development, ui, UX, waterfall
As I write this it is late on Friday afternoon in early September and we’re rushing to put the final touches on a small website that needs to go live today. The site was on staging earlier but routine QA led to conversation and conversation led to critique and finally we decided to make some last minute improvements. This is not at all unusual for most development groups but it occurs to me that this kind of agile revisioning is virtually impossible in a regulated environment. It is really refreshing to be able to rapidly change up the copy, revise the style sheet and swap-out an element. In most of our work, the review process means we need to lock things down sometimes weeks or months before launch. I don’t mind the wait but what I do mind is the feeling that you are married to a creative solution for so long. Because, as all creatives know, there’s always something you can improve on but sometimes you just don’t see it right away.
Published on September 9, 2011 8:46 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, UX Tags: agile, fire, haverstraw, on your mark, regualtory, revisions, sinking party boat

Ease of use often has as much to do with how familiar users are with the interface pattern that’s being used as with the overall simplicity.
For example, one of the most poorly designed interfaces I use is the parking meter machines in New York. The machine is incomprehensible the first couple of times you use it. There’s too much information, the steps are numbered but they are presented out of sequence so they are very difficult to follow. However, now that they’ve been in market for a while, people are used to them and if you were to change it up–even to make it simpler to use– you’d probably trip people up because of their familiarity.
Same is true of screen-based interactions. Take Amazon or Ebay, two of the worst offenders. Of course they could improve the interaction for check out but their user base is large enough and familiar enough to grandfather the poor design.
Also as Einstein famously said, there’s such a thing as getting “too simple.” iOS has a number of areas where simplicity has trumped clarity. The result is that users have to poke around looking for how to turn off wireless, turn on location services, or switch random play off.
Our job is to present things as simply and as clearly as possible, but not at the expense of functionality. Looking simple isn’t the same thing as being simple.
Published on September 8, 2011 6:14 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: complexity, Design, parking meters, simplicity, ui, UX

Is UX design still a skill that requires specialized knowledge or has it become a popular craft that practically anyone can engage in? If it is still a skill, has it become numbingly unoriginal–just the assemblage of patterns from a catalog?
- Pattern-based thinking has become a standard approach resulting in more sameness in UI design. Familiarity has trumped innovation and simplicity (what users already know is easier for them to adopt)
- Mobile has spurred an increased integration of OS elements, functions and patterns into design. This is radically different from browser-based application development that was much more of a one-off
- New template-based software like Balsamic enables team-members with no training to develop pretty clear-looking wireframes in half the time that it takes using Omnigraffle or Illustrator
- The vulgarized version of Agile method means that everyone is involved in the UX design process, regardless of their expertise. This is not necessarily bad, but can result in irrational design decisions
What this means for the UX design profession will be the subject of my next installment.
Published on September 6, 2011 10:22 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology, UX Tags: agile, agile method, best practices, IA, outsourcing, software design, ui, UX

This piece is about truths and fictions in art and in in our times.
Let’s start with a reference to two books that explore parallel themes: In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake free markets and privatization have replaced traditional government roles. Police have given way to private corporate goon squads and society is harshly stratified between the employed, who live, work, shop and educate their children in suburban style corporate campuses, while outside the gates the plebeians toil in squalor without hope.
Similarly in Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, the future is portrayed as a corpocracy–a collection of global corporations–where employment as obedient management is the only path to a reasonably comfortable life, bioengineered clones do the heavy labor and the unemployed disenfranchised live short, brutish lives in shanty towns.
Both novels posit a path where free marker capitalism trumps democratic institutions and ultimately privatizes government. The result is a world dominated by branded abuse, and a collapse of meaning into consumerism. In Cloud Diaries consumers have a legal requirement to spend a monthly allotment of money.
The predictable results are dramatic environmental degradation unchecked by any regulation. Rampant disease fueled by runaway pollution, genetic mutations, bioengineered crops and global warming lead to a sudden collapse of society but without democratic institutions there is no means to address it; there is only continued profit-seeking and denial.
So how does this compare with our current reality?
1. The Tea Party wing of the Republican party is digging a grave for the EPA calling it the “job killing agency”, their jobs program calls for an elimination (not a modification) of labor regulations and tax breaks for employers.
2. There’s rumblings of the USPS (Post Office) closing, to be replaced by you guess who.
3. Since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan the use of private mercenary forces has been an integrated strategy of the defense department
4. Public support for private education in the form of vouchers and charter schools is on the rise while public systems are defunded and teachers are laid-off.
As democrats and republicans shuffle in and out pod the White House it seems that the only constant is the unchecked drum beat of corporate lobbyists and the continued erosion of democratic society in favor of one dominated by business interests cloaked in Christian mantle.
Defunding public education is part of the strategy: an ignorant society is more likely to turn to the church and listen to right wing polemicists.
Sometimes life imitates art.
Published on September 3, 2011 1:03 pm.
Filed under: Fictions, Reviews, Technology, Truths Tags: cloud atlas, david Mitchell, Margaret Atwood, oryx and crake

Most of us creatives know that almost as much work can go into a powerpoint presentation as a real UI design.
It is amazing just how much business in the US is conducted with Powerpoint. And, while contracts and financial documentation are still put in Word documents and spreadsheets, many decision-makers are relying upon presentations to make their large-scale decisions, the impact of which can be quite profound.
What has this done to idea generation, design process and the decision-making process?
1. Fragmentation
PowerPoint is often described a a deck, as in a deck of cards. Each slide can be shuffled and reshuffled effortlessly in PowerPoint. The result is that the narrative can be chopped and reconfigured continuously. This flexibility is great until the story collapses for lack of narrative.
2. Over-simplification
The best slides are brief and visual. Complex or nuanced writing bombs in PowerPoint. The result is oversimplification. As Einstein famously said, “make it as simple as possible. But not too simple.”
3. Simulacrum
Managers and buyers spend so much time with their heads in Powerpoint that they often mix up presentations of creative with real creative. So much creative work goes into pitch and is done so quickly, without thinking, that the result is often half-baked even though it may look wonderful. Don’t believe the hype.
Our world continuously blurs, compresses and conflates external truths with constructed illusions. Call it augmented reality or call it a group fantasy. Whatever you call it, it is increasingly prevalent. But beware of basing your decisions on this footing of shifting sands.
Published on September 2, 2011 12:29 am.
Filed under: Truths

There’s an enormous amount of uncertainty in the air. The volatility in the stock market, unemployment and under-employment, and signs of instability in governments abroad and locally add credibility to the impression that things are barely hanging on and might collapse at any moment.
For those of us fortunate to be running businesses it’s important to recognize this ambient feeling and understand how it is changing the marketplace and altering the outcome of our decisions. Uncertainty makes us question our judgment, second guess our decisions and undermine our top talent by questioning their decisions and micromanaging them.
For those of us working for companies, there’s the fear of losing our jobs; either through a downturn in business or because of downward pressure on salaries. The result is making it more contingent for us to prove our worth every day or risk being replaced.
All this impacts the dynamics of the workplace. It makes employees afraid to speak up with dissenting opinions and makes employers more desperate to “get it right.” Taken together this is a recipe for groupthink and the formation of a “Yestocracy,” a social construction where employees are more concerned with keeping their managers and employers happy and less concerned with doing what’s best for the business. Like the name implies, the employers are roughhousing their employees with the threat of dismissal and the employees are saying whatever they need to say to keep their employers happy. Yes, yes, yes… Even when they know the correct answer is no.
Published on September 2, 2011 12:16 am.
Filed under: Truths, UX
At the request of the GHC (Garnerville Holding Company), which owns and operates the Garnerville Arts Center, photographs of the Center have been removed.
Please contact them for more information at www.gagaartscenter.org
Published on August 31, 2011 1:16 am.
Filed under: Art, Truths

Thinking today about cloud computing and how the successful marketing of the concept has impacted my clients’ beliefs and expectations.
Software as a service and cloud computing is on everyone’s lips but it is surprising how much confusion there is about what it is. This is surprising considering how much good information is available on the topic. Perhaps it’s part of the downside of the successful marketing campaign around the cloud: non-technical clients seem to think it’s something new despite the fact that its been around for a long time.
Meanwhile in the healthcare industry, cloud computing represents a major challenge to the existing infrastructure that’s used to house and manage patient data. Pharma has gone to great lengths to ensure security, hygiene and compliance around this sort of personally identifiable information and it will take more than a marketing campaign to change existing relationships between database vendors and IT departments.
From a design and production perspective the implications of cloud computing are huge: especially for those of us involved in one-to-one marketing and dynamic health applications. Whether we design our applications for a web services/cloud model or for a traditional model will significantly impact design. Today that means applications that require data storage such as tracking tools and health diaries that will benefit from seamless access to data across disconnected wireless devices.
Published on August 30, 2011 9:49 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Mobile, Technology, UX

In the world of mobile app design it is the operating systems that are setting the user expectations for mobile security. This is because the OS are so closely tied to the design and by extension to the user experience. This could be just fine for most applications but we probably need a more specific protocol for health applications that store or transmit personal health related data.
For example, should these apps have a timeout due to inactivity? Many users do not leverage the built-in automatic logout that comes with the OS. If so, what is the trigger to log a user off? Is it a time delimited period of inactivity? If so, what’s the correct duration for an automatic timeout on a healthcare application?
Banking websites log us out after 5 minutes of inactivity. The same is true for most web-based applications that handle financial transactions such as those found on credit card and investment management websites.
When it comes to health applications HIPAA rules are generally applied (even for those sites that are not associated with insurance). And, of course, each client organization has its own internal privacy guidelines that need to be adhered to.
But remote, portable and embedded applications change the equation for this significantly. For example, how will symptom monitoring devices or related mobile applications manage security in a wireless world? Especially challenging when the application is always on or nearly always on.
One option will be to replicate the log-out due to inactivity model that has been adopted in the web space.But the implications of this need to be examined against the need to confirm trigger-based functions, such as alerts. What may be required is that blinded notifications display to the user for their confirmation without revealing any sensitive information.
Like shared public computers, mobile and embedded devices also present risks for unauthorized use and unintentional sharing of sensitive data.
Published on August 26, 2011 6:11 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Technology, UX

According to FDA regs, you can only describe a product as “new” for six months following approval. Good and clear enough but what about educational and user-created content published online? We’ve come to expect new articles to mean new, as in the last 24 hours–max. But with pharmaceutical companies requiring regulatory approval of all published materials, new can take on an entirely different meaning.
Now that the age of product websites (i.e., brand.com) are on the wane in favor of less brand-centric, more credible endeavors, we’re seeing more and more sites aspiring to community and blog status. But wait! Despite the design conventions, the site content still needs to move through regulatory approval at a snail’s pace.
It’s no secret that design conventions set expectation and when those expectations aren’t met it can send the user experience down the tubes. Take this scenario: pharmaceutical company wants to build an online community site to support a widely dispersed rare disease community. The site looks and feels like a community site with chronological postings and a blog look-alike. But all the postings are months old and premeditated. When site visitors attempt to make postings on their own they shoot their text into a three to six month oblivion with no knowledge if it will ever get posted or not. Not the best user experience.
What this really calls for is a two-tiered system for regulatory review: one for branded promotional content and the other for legitimate non-commercial speech in the hosted sphere.
Published on August 26, 2011 1:01 am.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Truths, UX
In the rush to release mobile apps and the proven success of rapid prototyping its no surprise that design has had to adjust to an agile methodology. This also means that the project sponsors are far more involved in design decisions than ever before. It is in the nature of mobile design to rely on the OS far more than in browser-based application design. This implies (and demands) full integration of interaction design with software development in a way that hasn’t really been popular since before the emergence of the web.
Not a bad thing if you ask me.
Published on August 24, 2011 10:07 pm.
Filed under: Design, Mobile, Technology, UX

Trying to clean-up sprawling, industrial-sized websites is always a challenge but it gets more difficult in direct proportion to the size of the company that owns the site.
The most predictable issues revolve around distributed ownership, inconsistent naming conventions and lack of a holistic understanding of the end users. Perhaps the biggest challenge isn’t related to UX/IA at all but instead has to do with getting access to the stakeholders who are empowered to authorize change. Too often in engagements like these, good ideas get nixed because someone more senior isn’t engaged in the process.
Some key elements in the UX / IA toolkit include taxonomies and controlled vocabularies, comprehensive navigation analysis and content audits. But perhaps the most powerful thing to do is a straightforward end-user analysis, complete with profiles and scenarios. A lot of designers have moved away from this approach int eh last couple of years influenced by agile methods and the demands of rapid functional prototyping. But when working on a larger project I still feel that they’re critical. And this in never more true than when working ona corporate project. This is because, despite all the doctrine to the contrary, most organizations are still reproducing their internal organizational structure in their website navigation.
This is understandable given the way that many of the larger corporate CMS systems are designed and implemented. They are built around a traditional model of corporate hierarchy and organization. Further, they are most often rolled-out and managed on a functional basis.
Published on August 23, 2011 9:13 pm.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Technology, Truths, UX
When relationship marketing began print and broadcast media were the primary channels of communication. Television and radio provided only crude targeting. In print, presses could do split runs with different variations for different segments of the market. But, like broadcast television, these capabilities were crude by comparison with what we can do using information systems and social media to micro-target individuals.
Its no secret that extremely precise targeting can be accomplished today. SO much so that the chief concern is around the privacy issues around collecting personal information and selling it for the purpose of marketing.
Why then do marketers persist in thinking in market segments? Is this an artifact of the past that people won’t let go of or is it a convenient shorthand for making sense of the marketplace?
Published on August 22, 2011 2:14 pm.
Filed under: Healthcare, Truths, UX

A key component of post-humanism is the unspoken but underlying assumption that the human mind exists as a separate object that can be detached from the physical body.
Today, the process of mind extraction is theoretical since we have not developed a process for doing so. However, it is widely believed by many contemporaries that mind extraction (and by extension, mind preservation) is achievable in the not to distant future.
This belief is based on a computer-based model of the human mind. The human mind according to this model, is just like a computer, only more dense, with more processes and memories than a conventional computer. This suggest that the human mind and the computer are equivalent in most ways except size and complexity. Thus, by extending Moore’s law into the future it would be inevitable that we could develop the capacity to reproduce logical process and memories equal to that of the human mind. Then would be required a method for extracting the contents of a human mind, and reproducing it in the processing space of the machine.
Just consider the unspoken assumptions inherent in this and how pervasive they are in our society: The mind can be conceived of as an independent object separate and distinct from the body. The physical reality of the human body is replaceable or disposable; our unique physical characteristics are of no lasting moment to the complexion of our mind. Our personality is not significantly informed by our physical being.
Assuming for a moment that this is possible, the question is, would such a disembodied brain constitute a living being with rights and privileges of citizenship? What kind of existence would such an entity experience without a body. If the body that served as the source for the extraction was from Latvia would the computer-based brain be Latvian?
Published on August 21, 2011 10:23 pm.
Filed under: Technology, Truths

As much as society embraces new technology, there’s also that ghost of technophobia that never quite goes away. It emerged not long after the birth of cinema itself, perhaps inseparable from the suspension of disbelief that film technology brought with it to audiences.
Since the late eighties technophobic movies assemble, reassemble and reconfigure (like transformers themselves) to form a new classic repertory:
1. Protagonist travels back in time and alters events that impact protagonist’s own present. (Terminator, La Jetée)
2. Protagonist is severely injured and his/her mind is extracted via a computerized process and transferred into a machine or other body. (Source Code, Moon, Avatar)
3. Medical madmen develop a highly contagious strain of virus that is fatal to humans, let it escape and thereby kill off all or most of the human race (Twelve Monkeys, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes)
These are just three–and I am sure you can suggest at least three others yourself–but what they all have in common, besides being stock in trade narrative motifs used over and over again in contemporary sci fi film, is that they all evidence technophobia that resonates with specific social fears:
1. We are doomed to repeat the same mistakes, and when given the opportunity to replay the past, we’ll probably screw it up all over again.
2. The machines (esp. computers) are too smart for our own good and will run amok, killing or enslaving us.
3. Reality is a fiction produced by cynical or manipulative agents to keep us from realizing that we are slaves or worse.
Published on August 21, 2011 7:53 pm.
Filed under: Truths

Worry is said to be a byproduct of civilization. The theory goes that when we were evolving the fear instinct served us well, informing us when to look behind our backs, when to run and when to stand and fight.
In today’s society, the threats have changed. Rather than life or death struggles with wild beasts, belligerent humans or an unforgiving environment, our threats are around paying our bills, workplace stress, or our economic future. Rarely is flight an appropriate response. So when our fear gets triggered it transforms into worry and persistent anxiety . Sometimes it kind of makes you want to pick up a club and wack something.
In the meantime, we’re living in a world of accelerating worry: The high standard of living that we’ve established and have come to expect is being eroded by shifts in employment dynamics. High unemployment, decline in real wages and a (probably) permanent collapse in manufacturing jobs in a consumer-driven world is a set up for worry.
Throughout the late 1990′s and early 2000′s economists spoke often about the rapid increases in productivity afforded by the blossoming of information technology. It is no secret that these advances have become commodities that can be outsourced. Whether it is software design and development or applied robotics for manufacturing, the result is a society that can produce good and services cheaper and faster.
But our society is increasingly concentrating wealth in a small segment of society. So the result of the efficiency will likely lead to increased and permanent unemployment or underemployment. With consumers having less money to spend on goods and services will it be any surprise to see a deflationary trend?
All of this makes the current dynamics in the U.S. Congress that are focused on deregulation and regressive taxes seem exactly counter to what we need to do. When the corporations are forces to lower prices to move goods perhaps we’ll start to hear a change in tunes in Washington.
Unless the stewards of our national government change course worry may become a constant companion.
Published on August 17, 2011 1:59 am.
Filed under: Fictions, Technology, Truths Tags: life, Work

J, one of our lead developers sprung on me that he’d used some downtime to prototype a “Build Once / Run Anywhere” mobile version using PhoneGap. After developing an iPhone app using an offshore development group (at no small expense) it’s nice to know we can leverage the investment across platforms (including blackberry) and tablets without having to fuss with multiple style sheets.
What’s odd is that if you use HTML to generate the UI you can end up with Android users looking at interfaces that look totally iPhone. (The opposite is just as possible, it only depends on where you start.)
But the real advantage is that updates are automatic and passive. this means that users don’t need to manually update their apps. All the while the app cam be tethered to a real remote SQL database in real time.
What’s really very innovate here is that Phone Gap aims to provide both a technology and marketing platform in one package thereby combining two domains of knowledge and organizational interests that have traditionally been worlds apart.
Published on August 17, 2011 1:44 am.
Filed under: Design, Healthcare, Technology, UX Tags: Design, Mobile

Designing software for smart phones and tablets requires a different approach than web application design. Unlike applications delivered via web, app users must understand how to use the application immediately or they will likely remove it from their device.
Consider the process that a typical user goes through in purchasing and buying an app. The purchase cycle may begin when the prospective buyer reads a review, gets a personal recommendation or conducts a search in the app store on their phone. If the product looks appealing and the price is justifiable, the user will typically download and launch the application immediately.
I cannot think of many environments that are more distracting than a phone: For one thing, there’s a load of other applications, text, email and voice ready to interrupt the user flow; secondly, there’s a good chance the user is multitasking–the user may in fact just be waiting for a taxi, a plane or for friends to arrive for dinner. So first impressions are more then important; they are live or die episodes for your app. If you lose them on the initial crank, you may never get them back.
You may not be able to control the environment that your first-time user is going to be in when they experience your app for the first time, but you can take steps to make the experience positive.
Concept Anchor
A concept anchor is some aspect of your software that functions as key conceptual access for users to hold onto while they explore the functionality of your app. Without the anchor, the user can easily and quickly get lost and frustrated. When you’re app does something most people are already familiar with establishing a concept anchor is a no-brainer, but it gets much more tricky once you go into uncharted or ambiguous territory.
You establish a concept anchor in the design phase by identifying the key object, activity or task that is the prime rationale for developing your software. It should ideally be something that is already familiar to your users. For example, Instagram’s anchor is photographs–not the filters that makes the application unique. Similarly, Evernote uses the list as its concept anchor, even though there’s a million other ways to create lists, because it is the list, not the interesting things that evernote allows you to do with your list, that people will initially and intuitively understand.
Surprise and Delight
Establish your concept anchor on the initial screen. This will have the dual benefit of making users feel comfortable while providing them with a secure anchor for them to hold on to while they explore the new and unique features your app has to offer. With the security of a concept anchor, new features can surprise and delight your new user. WIthout an anchor they may feel untethered, confused and frustrated.
Published on August 15, 2011 7:38 pm.
Filed under: Design, UX

As Paul Krugman points out in his column in today’s Times, Standard and Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt is the height of chutzpah; these are the same buffoons who gave Lehman Bros. aa triple A rating right until their collapse. They also were chief among the gangsters that fueled the economic collapse of 2008. So why do are they able to so powerfully impact world opinion and markets in 2011? It seems that the market, renowned to be unforgiving, is only selectively unforgiving. How did Standard & Poor escape the consequences of their utter failure to provide accurate ratings to securities?Oh, and by the way, they made and admitted to a two trillion dollar error (yes, you read that correctly) in their initial release of the document. Then, when the congressional budget office pointed out the error, they admitted to it, corrected it, and then maintained the downgrade.
Since they had earlier indicated that they were looking for at least a four trillion dollar debt reduction and the recent negotiations in congress resulted in a two plus billion dollar reduction, we need to examine why the downgrade occurs at all. We need to follow the money. Sophisticated investors can make money in a down market. One possibility is that this was a cynical manipulation of market forces that Standard & Poor and their clients could take advantage of. Another possibility is that Standard & Poor is playing politics. By fueling a financial panic the downgrade impacts the 2012 election by driving down the middle class’ 401K and further diminishing the hopes of the unemployed.
Tea party republicans gloat over their Phyrric victory over Obama, and their rank shout “No,” and “Obamacare,” the 2012 election is beginning to look more like a mutiny on a sinking ship.
Published on August 8, 2011 12:02 pm.
Filed under: Healthcare, Truths
Published on July 8, 2011 9:21 pm.
Filed under: Art
Drug marketing as we all know is big business. So big, in fact, that the largest pharmaceutical giants have organizationally shifted in many respects away from basic research and into product development and marketing. As a result they have a vested interest in sustaining the motif that drives consumer demand for healthcare products.
We witnessed one form of this beginning in the nineteen nineties with the concept of blockbuster drugs–drugs that were largely driven by consumer brand recognition and choice. It also gave rise to the commidification of conditions: ED (Erectile disfunction), Restless Knee Syndrome, and GERD (Gastro-intestinal Reflux Disease), conditions that some might argue were largely popularized to sell the products that treat them.
Perhaps the biggest and most successfully promoted condition is ADHD. That one required the coordinated efforts of the APA (and the DSM-IV, and the insurance companies). Some will argue that these are significant conditions and that the drugs used to treat them have vastly improved peoples lives, etc. And there’s no doubt that is often the case. Nonetheless, the interesting point is that the promotional plan for the product is predicated upon an aggressive condition awareness program and in the case of ED, building comfort around discussing the topic.
This leads us to genomic therapy. The initial phase of this type of medicine is tumor-targeted therapies but we can safely assume that it the years to come we will see embryonic and neonatal targeting. These will fall into two distinct categories: interdiction of diseases that are genetically predetermined and enhancement products. The later could target anything from aesthetics (height, weight, muscle mass, general facial characteristics, etc.) to neurological characteristics (intelligence, creativity, mood, etc.).
Because we live in a highly religious society with a large portion of society that has demonstrated strong animosity to messing with the divine plan (think about the opposition to stem cell research), this will take some sophisticated and dedicated marketing efforts.
How will drug organizations drive consumer demand for products that predetermine the characteristics of our offspring without alienating large tracts of society and causing a religious-lef backlash?
Published on June 7, 2011 7:09 pm.
Filed under: Healthcare, Technology, Truths

A recurring theme in sci-fi and futurist films is the extraction or replacement of a person’s memory from their body. This concept with some variations has been incorporated into a number of popular films beginning in the 1990′s with the Matrix up to and including the more recent films Avatar and Source Code. While each of these films has a unique plot line, they share an underlying assumption that through technology a person’s personality can be removed from the body by extracting their memory. Once it is removed and held digitally it can then be installed into a new or different body, or left to exist and interact in a virtual, digital world.
What is interesting about this is the assumption that the self is almost entirely located in the mind and the body is a disposable appendage. This assumption was not always present in our culture. In H. G. Well’s classic novella The Time Machine (1895) the protagonist builds a machine capable of transporting the user through time. He sits within it and by operating the controls can move through time (though his machine stays in the same location). He travels to various epochs in the distant future, including a lengthy stay in a dystopic world inhabited by innocent vegetarians who are bred for consumption by cannibalistic troglodytes. Ultimately, he travels well beyond the demise of humanity to witness the earth inhabited by giant crustaceans. However, throughout all his travels, his body and mind remain firmly inseparable.
Compare this to Avatar and Source Code. In both films it is possible to extract and store the essence of an individual for use elsewhere. The result is that there is no fixed age, gender, race, or appearance. Interestingly, in both films however there is a persistent nationality (But how else could the militaristic theme be constructed?).
The underlying beliefs that support this shift have everything to do with the digitization of communication and emergence of the disembodied self. This has been written about by N. Katherine Hayles in How We Became Post-human.
The new self of the 21 century has a distinctly new relationship to the body: The self can be extracted and preserved in digital form. Memory is a singular, defining characteristic that trumps all physical characteristics. Scientists across various industrial and university settings struggle to develop a digital map of the brain based on the assumption that the silicon-based computer is a model capable of reproducing what it means to be human. They have mapped the brains of some life forms successfully (such as worms and mice) but to date have failed to reproduce any of the thinking processes that happen within the brain. As Dr. Michio Kaku suggests, cockroaches are more capable than today’s robots.
But assuming that the continued evolution of silicon chips and the resulting ever more powerful computers are capable of reproducing the thinking power of the human brain, will this result in the ability to distill what it is to be human in digital form?
The question would be unthinkable without the emergence of digital culture, social networks and resulting disembodied selves of contemporary digital culture. In fact, seen from the point of view of 2011, the Internet is in the midst of a fundamental change that may forever change our understanding of what it means to be a person. In my view, these films are less reflective of science and more related to how our social behavior and interactions are changing as a result of technology–and especially social networks and always-on interactive media.
Published on June 1, 2011 8:06 pm.
Filed under: Fictions, Film, Reviews, Technology, Truths Tags: avatar, h. g. wells, memory transplant, post-human, source code, the time machine
This presentation outlines the dynamics of Ushahidi crowdsouring and open source model for collective disaster response. It is a powerful platform that is generating critical reporting and distributed reporting on a truly global level. Have no doubt that Ushahidi will be as well-known as wikipedia in a few years and for all the right reasons.
That being said, this video is pretty disturbing in its philosophical assumptions and reductivist logic. All human actions and relations can never be reduced to commodities. And we should not be trying to justify crowdsourcing and disaster relief by assigning it a commercial value. There’s just no need for that.
Published on May 17, 2011 2:49 am.
Filed under: Design, Fictions

This was originally said by Mr. Dryesdale, the banker, in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies: “The secret of the insurance business is this: You take the money in but don’t pay it out.” And we all knew this was true but now, finally, it is on the front page of the New York Times (little good it will do, though).
Read the entire article here.
When Obama began his overhaul of the U. S. Healthcare system I believed–I suppose it is more accurate to say, “I hoped”–that he was gunning for the insurance companies.
Why does the American public hate insurance companies more than big pharmaceutical companies? As much as the American public hates the big pharmaceutical companies, at the end of the day, they make drugs that help people. Why do they hate them more than doctors? As much as people are annoyed with the fragmented mosaic of specialists that they need to manage when they have an illness that requires complex treatment, it is the doctors who heal them. Why do they hate them more than hospitals? Despite the sometimes wretched administration and often substandard hygiene of hospitals, it is these institutions that provide them with care–emergency and planned–when it is needed.
But insurance companies: what do they do?
Taking the devil’s advocate position, insurance companies eliminate the financial devastation that disease can bring on families and individuals by spreading the risk throughout society. In their purest and most altruistic form they would collect some amount of money from each family equal to the amount necessary to care for all those who get ill. This way all of society would pay equally for the cost of treatment to all as it is needed. (I think this might be socialist!)
But in fact insurance companies are not altruistic nor are they pure. Instead they are for profit companies whose operational protocols are designed to maximize profit and minimize expenditures. As Mr. Dryesdale might put it: “To take the money in and not pay it out.”
Well, perhaps the insurance companies do do something: They drive us crazy. They drive us mad with their poorly designed forms, their malfunctioning fax machines and their inscrutable denial of service notices (which they call by the misnomer “explanation of services.”) But mostly, they drive us batwing by promising us coverage and denying it to us when we are in need. Let’s make no bones about it.
And this really points out what is essentially wrong about a purely capitalist system and shows why it is so critical for us to make a distinction between the healthy capitalism associated with business creation and innovation and the sickening (literally) impact of privitization on industries that should not be privatized: social services, health services, corrections, military and government. Add your own, if you like.
None of this is going to change until we move to a single payer system. And in my view it is inevitable that we will either move to this model or we will invent a new one that will not include the insurance companies as we know them today. To those of you who work in the insurance industry, I know this probably upsets you. Just start looking for a new gig now. It will take a while to destroy your industry. But I have no doubt that eventually it will be destroyed. How do I know this? It is simple: Things that can’t go on forever, don’t.
Published on May 14, 2011 1:54 am.
Filed under: Fictions, Film, Healthcare, Truths

Source Code, a film that explores time travel, is arguably the second major release that is, at its core, a remake of Chris Marker’s 1962 film, La Jetée (the first remake was Terry Gilliam’s 1995 Twelve Monkeys.)
Like the Marker original, Source Code focuses on an unwilling time traveler, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, imprisoned and subject to repeated journeys back in time at the hands of an unscrupulous scientist. In both films his mission is to change the past in order to save the present from disaster. Gyllenhaal has no control over his journeys in time but is a free agent once he arrives. As the narrative progresses the protagonists become romantically involved (or perhaps obsessed) with a woman they meet on their journey into the past and ultimately seek to unite with them, in their world.
In La Jetée the crisis that they were seeking to avert was nuclear winter. In Source Code the crisis is a dirty bomb set to detonate in Chicago. If nothing, this is a telling indicator of how our collective fears have morphed from nuclear Armaggedon to terrorism.
Gyllenhaal is repeatedly sent into a commuter train that has a bomb on it set to explode in the Chicago suburbs. He must find the bomber. Each time he has only eight minute until the train explodes. On the train he meets love interest Michelle Monaghan, and while trying to locate the bomb and the bomber also enacts a series repetitive, eight minute speed dates.
The underlying trope that drives the fascination in these film is conundrum of time travel and how changing action in the past inevitably creates alternative futures. In Source Code the solution is that each alternative created is a parallel universe separate from the original. The ultimate logic of this posits that experience is created in the min, is universally extensible and that there is no preferred version of reality. My internal reality is just as good as yours, thank you.
Source Code also shows how film culture has incorporated the threat of terrorism and ongoing war into our collective psyche. Gyllenhaal’s character, like the protagonist in Avatar, is a critically injured veteran of Afghanistan. His injuries have left him no hope for a normal existence and so science is used to migrate his consciousness into another body. The terrorist in this film is thwarted and disaster is averted. At the close of the film, Gyllenhaal is united with Monaghan and they are free to live on in the alternative universe that was spawned through his monkeying with the past.
Source Code was directed by Duncan Jones (Perhaps better known to some as Zoe Bowie) whose previous film, Moon, explored similar issues of mirrored identities and reality. Moon depicts a lone engineer minding a largely robotic mining operation on the moon. When he falls ill and discovers an identical but healthy version of himself in his solitary station he learns that he is only one in a series of clones created explictly to work on the mine in solitude until they wear out. At the end of that film his replacement opts to escape the moon and try his luck as a free man on earth.
Published on April 23, 2011 3:36 pm.
Filed under: Film, Reviews
Published on April 23, 2011 12:19 pm.
Filed under: Truths Tags: Design, IA, ID, motikon, news, psychomotikon, tweets, twitter, UX
From Roubini Global Economics Monitor
S&P’s decision to cut its outlook for U.S. government debt from stable to negative—a historic first—sent markets tumbling: On April 18, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both recorded their biggest one-day drops in nearly a month (though U.S. Treasurys and the dollar did well). The landmark outlook downgrade reinforces what we have been saying since 2010: The United States is on an unsustainable fiscal path from which it cannot exit without political consensus. The key question is whether the gridlocked U.S. political system can respond in time to avert a bond market revolt.
The rise in public debt following a financial crisis is one of the main mechanisms by which a recovery may be supported in the short term. Typically, this happens via Keynesian consumption-smoothing across economies and income generation through the state’s redistribution of resources between economic sectors, financed by borrowing against future revenues and growth. But the flip side of this short-term recovery may be reduced post-recovery potential and actual growth: The larger public debt portends a future rise in taxes on wealth and/or income, which in turn weighs on growth and thereby on fiscal balance.
Since the precrisis leveraged asset bubble induced above-equilibrium public revenue, corporate profits and household income, wealth and spending, it is logical to expect a general reduction in net wealth, including a rise in net public debt. The capacity of the financial markets and the state to tolerate and manage that rising debt burden or adjust fiscally or structurally to reduce it will be the key to whether the markets buy the fiscal liabilities or sell them en masse.
A bond market revolt is not at all easy to engineer in the United States. There is no safer asset destination on the planet than the United States, which has the third-longest-running system of government in the world, despite being a young nation. Almost no other country’s structure of state—and hence property rights—have survived world and local wars (including defeats), economic depressions and financial and fiscal crises without major dislocations and arbitrary redistributions of wealth through inflation or more direct expropriation. The knee-jerk risk-off wave may well pass as people begin to recognize that this rating move will make little if any difference—and may even improve debt dynamics by cutting bond yields if risk-off persists. Unlike other debtor countries, the United States actually benefits from risk aversion, even domestic risk aversion, through a stronger dollar and lower bond yields, so the market impact will likely be transitory.
The United States has the most manageable fiscal issues of any major advanced economy because federal, state and local revenues as a share of GDP are very low, for cyclical and other reasons. Therefore, fiscal balance can be restored by fiscal adjustment without major economic difficulty in the near term. In the longer term, structural fiscal reform will be needed due to rising Social Security commitments. For the United States, debt sustainability is a function of political constraints. The political center has fractured as a result of the financial crisis, and healing it requires a consensus about the desired size of the state: Should the government bear the low level of responsibility of its 18-19th century libertarian predecessors or should it share the 20th century New Deal or Great Society vision of America?
The current shortage of consensus in Washington about the right balance between public and private responsibilities suggests no real action will be taken to address structural budget issues until at least after the 2013 presidential elections. On the other hand, there are now four potential plans to foster debate in Congress that would reduce the deficit by US$4-5 trillion over the next decade: the original Simpson-Bowles bipartisan proposal, the Republicans’ “Ryan Plan,” President Barack Obama’s new proposal and the impending “Gang of Six” proposal that potentially could have the most bipartisan appeal. So while formal progress will not be made until 2013, an agreement in principle that something will be done by 2013 could coalesce between 2011 and 2012.
Published on April 20, 2011 1:25 pm.
Filed under: Uncategorized
My fifth grade son has been assigned to write an article on how amphibians are threatened with mass extinction. It has to do with fun topics such as wetland habitat destruction, disease And the impact of industrial waste in their environments. At yen years old he’s totally unphased by the prospect. The next generation expects the unimaginable and considers it normal.
Published on April 17, 2011 2:21 pm.
Filed under: Technology, Truths Tags: Truths
Pharmaceutical companies endeavor to make direct to patient communications relevant. But anyone in the industry can tell you that we fight an uphill battle against an increasingly paranoid regulatory review process. Despite what brand managers may think, increasing scrutiny and risk aversion is not limited to one particular brand or company – it is now part of the zeitgeist.
Pharmaceutical companies and their agents have a mandated responsibility to provide fair balance under FDA guidelines and to avoid making unsubstantiated claims about their products. And well they should. However, so long as the regulatory environment remains locked-down, it will prevent healthcare companies from engaging in the most relevant and impactful communications.
This is because social media has totally transformed the way we communicate and consume information. Healthcare consumers can and do participate in the dialog around their health, treatment dynamics, drugs, and (yes) side effects. Not only are consumers the new publishers, but they are using channels that cannot support fair balance and AE reporting. The dialog around health is blossoming across blogs, twitter and social media and as a result pharmaceutical websites are increasingly detached from mainstream dialog and are threatened with irrelevance.
Is it the intension of the FDA’s regulation of direct-to-patient communications to prevent the pharmaceutical companies from participating? Probably not. What’s missing is an updated set of guidelines for emerging channels such as twitter, Facebook (and similar social media sites) and blogging. Approximately two years ago the FDA promised to issue regulatory guidelines on social media for drug makers. Given how rapidly the landscape is evolving and consumer behavior changes it is difficult to fault them for failing to arrive at a firm stance.
How should pharmaceutical communications use social media? How can we arrive at guidelines that will allow us to participate in the dialog?
Published on April 13, 2011 3:07 pm.
Filed under: Healthcare, Technology
There’s something of disagreement now between US and Japanese nuclear authorities on how seriously to take the radioactive emissions from the damaged reactors in northern Japan. The Japanese authorities, perhaps concerned with seeding widespread panic in a nation that has a history of nuclear trauma dating back to WWII, has played down the health impacts. Meanwhile experts in the United States have characterized the danger level as very high and have recommended a broader evacuation zone than the Japanese.
The point has also been made that far more people have died and are suffering as a result of the tsunami than from radiation. It has been suggested that it the invisible nature of radioactivity that raises fears out of proportion to its actual health impact.
All of this leads me to believe that there is a campaign on by nuclear industry advocates to use the crisis in Japan to allay justified fears of radioactivity. Its even been suggested that coal use produces more radioactivity than nuclear power plants.
This information is misleading at best. The dangers of uncontained radioactive materials are significant for human health on scale that cannot be compared to natural disasters. This is because of the extended duration that these materials persist in the environment. This is also true because over time the radioactive elements will become dispersed in the environment, entering the food chain and probably affecting the genes of life forms that come in contact with it.
I suppose one of the traits that have helped humans survive and dominate the planet is our ability to adapt. So, one has to suppose that we can get used to this as well. Pass the iodide?
Published on March 17, 2011 2:13 pm.
Filed under: Healthcare, Technology
Since the mid-nineties we’ve been working intimately with what we used to call information architects, but now call user interaction designers and there’s still no consensus on what their role is. This, despite the fact that colleges are teaching it, organizations are funding it and software has been created to support it.
The situation is significantly worse in marketing organizations as compared with engineering groups.
Why?
My theory on this is that it is structural: Marketing (like R&D) budgets are the most fragile and subject to last minute changes. After all, unlike costs for salary, facilities, production, etc., marketing budgets can be radically altered at the drop of a hat (or a drop of the stock market) without endangering the core business.
The result is that the entire practice of marketing has become accustomed to last minute changes, short-term decision-making, and a general poverty of planning and long-term organization. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in today’s media environment, but it does lead to a cultural mindset that places a low relative value on skills that are methodical and process-oriented.
And so, 15 years later, while we don’t need to justify the practice, we do still need to educate and drill teams on the proper time and place to integrate this role into the team, how to integrate their efforts with the designers, and even, ironically, in some cases, to educate the user experience designers on why it is important to make interaction sexy.
Published on March 3, 2011 2:24 am.
Filed under: Design, Technology

It is no surprise but it is still worth remarking that this is the moment when the Internet revolutionized the world. What was true about communications, dating, music, news, publishing, education, etc. is now also true about politics. And yes, this is more than just fund-raising.
While it is true that the revolutions that are spreading throughout the Middle East are fueled by despotic and corrupt regimes, it is digital communications that have enabled the distributed yet coordinated revolts to be so effectual against guns, bombs, camels and molotov cocktails.
For those of us who witnessed first hand the transformation of the Internet from a quirky, nerdy communications platform in the 1990′s to the commercial marketplace that it is today, this comes as a great relief. It demonstrates the resilience of the medium as well as its potential to reflect the imagination of its users and how difficult it is to control.
What makes this all possible is the fact that no one is in charge. Isn’t that amazing. Even today with all the financial interest in and reliance upon the Internet, no one owns it and no one controls it. And, when governments seek to turn it off, they can only slow it down but not stop it completely.
Published on February 27, 2011 4:22 am.
Filed under: Technology

This week I realized that I had been staring exclusively at screens from waking going to sleep. I began the day with my iPhone alarm and then went on to read the “paper” online while drinking my coffee. At work I spent my day reviewing website designs, developing media and designing mobile applications. After work I helped my son with his homework on our desktop computer and then read my kindle before going to bed. I used a mobile app to monitor my sleep cycle by placing my iPhone under my sheets.
The Star Trek episode pictured above shows Captain Piccard holding a book, collected as an antiquity in the future. That future is upon us. Last week Borders Books went bankrupt and I predict it will not be the only book seller to lose financial viability in the wake of the eBook.
My generation is so attached to the concept of the book. The book, it is thought, is superior to other forms of information because it is long enough to develop and expound on a complex idea or set of ideas, requires editing and care in development and through this process of validation becomes an item of record (as opposed to a fleeting communication).
The question that seems pressing is whether the book, in either digital or print format, will survive at all. Even assuming that books go digital, will people still devote the time to reading books of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred or more pages in an environment where media, messaging and truly powerful social networking capabilities are coursing aroudn us at all times?
Published on February 27, 2011 12:35 am.
Filed under: Technology, Truths
2011 is shaping up to be the year touch screens become ubiquitous. As adoption grows across a wider demographic and people become accustomed to interfacing with computers with their fingers we’ll likely see an acceleration of technologies that extend this modality of human computer interaction.
The problems with touch screens are obvious to anyone that uses them: difficult to manipulate items with precision, lack of physical feedback makes keyboard input error prone, and variances in finger size is not accommodated in current interfaces.
But what really stands out is the disparity between the simplistic inputs recognized by touch screens and the actual expressive potential of the human hand. Consider, as only one example, the expressive potential of hand gestures. Consider also what sign language has done with the human hand.
In order to truly engage the potential of the human hand’s expressive ability, touch screens will need to detect movement in space–not just the flat plane of the screen. Once they can detect motion and direction in space, a world of interpretive possibilities will come to life. Parallels to this are already happening in voice recognition.
Today Engadget reports on an Apple patent that embeds acoustic transducers in the chassis of a laptop to function not to detect sounds but as motion detectors. See http://engt.co/ibyKPj.
Once user input moves away from a keyboard it opens up a world where a more extensive vocabulary expressive gestures could be detected and interpreted. These could be based on whole words, phoneme or letters. These could be modeled after the sign language used by the deaf.
Published on February 21, 2011 10:10 pm.
Filed under: Design, Technology Tags: 2011, Design, engadget, gesture, human computer interaction, innovation, interaction, keyboard, natural language, sign language, Technology, touch screens
The twitter ecosystem is a lot like the early days of the Internet: primarily driven by people not companies and the excitement of exploring a new channel with all the new modalities and emergent behaviors.
The political impact of the channel have just moved from theory to reality in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Libya.
Size does matter. Even when governments pull the plug in the Internet, they cannot completely cut off access so while media channels that rely on larger information packets are immobilized small ones like twitter can continue to function.
Published on February 21, 2011 2:24 pm.
Filed under: Technology, Truths Tags: bahrain, communication, egypt, middle east, news, packets, social web, Technology, tunisia, tweets, twitter
Why has texting replaced voice? It doesn’t require less effort (can you argue that typing is easier than speaking?). One theory is that people prefer texting because it is asynchronous and therefore doesn’t require an immediate response. Perhaps. But then, most people I know respond to texts immediately. Could it be financial? Is it less expensive to conduct a conversation via text messages than voice? That’s a hard argument to make given the fact that even a brief conversation can transmit a wealth of information that would take screen after screen of texting to convey. So while the initial transmission may be less expensive than a long call, how many text dialogs are composed of a simple exchange? It is usually a long series of exchanges. Perhaps it is the fact that texting allows us to simultaneously converse with multiple partners. Or perhaps it is the fact that we don’t actually have to speak to the other person.
Published on February 20, 2011 4:20 am.
Filed under: Technology Tags: communication, human computer interaction, Mobile, text, voice
Clock is at once utterly different from any film you’ve seen before and completely familiar. As you probably know by now, the film with a runtime of 24 hours, strings together short clips from films that either refer to the time or show a clock on screen. The time in the film corresponds to the actual time of the screening. The film is a relentless series of references to the actual time while the context for these references are in ever changing flux.
Because the film is calibrated to actual time and the clock faces are nearly ubiquitous, watching Clock is like watching a clock. But unlike watching a real clock, the effect of watching Marclay’s film is mesmerizing and expansive. One has the sensation of having scanned an immense spectrum of human experience.
What emerges is a commonality of cultural references to particular time. That’s only is to be expected but that doesn’t dull the effect. One takeaway is that filmmakers use references to time to advance particular narrative tropes, most particularly to build tension and anticipation. The effect of watching tense scenes in a near continuous mosaic has a unique effect, bringing on anticipation without any resolution.
Because clocks in film are used so often to convey impatience, anxiety or anticipation, the brief excerpted narratives has the effect of conveying a series of crises that are never resolved. This effect calls to mind the musical effect of the Ring of the Niebelung that, like Clock, is an extended series of unresolved musical crises.
Published on February 19, 2011 12:35 pm.
Filed under: Art, Film Tags: Art, christian marclay, clock, Film, paula cooper

Margie Neuhaus, Fragment, Mixed Media
The human body as a subject in art tells us as much about our society as anything intended by the artist. Even representations of the inner workings of the body reflect social beliefs and cultural perspectives. The ancient Chinese, for example, had no tradition of autopsy and as a result had no clear mapping of the internal organs. Despite this, they were able to develop a sophisticated system of medicine based on the outward signs of inward disease.
Today’s dominant perspective on the human body is a systems approach (circulatory system, central nervous system, etc.). This can be interpreted as an expression of the way we educate and organize physicians professionally rather than an empirical truth.
Margie Neuhaus’ Fragment I. (2010) Copper coated steel, ink on mylar, vinyl coated wire, thread, plastic coated wire, acrylic, 42 x 18 x 20 inches
Margie Neuhaus’ ephemeral and buoyant constructions mimic the organic plumbing of the human body but the overall effect is closer to medical illustration than to a cadaver. Neuhaus’ hanging constructions are extremely light and seem magically suspended in space, similar to a hologram, an effect made more pronounced by the bright, translucent materials. They invite movement and one even wants to put a finger through the highly charged negative spaces.
All this results in a high degree of mental abstraction—in this case in the form of a highly refined aesthetic. Complimenting the sculpture, are a series of layered, translucent works on vellum. Much in the same spirit, they reproduce details of the nervous and circulatory systems, and like the three-dimensional work, they too leverage light and transparency to produce a glowing, charged effect.
As the inward conception of the body is the subject for Neuhaus’ work, O’Hare turns his gaze outward to the landscape—not as an examination of nature or society but as a mediated landscape that lies somewhere in-between. His subjects hang in the balance between the forces of industrial development and the regenerative power of the earth. O’Hare’s work takes the long view, making no distinction between successful industry and failed, forgotten remains.
With industry’s impact on the landscape as a subject, it would be easy to take a few obvious shots at the demon, but O’Hare’s photos are more complex and equivocal. They remind us that fortuitous accidents (are they miracles?) can happen anywhere—even on the backside of a corrugated metal warehouse.
They also suggest that nature, despite the abuse we throw at her, is resilient enough to demonstrate beauty and civility even after the civil engineers have their way with her.
Another theme in O’Hare’s work is an exploration of atmosphere—especially when it is thick with smoke, rain or particulates. Similar to his industrial images, these find beauty and mystery in the unexpected: The rain storm that one wants to get out of, or the acrid plume from a garbage fire.
While the prints included in this exhibit were the perfect scale for the venue, I can’t help but wonder how these images would look at a larger, more enveloping scale.
{Gg Gallery} 119 India Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222
mhstudionyc@gmail.com for an appointment,
Published on February 10, 2011 2:39 am.
Filed under: Art, Reviews
The programmer runs rebuild after rebuild. Each time he lets the program run until something annoys him. He gets annoyed each time after just a few minutes. First its is because someone by the snack table is frozen and mute (it was a simple runtime error, easily corrected). The next time it is because the voice of the girl by the window is pitched too high and brings to mind a childhood memory of his sister yelling at him to get out of his room. On the third round he programs the room with a higher ceiling and extended the cords from which the light fixtures hung.
Published on February 2, 2011 1:24 pm.
Filed under: Fictions
Writer Kim Stanley Robinson posited that defunct economic systems never really disappear but instead live on in pools, eddies and pockets of our society. Through this lens, feudalism can be said to live on in corporate America.
Consider the role of corporate propaganda and the workers’ obedience to corporate culture. Are annual pep meetings very different from the pageantry of royalty?
Published on February 2, 2011 1:09 am.
Filed under: Uncategorized