MAYA

Friday Links - 09-04-2010

Ford, Bucky, star wars, dark patterns, the Mongoliad, rules for radicals, hackerspaces, iPony, and the most unsung actor in Hollywood.

Friday Links - 08/13/10

Cutting for stone, raising Chicago, duck knight, words, toast, and the problem with thinking too much.

Friday Links - 07-24-2010

Aspen Ideas Festival, TEDGlobal, holograms, creativity, and edible brains.

Friday Links - 06-19-2010

Fordlandia, under heaven, best small company to work for, slow motion disasters, rent a white guy, Al Franken explains the value of the constitution, best illusion of the year, and a real time world cup tracker.

Friday Links - 04-30-2010

Facejobs, the quantified life, didgets and data platforms, thinking about tomorrow, zip files all the way down, the marshmallow challenge, and the show book of the world.

Friday Links - 04-16-10

The Girl with the Tattoo, the iPad Challenge, Ed Catmull and the Hybrid Problem Solver, Panorama, robodog and rosie, heat vision and jack, will it blend, an impressive portfolio, and shaking your way to literacy.

Friday Links - 03-26-2010

The Ideas Economy, have paper will prototype, a case for design literacy, Black Hills, the heatswell coffee cup, an indoor tornado, the arrow of time (teeth edition), Ms. Badu visits Dallas, insect bling, and data data everywhere.

Friday Links - 2-27-10

Vice guide to a strange land, Ninendo plays with dimensions, Tom Waits sings a song, digesting the web, charting the Beatles, cat food, mothership, and a glass harp virtuoso.

Friday Links - 02-19-10

Your man, massive attack, Pittsburgh winter sports, howtoons, the lady, and the reaper.

To iPad or not to iPad.

First thoughts about Apple’s new iPad in the context of the future.

Friday Links - 01-30-10

Our hero, how to report the news, soap box derby delight, a very personal annual report, the political power of visualizations, Lost is found, tape measure masters, and exit through the gift shop.

Friday Links - 01-22-10

The Swan Thieves, the great world, 360 video, inflatable hospitals, waiting for superman, privacy is dead (again), the questor tapes, and Justin lifts his voice in prayer.

Friday Links - 01-15-10

Rhiza Earth tours, TEDx, mini left overs, CES highlights, the lost supper, voiceband, and of course, Sneans (err, Jeakers?).

Festivus Links - 12-23-09

Festivus, chrome, doppelgangers for sale, photo-collage sculptures, holiday-based computing, your brain on checkers, the Copenhagen wheel, and a taste of a London that never was.

Friday Links - 12-11-09

Work is a game, zettabytes, art is a lie, living stories, the CO2 cube, LEGOS, Scott Kim, bioprinters, and an engine with a difference.

Why do we prototype?

Over the last several years, I’ve developed the mantra, “Just prototype it.” The experience of having to think through how things are built makes you ask all sorts of questions you never get around to in a design/brainstorming meeting. There are a few things to keep in mind before you begin though.

Friday Links - 11-20-09

Free, makers, networked car driving Elmos, a few bright spots in the healthcare morass, trillions, idle human initiatives, autocaptioning, Tim Burton, and a magic wand.

People, Technology, and Design. Originally published in Breaking Ground, July/August 2009

Although new technologies are leading to greater efficiencies in building design, we will succeed in building the future only by thoughtfully considering the intersection of people, technology, and design.

Friday Links - 11-06-09

A million miles, succeed once in a while, 99 red balloons, I miss Carl, how Facebook makes money, making healthcare better, beautiful newspapers could happen, and a simple idea for storytelling.

Friday Links - 10-30-09

Chronic City, Petman, flowcharting the Beatles, failing to learn, the perils of having feet of clay, the quality of light.

Friday Links - 10-16-09

A ship of gold, juliet naked, the meaning of night, caveman sci-fi, the theory of fun, Manhattan before all those pesky westerners, an amazing new (old) camera, a game for snoopers, and the botany of desire.

Friday Links - 10-02-09

A few book reviews to clear off my shelf, a classic segment (from this week’s news) of the daily show, tools for the mind, memristors, the power of time off, and a different way to draw borders on a map.

Friday Links - 09-27-09

Yes is more, random stats, tag, a little known band, a politician who can actually draw all the states from memory, a few nice moments, and a drill powered bike.

Friday Links - 09-04-09

The angel’s game, the book of space, remixing youtube, T-Pain or not T-Pain, projectopong, spike gets his interview, I always knew something was going on at IKEA, USB eye warmers, and a house made of legos. Who could ask for anything more?

Missing the Point in the Design of Electronic Medical Records

The push for Electronic Medical Records is all over the news, and has even been signed into policy by President Obama. But not everyone thinks they’re everything they could and should be. Dr. David Eibling and Dr. Augie Turano from the Pittsburgh VA hospital came to MAYA to talk about some of the shortcomings of the current systems, and the vast potential of future ones.

Friday Links - 08-28-09

Staring at goats, tracking the amazing and positive growth of health and prosperity in the world (really, Jeesh, lighten up!), tasting light, a human interface, grilling brats on your phone, the design of EMR systems (or lack thereof), a sustainable city of umbrellas, blinky things, and spots before our eyes.

Friday Links - 08-14-09

Short list this week, Bobby, Dean, George, Kanye, and Aldous.

Friday Links - 08-08-09

TEDGlobal, Manahatta, BIG,trompe l’oeil… but with light instead, Mr. Fox, touchable holographics, Zeitoun, iPhone robots, and how people really spend their time.

Friday Links - 06/27/09

Great documentary, patented shoes, living by the numbers, cooking with greenscreen, Low-poly fashion, the architecture of data farming, napping, and the Roots.

Friday Links - 06/12/09

How to win a cosmic war, the CIO 100, pop-psych persuasion, the appeal of aged news, teaching kids to argue, doctors focusing on patients, a little black hole, Banksy is back, Zaha takes on Burnham, and a taste of Tomato.

Friday Links - 6-06-09

Babies, learning design through reality TV, a new kind of controller, gestures, a better place, mapping the Internet by hand, the wisdom of the crowds in your head, asking nature, fun with liquid metals, google squared, a powerful story about human-centered design, and of course budgets are sexxy.

Learning Design through Reality TV

Putting my food-lust aside, Top Chef has quite a few “design lessons” hidden between the fancy presentation and obscure ingredients. It’s pretty clear that the “rules” that make a contestant successful on Top Chef are the same “rules” that apply to good design work. Sure, they’re working with food rather than technology, but the core ideas are the same.

Friday Links - 05/29/09

Rebranding USA, improve everywhere, an easy solution, avant gardeners, Guilloche patterns, and the swiss army camper of my dreams.

Friday Links - 05/22/09

Alpha, Data.gov, Imogene, brands that will disappear, the selected works of T.S. Spivet, working with your hands, push-button house, ancient artifact graffiti, calling cards and playing cards.

Friday Links - 05/01/09

Flutracker, information-centricity, a notebook, physics is the new black, the singularity, bendy things, and of course a slow motion piano crash.

Usability Rant: Why is it so hard to talk to users?

Practicing the principle of involving users in the design of a product is not that easy. There are pitfalls, roadblocks, political difficulties, and motivation issues. This rant is to convince you that the thousands of excuses I’ve heard for not including users in the design process are all bunk.

Information Centricity 101

Information-centric design places primacy on the information itself to support direct interaction between people and information.

Friday Links - 04/24/09

The wrong cloud, deathcasting for dollars, is America still innovative, Luigi Colani’s fever dreams, hairhats, gorrilla specs, and the rise of silly motoring.

The Wrong Cloud?

In our opinion cloud computing, as currently described, is not that far off from the sort of thinking that drove the economic downturn…

Friday Links - 03/27/09

Junior MAYAn Action League, where the wild things are, this little light of mine, balloonimals (or fun with the microphone on your iPhone), smoking hot electric cars, skateboard friendly housing, hot dog octopi, and of course robots that spit fire.

Friday Links - 03/20/09

A book about Dickens (ok sorta about Dickens), Dave Eggers co-writes a film, plants are good, I love motorcycles (though no I won’t drive one), holograms are bad, improv is everywhere, LEDs take the iPhone back in time, and a bit of fun with projectors.

Friday Links - 03/13/09

Mr. Stewart mixes it up, where did the money go, 6th sense, wind power, and a wrist computer for people with very big arms, and very keen eyesight.

Is usability obsolete? (Part II)

Usability is slowly being sidelined by three computing trends (outlined earlier), but our demise is being accelerated by three additional “human” trends.

Friday Links - 03/06/09

Who watches, how we decide, building a world, garbage bag monsters, robots and playbourers unite, and love will tear/keep us together/apart.

Friday Links - 02/20/09

Light week in linkland… What happens when you take out keyframes, tinkering is good, abandoned luxuries, and the second lives of things.

Usability Rant: Adding complexity when you should be taking it away

I wish I lived in a world where designers were forced to remove two features from a product for every one that’s added in. It’s so easy to campaign for the addition of a feature, but try suggesting removal some time and you’ll be beat down with a bazillion cries of “somebody might need that,” “but our competition has that,” and “that’s moving backwards.” Well, that’s hooey. Half the stuff I own would be easier to use if it wasn’t so, I dunno, b>laden with extraneous junk.

Getting to Know You

To design a usable, useful system, I need to get beyond the level of “information” and move up to the level of “knowledge and understanding.”

Friday Links - 02/13/09

Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Information Architecture but were afraid to ask, a kid approved storymaker, jetpacks available now (sorta), who watches the watchmen, and really nothing at all to worry about.

What is Information Architecture?

Two short films and a bit of a rant about Information Architecture.

Is usability obsolete? (Part I)

Current usability work is an artifact of an earlier computer ecosystem, out of step with contemporary realities.

Friday Links - 2/06/09

Slow week in link land. How the world will end, UAVs for all, buttons ATMs Legos robots, a fire on the mountain, and dying towns.

Friday Links - 12/30/09

Steeler baby, focused sound, chiabama, zooming is the new black, Rem Koolhaas comes to New York, and a nice clip about this generation.

Friday Links - 01/23/09

A new day, some nice pictures of the inauguration, beating plowshares into swords, understanding comics, the new lunar rover, and how the day sounds.

Friday Links - 01/16/09

How to make soda water, mind games, Burger King figures out a way to help you cull your “friends,” some strange maps, a little something musical, and a way to hack your brain without drugs.

"Predictably Irrational" - Something to Think About

Dear fellow Human Science types,
I read Predictably Irrational (Dan Ariely) while on vacation, and for
anyone who’s interested, I did a little write-up.

Friday Links - 01/02/09

Very light week in linkland. Core77’s best of the best, custom scooters, Zbig takes someone to school, digging into the wayback machine, self-balancing table, an art show in Miami, and a bit of Feynman.

Friday Links - 12/26/08

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the Harlem Children’s Zone, tunable glasses, scouting for cool locations, handmade fonts, music list for 2008, and something that clearly needs to be demodulated before appreciating it.

Friday Links - 12/20/08

Books for the holidays, the Onion’s version of the Geobrowser, Caractacus Potts, the fabled “Z” dimension, a year full of ideas, the sweet smell of a Whopper, Brian Eno makes an iPhone app to help you sleep, and of course the Evil Dead musical.

Friday Links - 12/12/08

The true cost of the twelve days of Christmas, 5 things that will change our lives, the problem with “Just in Time,” a true prince, radical knitting, brain pictures, and a flying nun chair… all while my ukulele gently weeps.

It Wasn't The Manifesto I Was Expecting

A short review of a book on Activity Centered Design, with a bit of a rant thrown in (sorry; couldn’t help myself), followed by a few quick pointers about good iterative design practice.

Friday Links - 12/05/08

Two book reviews, a musical instrument made out of the pictures you draw as you draw them, Elvis’ new spectacles, a little sugar, a mystery man, and some beautiful hype.

Friday Links - 11/28/08

Tutoring kids, white castles of joy, Bruce Lee, active video objects, diagrammatical excess, Lessig on Rose, and a story of rags to riches in Bollywood.

Friday Links - 11/21/08

Why super capacitors are better than batteries for some things (if you can afford them), a dancing moustache, Jeff Han’s conspiracy, James T is a teenage rebel, the Coen brothers tell stories, Proust was a Neuroscientist, and that is not Milwaukee.

A Little Ditty about "Innovation"

Dave Bishop attends The Technology Collaborative’s annual meeting last night where, amidst random hors d’oeuvres and other presentations, he heard Rob Daley from Thorley Industries speak on how his company does business.

Friday Links - 11/14/08

Minority reports, the muppets, your new girlfriend, new money, a book that shows you how to do everything, muybridge lives, Rod Serling we hardly new ye, and a collection of blackboard diagrams from mathematicians to musicians.

What is the value of steampunk?

Lately, we’ve all been privy to the reemergence of steampunk from the ashes of dormant retro-asethetics. Even The New York Times recently cited steampunk as a hot new trend. Before we rush to embrace a new wave of emerging art and culture though, we need to ask ourselves: what is the value of steampunk beyond another marketing tool?

Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh

Mick spoke to business school students about how the key principles of design thinking can be applied to business challenges, and how MAYA is using them not only to create more satisfying user experiences but also to drive change in traditional, product-centered organizations.

Friday Links - 10/24/08

A short film on the electoral process, x-rays from scotch tape, the secret behind helping kids excel in life, how much time it takes to be really good at something, and 10 bucks worth of sharpies.

Why Jeff's Head Works

Jeff has a wooden head. It sits behind his desk, and sometimes people talk to it.

Friday Links - 10/17/08 (ish)

Post-it cheat sheets, the remix economy, zapping zoom, boolean hyper-realism, bomb sniffing laundrymat, and a new way to sketch in 3-d.

Friday Links - 10/10/08

A visit to one of my favorite streets (don’t be afraid of all the words, they like you), shared paper, the financial crisis as told to a 14 year old, an amazing home library, and yes, finally, a vending machine for men (err women).

Friday Links - 10/03/08

Heavy week, light collection of links. Warren Buffett with some timely comments on the economy, architecture as special effect, a museum dashboard, a nice take away, and a quantum of solace.

Friday Links - 9/25/08

Fun with magnets, stunning photographs of books, curious experiments in pay for performance, cat 5 compliant wedding rings, and an inside look at the future? of magazines (and every other surface the geeks can get their hands on).

Confessions of a Sort of Luddite

I never thought I’d end up working at a company like MAYA— at least not for the nearly 16 years I’ve been here! It’s not that I have anything against MAYA. It’s a really cool place with really cool and smart people I like a lot. It’s just that in one way, I’m an anomaly.

Friday Links - 9/12/08

Being a bird, alive, silly, human, and potentially ground beef. Plus don’t miss a new form of text entry and tips for collecting humans.

Friday Links - 9/05/08

English language is a mess, trusting what we see, what it feels like to make code, pointillist telepresence, an operating system about nothing, and as we may (or may not have enough time to) think.

Friday Links - 8/29/08

Light leftly longingly lately lamentable links lie in wait…

MAYA Design Hires Education Director to Lead Venture Devoted to Fostering Design Literacy

MAYA Design, which has been developing a suite of design-education products and services, has named Chris Pacione, previously with BodyMedia, Inc., Director of Advanced Development, Education. Pacione will lead a venture devoted to the emerging need for design thinking in organizations.

Friday Links - 8/22/08

The National Attention Deficit, Summer Songs, a visit to the Uncanny Valley, Muons for Mayans, and the Last Supper.

Friday Links - 8/15/08

Watch a wonderful animation that brings John Lennon’s words to life, wonder at a new computing method that makes bad videos better (and reminds us why we can’t trust what we see anymore at all), and listen to the Irrepressibles haunting sounds… and of course the usual detritus of a week on the web.

Brainstorm devastates small community. Leaders weep.

Forecasters predicted last week that a Category 5 Brainstorm would sweep through the halls of a local community of business people just south of making their quarterly numbers. Unfortunately nobody heard the warnings and many were left unprepared for the tragic loss of useful thinking that resulted.

Friday Links - 8/08/08

The opening ceremony, Britain from above, David Bryne is in a valley of robots, Michel has a comic book, tracking the last hope, and EamesPunk finally has a manifesto.

We seem to be a verb.

R. Buckminster Fuller used to answer the question of what he was and did by saying “I am not a noun, I seem to be a verb.” Bucky was a Design Scientist (architect, engineer, inventor) who treated himself as an experiment to see how much one person could do in his lifetime on behalf of humanity.

Info-centric Imagery

A decade or two ago, the global marketplace to share ideas and opinions was the venerable Bulletin Boards and Newsgroups. The predominant mode for such sharing of diverse ideas was plain text. Fast forward to the 21st century.

Friday Links - 8/1/2008

A light week in linkland apparently the tubes are slowing down for the summer heat. Visit the Toaster Museum, learn about Dr. Horrible , and stare in wonder at the Super Collider…

Pervasive Computing - A Primer: Part 1

What’s in a name?

Ubiquitous computing, ubicomp, context aware computing, whatever you call it the basic idea is the same. Somehow we have to use the physical world to help “Tame” the complexity that is rapidly overwhelming us all.

Friday Links - 7/26/2008

A few links from our overseas trip, jetpacks?, Feist, and a snippet of Ms. Portman as an Octopus.

UX@UC: Laundry Charrette

Bill Lucas

MAYA Launches Rhiza Labs

The MAYA Group has launched Rhiza Labs, LLC, a software company that builds web-based applications to unify community information and improve decision- making in the public sector.

Video of Rhiza's Google Tech Talk Available

On April 15th, 2008 Rhiza Labs CEO, Josh Knauer and CTO, Mike Higgins along with conservation scientist Tosha Comendant presented an overview of the Databasin.org project and shared their insights on the challenges of how to create incentives for people to share public GIS data.

People Do Matter

People ask me why I’ve stayed at MAYA for almost 10 years and part of the reason is that we’re treated well. For instance, we had a woman at MAYA that, after giving birth to her first baby, wasn’t ready to come back to work and put her son in daycare after our six week paid leave (and yes, that’s for moms and dads!). We looked at the problem like any other that we’d work on for one of our clients – what creative solution could we come up with to get her back to work, give her some transition time with her son, keeping in mind that we had 4 more moms and dads that were expecting new babies over the next year? The Babies In The Workplace Policy was born (pun intended!).

The Vision of MAYA

When I joined MAYA in November of 1997, I was excited by the ideas of new challenges, working on all types of user interfaces. I had found myself in previous jobs building user interfaces (a voice response application, an interface to compile large mainframe applications and run regression tests). During my first week I had a meeting with Peter Lucas, one of the founders of MAYA, to gain some insight into what MAYA is and what they were doing with Visage and Interstacks. After a couple of hours of Pete diagramming things on a whiteboard, talking in what seemed like a foreign language (it sounded like English, but with a bunch of odd words like ‘uforms’, ‘repositories’, ‘transducers’, etc.) I went home that night and wondered if I was in over my head.

Ad-Hoc Usability Testing

We at MAYA have been interested for a while about the differences between usability tests where the tasks are well-defined beforehand and those that use a looser structure; where the user has greater autonomy to explore the interface or the product.

Observing the user while they’re allowed to explore a system on their own has merit — after all, they won’t have a usability test moderator telling them what task to do next when they’re using the system in earnest. On the other hand, if there’s no structure to the test, a participant may not encounter many areas of the user interface, or it may take more users to get complete coverage of a system.

Users, how they make my day!

As a Design Anthropologist there is nothing more rewarding and invigorating than getting to observe and/or engage users on a personal level. Don’t get me wrong, I love the design aspects of what I do; translating research into design decisions, innovation and ideation, designing and building concepts and prototypes, or exposing the underlying information architecture of complex systems. All of that design work is rewarding, but there is something that is so viscerally appealing about engaging real users. Sure, it’s not the same as being involved in protest marches that help overthrow a South American government, or skinny dipping in the Napo Valley River Basin, but damn, it can be just as exciting.