Laptops & Looms 2014, notes.

Here are the things I wrote down at Laptops & Looms 2 — direct quotes and indirect notes. Sadly, I missed the third day with no-doubt excellent thoughts and demos of things from Lou, Adrian, Tom A, other good brains:

Lars & Theo (Skrekkøgle):
– communicating finish
– international quality control
– changing scale from prototype to product: α to ß
– falling between hobby level and big industrial quantities

Mosse Sjaastad:
– “learning through the skin”
– change perception of 5 minutes; old and new understandings

Lars:
– “a cuckoo clock for short-term memory.”

Nick Hand:
– “when setting type, you think about it more”
– process of thinking – engaging with negative space
– PROCESS IS THINKING
– “A mobile career” – identifying skills through appearances

John Willshire:
– “Design for one problem”
– Pictures are a common language
– “Make with what is at hand” » design for necessity
– the making is the narrative is the product
– you can’t patent a story

Louise Downe:
– “the internet is regional”

Alice Bartlett:
– “it doesn’t mean anything if a computer can smell things.”

Henry Cooke:
– an interest in things that are replacing analog things
– ephemerality of timelines – breaking the loops of things; disappears into the ether
– JUDGES NOTABILITY and creates a memento
– LUMPY EVENTS
– Tying you to a time in a way that just scrolling doesn’t
– Vague enough to allow people to fill in the gaps

Brett MacFarlane:
– Fix the basics
– Lateralism / Diversity / Monoculture

George Oates:
– Cultural heritage design and service
– making archives more accessible » think about the archives first
– “How many things do you have?”
– EXPLICIT NOTES TO THE FUTURE
– metadata for the physical objects
– mindful of how you describe digital materials
– ADDITIONAL CONTEXTS and multiple voices

George also spoke about an exciting project that at the moment is her “tiny, tiny fantasy” and can’t be mentioned. 

The two days felt like we have started to pass through the retrospective fetishism of object/print for object/print sake. People are now creating/making webthings as a point of purpose because those things fulfil a need, rather than a want or empty shelf where the George Foreman grill once was. It may be that we are leaving the gimmicky web behind and maturing.  

There were other things said — that I didn’t write those down is no indication of how much I valued them — around flow, focus, purpose, service, respect, problems/solving, the network and conducting. Smarter people will elaborate on those, I hope.

Of course, the main part of the thing took place amongst the trams, cable cars, Swedish knives, the fish, the chips, the ice creams. Many ice creams. Thanks to all that came, and particularly Matt and Russell for wanting to make people leave London for some traditional shambles in the East Midlands. 

Service.

In terms of User Experience Design, the web can learn a lot from the restaurant world —

For me, service is how people look at you, talk to you, engage you as human beings. It’s not about how fast they pick up the crumbs on your table or even fill up your water glass.

Christian Puglisi (Relæ) in Cutting it Down to the Bone, Eater

Later, he talks about giving the right amount of information to diners, ensuring that each person’s need is appropriately met —

I don’t like the idea of waiters pulling off monologues, especially when the people might not understand or want to hear it. So, better to spend time with the person who really wants to know about the weird wine they are being served or something like that.

These seem like really obvious things — do what you should do, not what you can do; treat users like humans; give them the right amount of information for what they want — but they’re often the first failure points in any user experience.

Ugle: The Networked Owl.

Einar and Jørn from Voy have finally made a video to explain and demonstrate Ugle: the networked owl.

In their own words:

Ugle is a wooden owl that can be controlled over the internet with an iPhone application. It lets you send colour-messages from your phone to your home. When you change the position of the colors on the owl on the screen, the physical owl turns its head to the chosen color. It is a decorative personal message system where the household has to decide what the colours mean.

— Hoot hoot! A new Ugle film, Voy

I bring up Ugle quite a lot, in talks, in conversation, in day-to-day life. It’s the perfect example of the kind of products that people should be designing for the home — networked but not screaming network, undemanding, ambiently conveying meaning. The meaning is constructed between the people that use it, rather than being dictated by the object.

It is designed for natural tendencies, casual observation, rather than trying to create a new behaviour.

Too many products that come out of the Internet of Things end up putting utility above beauty, whereas it can be both. Ugle demonstrates that it’s possible to have a domestic, networked object that is functional and pleasing to look at (see also the Good Night Lamp by Alex D-S).

Ugle is calm, ambient, networked and beautiful, and that’s what our homes need.

Watch:

 

Lovely.

A visit to Preston Bus Station.

After visiting Northcote, I convinced the other half to go to Preston. Last time we took a detour home via a North West town, we ended up in the Magical Moomin Valley, so I have form in delivering quality experiences.

The reason I wanted to go was to see, first hand, the marvel that is Preston Bus Station and car park. Preston Bus Station is a Brutalist masterpiece, a structure built to last, to provide a public service through pure form and design.

Post Future-O-Matic.

A year ago, Russell posted his sketch for the Future-o-Matic Theory Maker.

Future-o-Matic; Russell Davies.

I think at the moment, there is little need for any column except the second one. I have noticed quite a lot of Peak Slow and Post Long recently. These are mostly as attempts to mediate content overload, such as the trend towards #longreads in blog posts and Russell’s own reshaping of Interesting this year.

Of course, the Big Dark is never far away.