I was just thinking that the netflix queue is a great design problem for any design class.
Queue management is fairly complex, especially in a two-person household like mine. For example, I went out of town. Suddenly philippe needed to get all "his" movies to the top of the queue. However, once I get back, we want to sprinkle a combination of his, mine and ours. We also go through moods-- comedies, classics, french. We also watch old series sometimes, like the avenger, and unlike other movies, it is *not* okay if the second disk comes before the first.
Really, once the queue grows to 200+ proportions, the problems are very different. You don't actually care if a movie is 57 or 62 in the queue-- what matters is "right now" and "someday" for a given film. How could this be handled?
Plus, as you can see here, the page gets very long. How can someone cognitively hold all that data in heir head well enough to manage it's organization?
In the montepmontre, at cafe sancerre.
Paris is a little different this trip; everyone has MP3 players rather than CD players on the metro, many very tiny. no ipod sightings.
Free wifi is newish (for me) and everyone has digital cameras, which was true last trip.
Ah yes, it's true, I'm off to France again. This time with my cousin, who is 20 and will be doign a semester abroad-- we're doing a two girl car trip around the Languedoc before she settles down in Paris. I guess the whole family are francophiles, though I'm the only one who married one.
I leave tomorrow, and return the 29th, and it is highly unlikely I will blog, though I will read email irregularly (if you want to reach me).
from AlterNet: Inside the Frame
"A frame is a conceptual structure of a certain form. Let me give you an example. Suppose I say the word "relief." The word "relief" has a conceptual frame associated with it. Here's the frame: In order to give someone relief, there has to be an affliction and an afflicted party – somebody who's harmed by this affliction – and a reliever, somebody who gives relief to the afflicted party or takes away the harm or pain. That reliever is a hero. And if someone tries to stop the person giving relief from doing so, they're a bad guy. They're a villain. They want to keep the affliction ongoing. So when you use only one word, "relief," all of that information is called up. That is a simple conceptual frame. "
-- George Lakoff
any one want to question the importance of selecting the right label now?
one more reason to go to france as often as humanly possible: from Critic's Notebook: An Epicure's 15-Course French Feast
"True to the Gallic film tradition, a handful of this year's movies portray French middle-class life (especially in Paris) as a movable feast in which good food, fine wine, elegant fashions, sexual sophistication and literary erudition together equal civility. Yes, American movies also celebrate living well, but they have a very different attitude toward the good life. Consumption, rather than being cozy and personal as it is in French movies, is usually conspicuous, often cold, and connected to status. In the imperial tradition it is more important to win the game of life than to enjoy it."
I have a little list of websites I dream about fixing. The top two are:
1. Netflix: Everything that is wrong with them is stuff I love and understand: their IA is horrible, and the interaction desing for the queue is a really attractive problem of scaling design.
2. Via Michelin: A wonderful print product that hasn't quite figured out the web. It could be the single resource for European travel.
Both are sites whose product I love, and whose problems seem more than skin deep: from a glance I'd say both are free from interface politics and have excellent visual desingers, and are missing the IA/ID understanding.
Wells Fargo just came off the list (it's gotten way better in the last few years), Travelocity is on the maybe pile (it does show signs of interface politics), almost all wine sites are definates ('cause the are both cute and broken and sell stuff I like), and as temptingly broken as the Sprint website is, I fear it. The interface politics look like chasms as big as the grand canyon.
What broken experience would you love to fix?
Today is one of those unbelievable days in Palo Alto where summer just shows up. Actually, it showed up about three days ago, but today it hit me. I worked from home today, and went for a small walk in the middle of the day. The air was hot and heavy with sun and honey-fragrance... the smell of every tree in the neighborhood bursting into flower.
I can only shudder at the architecture. I have proof that hell is other people-- who could possibly build low concrete groveling beasts like the retail shops that line el camino. Who could come to this place, of flowering trees and rolling hills and the promise of the ocean and the comfort of the bay and say, heck, good spot as any for concrete?
Despite the sins of the developer, my neighborhood is full of trees that mitigate the houses' hubris, and gardens that are tended enough to be full of life, ignored enough to feel human. One homeowner has decided to replace his lawn with daisies. Nearly every house has citrus-- oranges everywhere, grapefruits, lemons and tiny trees bent under giant pomelos.
So I'm at home, the garden is popping with daffodils, and I trying to force myself to work. to work! to --> work.
and I come across a reference to The Myth of Sisyphus. Mark is clearly struggling to find meaning in his existence from the myth, and Camus's reading of the myth is a tailor fit. But me, I begin to reread and find I'd forgotten that Sisyphus had left Hades (hell) to chastise his wife, and found life was just too lovely and refused to go back to hell. And that is why he got stuck with the rock-pushing gig.
"His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. "
He is the original slacker? The grasshopper! the one that refuses to do as he ought. He is the man who doesn't feel like working.
So how does he cheat Hades, and transcend his fate? By enjoying rock-pushing. "If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. " Work can suck, but it can give a joy also. No matter its nature.
So today work sucks, mostly because nature is doing a tapdance outside my window. But soon enough my mind will return to my labor and it is fine. It is my fate; I choose my labor, sometimes it doesn't compare to play, but sometimes it is better. It is always *my* labor, it is always my life and it is always mine to interpret and to be present in.
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy ."
Yahoo! News - Missing Actor Spalding Gray Found Dead brings me to tears.
If you haven't seen it, rent swimming to cambodia.
What a loss.
radio vox populi: live from the commons is notable both for its crisp infographic, tasty design, as well as the curious nature of the experiment it's running (aren't all web pages experiments, really...)
anyone enjoying it?
Why the heck is it so hard to archive mail. it's in everyone's interest-- since doing so encourages you to upgrade the computer or the software... why is it so hard?
from Risks of Quantitative Studies
"Number fetishism leads usability studies astray by focusing on statistical analyses that are often false, biased, misleading, or overly narrow. Better to emphasize insights and qualitative research. "
and in response, from Measuring Usability: The Risks of Discounted Qualitative Studies
"The discerning usability analyst should employ a mix of both qualitative and quantitative methods when discovering usability problems. The risks of relying heavily on a qualitative approach can lead to a severe misdiagnosis especially when usability problems are difficult to detect. "
I was able to register www.widgetopia.net. I feel cool about the .net, since so far it's me, manu and josh all doing widgetopia. and maybe more folks will join us. widgetopia's power will be, I think, in volume over time.
I also tripped over this useful collection while catching up on CHIWEB reading.
widgety!
from Life StyleMaven. Bring Your Target Market to Life
"A Mood board is an innovative and fun tool that translates market research data into a visual representation, providing a unified and inspirational kick-start for creative teams."