It's funny how technology changes you in small and unexpected ways. The integration of a camera into my Treo has caused me to change how i communicate.
Like any good wife, I always call my husband upon arriving in a destination (as does he) but how much better is it to grab a snap as one rides in a taxi to one's hotel?
He can also get a feel for where I am, I feel like he's arrived with me.
He's also with me via the Treo during amazing moments.
Standing at the foot of the capitol on a rainy day, my breath was knocked out of me as the clouds parted and the sun lit up the Lincoln memorial.
Snap, share and Philippe messages back-- "wow".
I got to share my wow with him.
I can preview Asilomar to my friends who will be attending the retreat.
Victor and I traded images of our respective states on Sunday when I was at the beach, and he in the heart of NYC.
It's a richer conversation, a better one.
And I can tease my dad about cool old cars I've seen. Or ask my sister advice about my outfit or send her a photo of a pair of cool shoes. Or ask my husband if he likes a shirt I see on sale.
I thought the camera in the phone was bullsh*t, useless and gadgetry, but every the simple camera in the Treo, which is far form the best one could hope for, is enough to do the one thing I need and appreciate.
it makes my conversations better.
And here we see the new Boxes and Arrows DC headquarters (I wish!)
this fellow keeps it all in perspective for us. (spotted in monterey, where jobs are hard to come by, I hear...)
In DC, I stayed at the Hotel Monaco. The stodgy exterior belies a hip interior. It's another of the new style of boutique hotels, complete with quirky offerings such as a goldfish brought to your room upon request and leopard-spotted terry-cloth robes.
It was this quirkiness that got them into trouble-- I was happy to see they offered a complimentary yoga basket, with mat, strap and block, since I'd forgotten to pack my mat. But when they were out all three days, I was more upset than if they had never offered it. I suspect if they had simply pulled the yoga table-tents when they ran out of baskets, they might have had fewer cranky guests. After all, if you don't expect it, you can't feel badly not to have it.
on the plus side
on the negative side it's funny-- I'm not sure it was a particularly worse experience than the Hotel Lucia: jazz on the radio, comfy bed, good TV, cool old building. Yet I left not-delighted. I guess it's the old saw-- always underpromise and overdeliver.
Thanks to Adam, I'm able to gaze upon the work of Baader-Meinhof: Gerhard Richter again. It came to sfMOMA at one point, and it is one of the two times I've cried in a museum. I doubt the website will bring tears to your eyes, but it will have to stand in for the power of being in a room with these works.
or are you just happy to see me?
Google's logo today is a bit... hmmm... suggestive.
From the Hitler family tree to the Bush dynasty (no, I don't mean anything by that) from the war of the roses to wallstreet scandels, there is something for everyone at threetwoone.org's diagramming mecca!
If you wondering why no posts, neither here nor widgetopia, well the summer doldrums have hit me hard. Palo Alto is hot and still. Even the neighbor kids disappear utterly in the midday sun. And maybe I've become french enough that I don't consider August a month to do anything.
So I offer a quiet indoor airconditioned game of Buzzword Hangman
"Yes, the giddily morbid game that you so loved as a child has been repurposed, reengineered, and mega-re-paradigmed to also serve as a loopy learning tool to help you catch up with the latest buzzwords being slung everywhere from San Francisco's funky SOMA district to the hallowed halls at bigbrain conferences at places like Davos, Switzerland."
The Library of Unwritten Books is "an art project travelling the UK, ... collecting stories and ideas for books people would like to write - but never have, and probably never will."
In Full Disclosure, a review of The Jewish Museum Berlin, the reviewer asks,
“What role does design play in the illumination of a history many might prefer to ignore? To what extent can or should it deliver painful or damning information without making the experience glamorous? How might it render such a break with civilization, making it both believable and memorable?"
When I first read those questions, I thought, “Design can do that!.” But then, as the review progresses, I wonder if design is up to it:
"How to explain the myriad oddities of the JMB exhibition—the digital pomegranates, kosher gummy bears, synagogue building blocks, and nap corners; two hundred young “hosts” deployed to usher visitors through the building and the insistent labeling that “explains” the architect’s intentions to the presumed confused (the voids are, for example, “Architect Libeskind’s way of recognizing that the destruction of European Jews in the Holocaust has caused an absence, or void, in German and European society”); the unseemly detours into irrelevant political correctness, like the tree to which you are meant to attach your answer to the question “What do equal rights mean to you?”
And in this moment, I can see the designers sitting around excited yet daunted by their chore: how do you get people to feel the way you want them too, how do you get them to actively participate in a space devoted to one of the worst crimes in history? Maybe the designers should have asked if visitors would be up to actively participating in such a creation (I have a feeling a tree on equal rights wasn’t the way….)
I can remember a moment where the world spit into two for me; the created world and the born world. I was 18 and on a tour of the Kansas City Art Institute, and we entered the design building. In the hall was an exhibit of student work-- the usual, toasters, silverware, books, etc. Upon seeing these mundane objects I suddenly realized that everything around me had a human being behind it. Not just the student-built toaster, but the case that held it, the wall that held the case, the linoleum under my feet the shoes on my feet my jeans, the cat-eye glasses on the woman explaining why the school was a good investment, the brochure in her hands, everything. Everything until my eyes fell on the trees outside the window.
And even though I choose fine art (perhaps partially because of the strange repulsion of that moment where my world felt horribly wrongly artificial) I never lost that consciousness. I never lost the awareness that not only was everything man made, but that someone sat down and puzzled over how it was made. Some designers talked to users, some did not, some sketched, some imagined, some copied, some innovated but there was always a human just like me deciding.
And now, after some years as a designer, I feel vaguely embarrassed when I see something and feel the designer's struggle. A good design feels much like a tree. You forget that a designer was there, and you don't consider it any more or less than a landscape-- it's beautiful or it's ugly-- but not "What were they thinking?" It’s much easier to be in the world when you don't feel reminded about someone's sweat, worries, late night and struggles. Better to enjoy the apparent effortlessness of Google without knowing there are five people on the first result team.
So as design and designers take on work that touches our humanity, be it museums to the holocaust or designing the ground zero site, I think perhaps we need to shake off the feeling that we are “doing important work” because that makes us self-conscious and awkward. All acts of designing the world are important, and need to be approached with the same attention. Having gained awareness of the designed world, we have to protect others from that upsetting sensation. We should remember the real design work is done internally by the visitor to the museum, or the user of a website, and our job is simply to give them a decent place to have that experience. Our designs are enabling, not dictating.
If you put a fork in your mouth and you are conscious of it rather than the food it carries, it is a bad design.
At the Hotel Lucia, one can order a pillow to one's liking. Let me repeat you can order your favorite kind of pillow!
After shower quality, I think a bad pillow is what makes me saddest as a hotel guest. Oh, and bad sheets. and crappy mattress. and not enough blankets. and no clock. and old air conditioners and... hmm. A lot can go wrong in a hotel. Bad wall art is low on the list for me, after many creature comforts including a decent pillow. But having a pillow I'd like was one of the things I had given up on (I like very flat pillows). Imagine my delight when I saw the sign.
I'm happy to say that the Hotel Lucia offered
But moreover, it's a good example of ways you can find to delight people, if you just question every single aspect of the experience...