Dori is swimming to raise money for Parkinsons with Team Fox.

I worked for the Swatch Group many many years ago. I was already a watch obsessive and I loved Swatch. I was quite the tragic.

So, it was sad to hear of the passing of Nicolas Hayek this week, credited with saving the entire Swiss watch industry. Luxury plays its role in creating desire, defining categories and setting fashion trends. It’s hard to imagine a luxury market without the watch category and without brands like Omega, Longines, Rado and Bregeut. Proving that the profit is at the lower end of the market these brands and many others were saved by a plastic watch.

Nicolas Hayek invented the Swatch concept to compete against inexpensive Japanese time pieces that were decimating the Swiss watch industy. It was genius product design. The mechanism was built into the plastic case making it super tough and mass producible. Seasonal ranges made the brand exciting, cute, fashionable, fun and sometimes even controversial. Swatch was a design triumph and celebrated designers and artists alike with special editions.

I think the brand plays it a bit safe these days, but in its day it was a revelation of product and graphic design.

Thank you Mr Hayek.

via creativereview.co.uk

Andreas Gursky has always had a macro view of the world. He seems to have gone omnipotent!

“The work apparently originates from Gursky being struck by the pictorial quality of the back-of-seat display as it showed the wide expanse of water that he was flying 35,000ft above (with the Horn of Africa to the far left of the screen, a tip of Australia to the right).”

Although Gursky uses digital means to create his images, no one is preoccupied by it. Maybe that because his images are always so beautiful, and meaningful enough that people aren’t distracted by any tricks. ‘”Gursky used high-definition satellite photographs which he augmented from various picture sources on the Internet,”… “The satellite photos are restricted however to exposures of sharply contoured land masses. Consequently the transitional zones between land and water – as well as the oceans themselves – had to be generated completely by artificial means.”‘

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/april/andeas-gursky-ocean-i-vi
http://spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/258@@viewqex2

Posted via web from everyday eri

Mathew Hodgson, an IA/UX type, writes and speaks about agile project management. I have never done an agile project, and this is not a piece about agile versus waterfall. What struck me to think about that article and Tamara’s story was a blog post and graphic that Mathew published a few weeks ago about careers and the Agile team.

In the team roles are categorised into groups, as being focussed on either:

• Process
• Output
• Analysis
• Build
• Customer, or the
• Client

The usual job titles can still be found in there, there’s an Information Architect, a DBA, a BA, a Developer an Interaction designer; but there is an emphasis on what people are doing, and what their preference is.

I wish I had thought about what job suited my personality when I was younger—I may have come to my career a lot sooner. I think this graphic would be a handy tool for any career advisor to show kids who are considering a job in IT, and especially for those who may not yet be considering the field, what they may be suited to and encourage them to think about what it is that they enjoy doing.

Posted via web from everyday eri

* Warning: this film review contains spoilers *

Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) is in the business of firing people. He travels the US first class, arrives at his destination to do what his clients are too scared to do themselves.

I couldn’t help but think of work as I watched this film. Not because people are being fired! But because the film is a great illustration of service design, and the pitfalls of an imperfect software implementation.

The opening of the film follows Ryan as he fast tracks airport check in with his first class frequent flyer VIP credentials. He receives personalised greetings and preferential treatment at every turn. Any interaction with the airport, airline, rental car service, hotel, is geared toward his status. Ryan is aware of the service he’s getting, he’s earned it,  it’s “the perfect experience”.

This is until a young go-getter, Natalie Keener, comes along and in an efficiency drive to cut costs and optimise the contract-for-fire business designs a system to take Ryan off the road.

The video conferencing set up is accompanied by a model that maps out the script for call centre operators to fire someone. The workflow includes what to do when the firee at the other end goes postal.

Can technology and a perfect workflow replace Ryan, and worse — stop his frequent flyer miles?

There are some great examples here for every experience  architect, and even a case study in why user centred design should be part of any software project.

Rating: 4 stars from me. 5 stars for EAs.

Related Links

Film review from a frequent flyer perspective. Hilarious.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2184-Frequent-Flyer-Examiner~y2009m12d4-Up-In-The-Air-with-George-Clooney-movie-review-by-a-frequent-flyer

Up in the Air Tweets. Great visualisation
http://www.upintheairtweets.com/

Up in the Air Official Website
http://www.theupintheairmovie.com

I just listened to episode one of The Flickerman on Radio National. It is the story of Cornelius Zane-Grey’s search for his missing girlfriend Lucinda. Someone is posting photos of her on Flickr!

This story is being played out on Flickr, Vimeo, on The Pool, in blogs, Google Maps, Facebook, there is even an iPhone app. All this social media may make you cringe except this paranoid mystery is just too good.

Listen in and help Cornelius find Lucinda by checking out http://www.theflickerman.com/. The links to the photos on Flickr are provided with each episode.

Click for full image.

Created by Online Education

“Town Square or playground of the keyboard warriors? Why does so much online interaction end up agressive, polarised and anything but enlightening?“

The panel was comprised of Andrew Bartlett — blogger and former leader of political party the Australian Democrats; George Megalogenis — journalist and blogger; and Laurel Papworth —  blogger,  speaker and social networking consultant.

Unfortunately, the panel did not really address the question posed to them about the lack of civility online. Instead they had an, albeit interesting discussion, about their own blogs and their strategies of moderating comments. They discussed policies of behaviour on their blogs such as codes of conduct and rules of engagement. Papworth and Megalogenis debated rating systems. Papworth advocated this gaming strategy as a tactic for the community to self monitor bad behaviour and Megalogenis critisised it for potentially hiding content.

Christy Lange, an art critic, addressed a similar question to the panel about the nature of discussion on blogs. In a contemplation on the difference between writing for print and writing for blogs (Critical Values, Frieze 22 April 2009) she  presented a dichotomy: irreverant and instantaneous blogs versus considered researched printed articles. Lange pointed to Snark: Its Mean, It’s Personal and its Ruining our Conversation (2008) by New Yorker film critic David Denby. Snark is his term for the blogger’s voice which he describes as an “evil brand of pure ridicule“. Denby is obviously not a fan.

So, back to the central question: “Why does so much online interaction end up agressive, polarised … ?”. Lange thinks that the “blogger’s snark is actually a reaction to the mediocre critisicm and affirmative spin that can dominate the printed press“. In other words – PR.  I think this is a good point that acounts for the motivation of some blog authors. Lange notes that blogging’s offhand subjectivity “prompts candid and sometimes emotional responses from readers“. So it seems that authors and commentors alike want to let it all out.

In the panel discussion Laurel raised the interesting point of online identity. She advocated the use of user profiles in (newspaper) blogs, suggesting commentor’s behaviour would improve if they were made accountable by being identifiable (i.e. all blog comments linking to a profile page for context). But I think that this is a strategy that looks at the problem, not why the problem exists.

I cannot help but think this behaviour arises because we are interacting with a machine. One day our virtual profile may be inseperable to our real life identity but I don’t think that all people have this relationship with the internet quite yet. Let’s not forget that the internet is a playground where people experiment with identity. People want to be beligerant, biggoted, uncensorered. Perhaps even more so in a civilised politically correct world. People are typing away at a desk behind a machine, by themselves despite the commuity listening on the other end.