designswarm thoughts

Fun fact: Wellington is the world’s most southern capital and the only capital in the “Roaring Forties” latitudes.

Oh my god, it really is the end of the world!

Right now, my experience of New Zealand limits itself to my 2 kiwi friends. I’ll be having a drink and cappucino with Dave this weekend though which will be nice, get the lowdown and local tour of the place. I’m thinking of going to the Te Papa museum in the meantime and see the Constable exhibit, although tickets are a woopping 12 dollars.

I am especially looking forward to see how Maori culture shapes the country. Coming from a canadian province which likes to be protective about its culture and language, boasting it’s uniqueness, will this be a sister country?

I will be presenting some thoughts about my theories about interaction and industrial design on friday, after I land on wednesday morning. So plenty of time to get over jet lag and go walk around, although it is the middle of winter for them at this moment. Hmm, where’s my canadian gear? crap, in a box in Milan, oh well.

I will try to drop by Singapore and have a look around downtown as they seem to have an efficient way of getting from downtown to the airport there and ill be there for 6 hours… oh god the pain… thank god I’m reading a good book and I’ve still got plenty to go through… 24 hours of flight more or less without waiting time… i lose a day… how weird… so anyway, i digress. I will buy a throwaway camera and report back with pictures that i will scan somehow… so watch out my Flickr stream next week!

Back on air on Monday the 14th! Wish me luck!

I wanna go!!!! hmm, maybe I can get a Paypal account and ask for my readers to donate some money for me to go ; ) or am i pushing my luck…hihihi

Cross Media Week.

I’ve been blogging for over a year now and i often wonder if perhaps i’m just talking to myself. I know of a few people who might be reading these rants of mine but I am unsure really of who my captive and wonderful audience might be… maybe you can post up a comment introducing yourself?

Maybe this will stop me ranting…maybe not. But that’s why you love me right? ; )

I really enjoy seeing projects that make a clever use of the natural ways in which people are used to products or their natural affordances.

This is definitely not one of these projects: the iBrella embeds iPod controls in the handle of an umbrella, making a person think about their music in such an impractical way. It’s raining outside, the very last thing i want is to think about water on a cable plugged into an iPod that is exposed to water first of all. Secondly, wildly shaking your umbrella in the air, somehow seems much less appealing an interaction than switching a button on, when wanting a random song to play. “- Are you ok sir? you’re shaking wildly! anything wrong? – Oh no it’s just my iPod…” ugh

Simple is difficult, yes i know, we can’t all be expected to come up with lovely, clever products, but we sure as hell should try!