designswarm thoughts

I’ve specifically _tried_ as much as I can to avoid the subject of women, gender equality and tech in this blog for years but this was an invitation I simply could not refuse. I’m also writing this down running out of time and needing to pack a suitcase, so this should be quick don’t worry.

Quote 1: “It’s just that until women have role models who are willing to risk incarceration to get ahead, they’ll miss out on channelling smaller amounts of self-promoting con artistry to get what they want, and if they can’t do that, they’ll get less of what they want than they want.”

Comment 1:
- Amelia Earhart
- Joan of Ark
- Suffragettes
- Benhazir Bhutto

also about the ones not dead:
- Anna Wintour
- Zaha Hadid
- Paola Antonielli
- Kathy Sierra
You get my drift.

Quote 2: “They are bad at behaving like self-promoting narcissists, anti-social obsessives, or pompous blowhards, even a little bit, even temporarily, even when it would be in their best interests to do so. Whatever bad things you can say about those behaviors, you can’t say they are underrepresented among people who have changed the world.”

Comment 2:
- Ghandi
- Nelson Mandela
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Oh, you meant white men I guess.

Quote 3: “What I do know is this: it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.”

Comment 3: I know _plenty_ of men in tech who would never dream of doing that and who sit there, not living up to their full potential. When talking about the elite, one must perhaps consider one’s expectations carefully. There is also a dramatic difference between the US attitude to performance and the rest of the world, perhaps why it hasn’t been blessed with the best of reputations. A loud obnoxious man (we’d say a wanker in England) is changing your country for the worse Clay, just now, probably because he is confident, louder and is lying about being able to do the job. Fabulous.

So with inflammatory rants, and I’ve been the first to start them in the past, I’ve learnt something important: more than anything else on the subject of women in tech, education, design, let us not wallow in the valley of despair. It’s completely unhelpful, makes people angry and gives out more bad vibes than not. As a woman in design and tech, let me grow in that field, make my own place and find my own voice. It won’t be a man’s, I assure you. It might take me time, but I’ll get there.

Received this in my inbox.

“As one of the most influential women in the Web 2.0 right now, it is my pleasure to invite you to participate to the Women’s Forum Global Meeting 2009″

What is wrong with this statement?

1. It sounds like spam. Influential according to who?

2. It’s impersonal, if anything I’ve co-founded a very non-web2.0 business.

3. Tickets are 2.5K

4. Any event named XX Forum will receive a polite “I’d rather be dead”

5. Any women-centric event is unrealistic in my field of work.

Someone please fix this.

Has anyone else noticed some creepy similarities between Windows and Leopard in those extremely annoying pop-ups asking something along the lines of:
“This application has been downloaded from the Internet, are you sure you want to open it?”

My answer to this is simple:
Yes, and before this, that was why I was using a Mac in the first place! Because it would trust my judgment as a user, to know what on earth I was doing. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have upgraded to Leopard in the first place, I would have gone back to my desktop Windows PC. And if this is a way to make it easier for Windows users to switch (because God knows they’re used to popups being part of their lives) then that’s just smoke and mirrors. Switching to Mac is a pain, it _will_ take months of adaptation, but it’s worth it.

Anyone who’s a die hard fan of Apple, stop reading now…

Gone? Ok.. here we go.

I walked into Matt’s office yesterday to be greeted by the giddy sound of “Oh hi, we’re following the Stevenote”. I tried not to roll my eyes but simply couldn’t help myself.

From 2001 – 2006 , if I only count the ipod, Apple has released some 17 different models of the damn thing. And this was still only to be able to listen to music alone, not counting the products of 2007 of which one of them will already be discontinued.

So I took some time to find out what they were doing about the environment. Most of it in reaction to the well advertised Greenpeace campaign obviously. Yes there’s something if you’re “lucky” enough to live in the US.

But that’s not the point now is it? How necessary is it to have such a high turnover of products that essentially bring the same value to the end user? At this point it’s not like Apple has to prove to people it’s a desirable company. Why can’t upgrades be available on the same product to transition from one set of functionality to the other? That would be clever product design. Is the amount of resources taken, energy spent, employees hired worth the production and environmental costs of sales of a product that will be discontinued 2 months after it’s been on the market?

In the mobile industry they call it feature-creep, i think Apple is now bringing this concept that to the next level: instead of providing all functionalities into one (such as the Jesus phone) it’s now creating a suite of products, each of which doesn’t quite offer all the functionalities of the other, thus inviting consumers to spend money on several of them.

I doubt that’s responsible product design and I will keep rolling my eyes.

Apple are “computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.”

Via The Guardian | Comment is free

As if my thesis needed more conceptual evidence of the fickle relationships we have with high tech devices, here’s the the seven stages of owning an iPod or rather being between iPods.

via Valleywag.

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!

Sigh. Ok so I’ve been thinking about the olden values we had when we were dealing with physical tokens to exchange music or the social and status-related social intricacies that musical taste can bridge and i find it hilarious to see this iPod bag that has a pair of embedded speakers on it. Its proving that although the medium of individual pieces of music has changed, nothing else has, our social needs remain the same and in a way, the iPod hasn’t changed much.

A screen and keyboard made out of wood!!!

“”People are tired of everything in plastic and want to return to the genuine. Some people would love to have something exclusive and stylish in the office.”

Ok so maybe the reasons that the company gives aren’t exactly convincing but i believe that the white box regime will soon be over mouhahahahha! : )

Via Core 77

I’ve always been an avid fan of bitching the iPod, as my thesis’s enemy and now they’ve given me new reasons… I think ill start an iPod rant category for this…

So they come out with the iPod HiFi which includes a “Universal dock” on which you plug your iPod and the added feature of a bloody remote control to control the whole thing. Hello world, here i come with product multiplication…

I would be very impressed if i just needed to walk into my apartment for the sound to transition from my earphones to the HI FI directly… where is my flying car???

Im so one step ahead… mouhahahah, still an interesting post on an Engaget post

“The bright pink silk tie has a hidden pocket on the back that’s the perfect size for an iPod nano, and includes an extra loop to keep headphone wires from getting tangled (though from Pink’s promo pic, right, it looks like the wires will get a bit jammed anyhow, since the headphone jack on the nano is on the bottom). We can’t help but worry that using this with anything heavier than a nano would result in a curious tightening around the throat — not to mention a rather unattractive stretching of our neckwear.”

My project’s enemy no 1 the iPod nano was hacked by the Technology review team at MIT.