designswarm thoughts

I’m about to go into hypertravel again but this time it’s a little different. Tuesday and Wednesday will be spent in Milan working with Massimo and greeting our second intern. Then I’m back in London for an evening before embarking on the spanking new Eurostar to Bruxelles (2hours 20 minutes…woah)

The event I was supposed to attend unfortunately got canceled so I will actually be somewhere I haven’t spent any time in, with the people I know being out of town… is that what real tourists do? I doubt it, they usually plan this ahead, it isn’t accidental.

So I’m left with an open day that I can fill up in whatever way I please, so if anyone has suggestions, do ping me! I’m thinking “moules frites”, having a look at cartoons and books, and walking around flickring, buying chocolate…

I’ve been heavily involved working with Blyk and tinker.it lately, so I could do with a day off in an unknown city.

On Friday, I’ll be having lunch with the nice people at 31 Volts in Utrecht… which reminds me I have to write something for their blog… argh.

via Dopplr Offsetr

I grew up all over the place (Paris, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Canada) and continued to relocate in my adult life (Italy, Holland, now UK) and many of my closest friends have had similar experiences. This got me thinking that the fashionable community of frequent travelers might not necessarily equate the community of frequent re-locators. From children of diplomats or bankers, to anyone who decides to relocate on a whim once they’ve become bored of a city (happens to me a lot), are there any new online or service interactions that can illustrate that granularity of personal experience or cater to those needs? Here are a few “weak signals” I like that could start some thoughts about this area:

We are multicolored is an interested exercise that allows you to draw your own flag based on different flags of countries that have had an impact on you.
I found however that I wanted to include and play around much more than 3 flags. “Where is your home” is question that has become much too broad. Where do you live now? Where have you lived? Where do you call home? are all questions that expand on this idea and could lead to interesting interfaces or visualisations.

What is the difference between relocating somewhere for a few months or a few years? My friend Hayat Benchenaa worked on a service design project for relocation and packing. There’s something interesting here about being able to recreate the idea of “home” quite quickly, before the container full of your belongings arrives. There is potential here in merging some of these ideas with the pre-furnished apartments people rent when staying somewhere for just a few months (very popular in Amsterdam).

Monocle could try catering to re-locators and giving deeper insight into some of the cities they cover instead of skimming through the globe over and over again (the latest one covers Milan in 3 different articles). They could also try catering to women in a different way, other than sticking in awkward fashion ads but that’s another story. There is a market for a magazine that gives insider’s knowledge not only on fashion and politics around the world but also on what makes every city special and different culturally. (Why, for eg. you shouldn’t order a cappucino after 11am in Milan, something re-locators want to know more than people dropping in for a few days of meetings)

Globalisation is a trading concept not a cultural one and there should be services, both online and offline that acknowledge this.

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The interesting thing about traveling and relocating several times in a lifetime lies in the particular nostalgia one has about those places.

In my case, Amsterdam was always about the biking. The wind (or more often than not rain) in your hair, the upright posture, the power (you will never get a car honking at you as there are more bikes than cars), the infinite ways to explore the city, the pride to ride an old and battered beautiful dutch bike that noone would ever want to steal, the sound of the lock as it clings and clangs against the frame, being able to bike back drunk from an event in town, the wind on your back on a downward slope.

In London, things aren’t quite the same for bikers. I look at them go from the second floor of a bus and it looks like an Olympic sport. Aggressive, fast, on gear-less sports bikes, wearing bike helmets (you’d be laughed at for doing that in Amsterdam) and sometimes face masks, it’s just not the same.

So when I left for Amsterdam last week, I had been thinking for months about how I missed my precious bike and how much I wanted to take it back with me to London. Of course it only occurred to me once I got there that it wasn’t the bike I missed, but the biking experience. Something 20 pounds on Easyjet would never get me.

So I came back empty-handed and a bit sad. This was a good reminder that although you can take your friends and your work wherever you go and that global nomadism is the epitome of cool among geeks, there is a vast array of things you will never be able to export out.

And that’s why most people aren’t global nomads. Some places just are too good to leave behind.

There are days when I find the internet boring. This is one of those days. Part dictionary, part soapbox, part best-way-to-not-get-work-done, part adress book, I’m simply not finding it inspiring right now.
I think I might have to leave it alone for a few days (oh how convenient, I’ll be going to Milan!) and come back to it later.

Found in the Hackney Freecycle mailing list:

“Offered: wedding dress size 10/12 with veil. N16 pick up”

Ok so we all agree that the planet is in trouble right? Regardless of whether that’s our fault or the neighbors right? Right.

So why on earth have we decided to allow for one of the most polluting industry to take off and become commercially available? Are we that suicidal?

So let’s have a look at the possible sources of pollution of a space shuttle, just for shits and giggles…

1. Energy consumed in the launch (from Madsci Network):

“Space shuttle fuel consumed in a launch: 3.5 million pounds
Gasoline consumed in one day in the US - 2,500 million pounds
In other words, one space shuttle launch is equivalent to about two minutes
of gasoline consumption in the United States.”

2. Hydrochloric acid production (from BBC):

“All shuttle launches can nonetheless have damaging impacts on the local environment. […] “The classic example of environmental impact is in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur launch site, where there are reports of quite serious environmental damage.”

For most shuttles, the damage comes from the solid rocket boosters[…]
As a shuttle launches, a “cloud” becomes visible which contains SRB exhaust products, either dissolved or as particles in the water vapour released by the main engines.

Hydrochloric acid formed in this launch cloud leads to acidic deposits in the surrounding area, a phenomenon which may also be observed some distance away if exhausts are carried on prevailing winds.

The scenes of dead fish in Spain could be repeated next to launch sites
John Pike, president of Global Security.org, and an expert on the US space programme says: “The hydrochloric acid can pit the paint on your car if it is too close to the launch site.”

3. Everything else (from a 1997 report on General space tourism):

“A myriad of legal and regulatory aspects of public space travel and tourism must be resolved before viable large scale businesses can emerge. This is especially true of those public agencies with the responsibility to regulate in the interest of public safety. This includes identification of public policies and/or laws that exist or must be enacted to enable business formation, licensing, certification and approval processes for both passengers and vehicles, clearance and over-flight considerations, and environmental and safety issues including atmospheric pollution, solar radiation (flares) and orbital debris.”

I certainly hope that these issues have been dealt with because the “design coating” that’s happening around this industry these days is making me sick.

Brilliant. Spam I can’t understand. I love the occasional english bit “Buy strong”!
(Thought it was dutch, turned out to be German, thanks Robert!)

“Meine Damen und Herren
hier eine Information, die Sie nicht missachten sollten. Dieses voellig unbeachtete Filmunternehmen hat momentan eine Bewertung von lediglich 400.000 ˆ. Am 19.05.2007 strahlte ARTE die Dokumentation „Hannibal ueber die Alpen aus“. Kronos erziehlt Gewinn an den heraus resultierenden Erloesen in einem Umfang, der weit ueber der gegenwaertigen Kapitalisierung liegt. Marktgeruechte besagen, dass ein renomierter Sender kurz vor der Vergabe von Auftraegen fuer eine komplette Serie von Dokumentationen in 6 Teilen steht.

Investment Recommendation: Strong` Buy! STRONG` BUY!!!

Disclaimer: Diese Anlageempfehlung wurde vom Versender auf der Grundlage oeffentlich zugaenglichen Informationen erstellt. Der Versender hat keine Aktien des empfohlenen Unternehmens. Der Versender erhaelt eine marktuebliche Kommission.”

Although this might seem trivial, I find this really interesting. This video, promoting a dutch language school by “teaching” the audience swear words, actually doesn’t touch upon what’s so unique about them in the first place: references to diseases. Because of their long history of self-preservation and survival, the worst thing to say to someone at the time was to wish them cancer or syphilis.

This dilution of their own cultural uniqueness to cater to an international audience is really fascinating. Afraid of being misunderstood, they would rather revert to teaching how to say “asshole” then “may you be struck with gangrene”.

Language separated from culture.

A small child walks out of the front door of a big house in a quiet suburban area of Montreal.
I walk by.

Child - Madame!
Me - Oui?
Child - Je t’aime!

Spending time in New York is always a story of compromises. I planned to go to the MoMa but didn’t get a chance to. Nice people were in town but triangulating was a nightmare. I think it has something to do with the scale and the spread of urban life there. In some cities, you clearly have a “downtown” area where you’ll eventually bump into people (Milan is a good example) but in New York, you can go from one end to the other really quickly and there are interesting things to do and visit at pretty much at every corner. Making plans with other people becomes an odessey.

So the trip consisted of hanging out in the West Village, getting great coffee at Jack’s Stir Brew, eating at some nice vegetarian restaurants that Daverecommended, going to see Design Life Now at the Copper Hewitt Museum, breifly dropping by the venue for Postopolis and getting my new favorite ice-cream in America: Green tea Pinkberry topped with coconut flakes.

In any travel plans however there’s also a little bit of work involved and so Matt and I went to see Designing Audiences an AIGA talk at the beautiful Fashion Institute of Technology.

The panel was lead by the infamous Ze Frank with guests graphic designer Stefan Bucher, game designer Katie Salen, and head of Stamen design, Eric Rodenbeck.

They each made a short presentation of their work, Stefan with his daily monsters, Katie with her Ice Karaoke project and Eric with the work that Stamen does (presenting Trulia Hindsight for the first time).

Each spoke about their relationship to audiences both offline and online and I must say I was at first skeptical about this wide array of experiences in drawing a set of conclusions but 2 themes seemed to emerge from the conversation nonetheless:

1. Setting rules is key: Not unlike a school teacher, the designers, apart from Eric perhaps, all spoke of the need to set rules to grow a good community. If you left things too open, people would start wandering away from the “goal” of the community and produce what Ze referred to as “crapucopia”. This is a social phenomenon that teachers, babysitters and mothers all know too well. Makes me wonder if these designers haven’t all turned to become design teachers handing out briefs. The tighter the restrictions, the more creative you are forced to become in order to impress your peers and win the love of the teacher. Is this web2.0 all just an extension of school then? Strange notion worth exploring. In a way this has nothing to do per se with designing a community but more to do with maintaining one and maintaining the conditions that will make every participant feel special and look great by rewarding even their most meager attempts, and keep them interested in contributing. Seen under such a light, “web2.0″ seems almost a maternal activity, closer to real life than a truly unique “internet phenomenon”.

2. Platform makers: I asked them during the Q&A whether they thought that designers would become simply platform makers and their value would come from how great a platform they would create for people’s enjoyment. This is a question that I myself struggle with as a designer in an age that pushes us to think more and more about services and less about “stuff” more particularly in product design. The answers they provided pointed to a balance between these 2 roles for the future designers. Yes we will be building more platforms but the content creation will still be important to launch that community and gather people’s reactions around an initial body of work.

It seems almost impossible to think that most designers will not be following this trend even if it means more maternal maintenance work and less ego-driven creation.

Ok so yes, I admit it’s time. I’ve been cruising around Europe for long enough without proper paperwork, so it’s time for a trip to the Motherland Montréal. I’ll spend some time practicing my dying québecois skills, drinking some sangria with long lost friends who think i’ve abandoned them, and do the best shopping in the world with loved ones…

Yes i’ll be on GMT -6h for the whole of June, so expect blogging at odd hours if you’re reading me from Europe :)

Before that, I’ll be dropping by the Big Apple to attend Fresh Dialogue 23: Designing Audiences, an AIGA event, go seePostopolis with Miss Steenson and generally hang out and test out the vegetarian restaurant scene with Matt.

America, here I come!

I’m in a non-descript hotel in Amsterdam, a place I called my home for 8 months. Now I stay in hotels here.

There’s something terribly disturbing about traveling to 4 different cities in the same week especially when you’ve lived significant amounts of time in some and no time at all in others. You brush by the old memories as you create new ones. Memory full as the new McCartney song goes.

I just finished Biographie de la faim from my favorite french author Amélie Nothomb. She writes about her experiences of having moved quite often as a child, something I lived myself, oscillating between Paris, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Canada, and the identity crisis that can accompany these journeys. In particular this quote struck me:

“C’est peut-etre cela, etre de quelque part: ne pas voir de quoi il s’agit.”

It’s almost impossible to translate but it goes something like this: “Maybe that’s what being from a place means: not getting it”.

… when I travel

Via Someecards.

I’m sitting in Berlin in a great café with a bear on the logo, on my way to Paris, not ready at all for my talk tomorrow, but have been terribly impressed by what I saw at the Designmai event. More on that later I promise.

I was also part of a panel, invited by my friend Goerg Bertsch, and lead by Mel Byars about “what do people hate about the world of design” with fellow panelists Sophie Lovell, German editor of Wallpaper* and V. Ragunath, architect and photographer.

Strange to find myself surrounded by people from my former life in industrial design as we found ourselves talking about design, designer/client relationships, how can the internet help designers, and the lack of theory in design to make for good critiques (in a more evolved way than “i publish what i like”) but not at all about what we hated about design and what can be improved. Too bad, that conversation needs to happen and be seriously directed and orchestrated.

Strange also because i now find myself talking in between 2 roles, too advanced in my understanding of the web and it’s dynamics for most product designers, not enough for most geeks. At least I understand them both and in Paris tomorrow I’ll try to talk to the geeks about why they should be talking to industrial designers. Maybe one day i’ll be invited to talk to designers about why they should care about what the hackers do with their soldering irons in their kitchens.