The Office of Erik Dahl

Vote For Your Favorite Pale Ale

Awesome concept, but failure on execution and experience.

I bought a beer sampler today from Southern Tier Brewing Company. I’ve had their IPA before and enjoyed it, so I thought I would try the sampler. When I opened the box I found a flyer asking me to vote for my “Favorite Pale Ale.” My first thought was “oh, cool” but I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. I didn’t know if they were competing against other breweries (and were pandering for votes) or if it was an internal initiative to connect with their customers.

The url on the flyer pointed me to the Southern Tier Brewing Company website, so I figured it was an internal initiative, which got me excited. I think its great when companies reach out to their consumers for their opinion even if its just for a taste test. I looked up the website to see what was going on. Long story short: great idea with poor execution.

Let’s take a deeper look. Continue reading…

Please “Actuate Signal”

C’mon, really? Who wrote this? Who thought most people think about the sensor for traffic lights as “actuating signals?” Really?! This sign is at the exit of my office building, the Smith Bros. Hardware building in Columbus, OH. The sign is meant to tell drivers where to stop so the sensor is activated and the traffic light changes.

It blows me away every time I see it. It’s a constant reminder that bad design decisions are made all the time with everyday objects like this sign.

I originally thought this was a custom sign (made to look standard/official), but after a little search I found the Standard Sign Design Manual from the Ohio Department of Transportation, Office of Traffic Engineering. The image below is from the black and white regulatory series. Evidently, it is an Ohio specific sign type.

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Snowfall Preparation Norms

I’ve noticed recently that a handful of people raise their windshield wipers when we are expecting snow. Its pretty obvious what going on here: they are raising their wipers so they don’t get frozen to the windshield. This isn’t a shockingly new phenomenon, but I haven’t really seen it as a widespread behavior, and I’ve lived plenty of years north of the Mason-Dixon line. A simple action performed up front potentially saves alot of time and effort scraping off ice later on.

So, why don’t more people do this?

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Signage Obscura & Root Problems

Sometimes design solutions don’t address the root problem and subsequently cause problems of their own.

I had to use the toilet at the dentist office before my appointment the other day, and came across this obscured sign.

“Please do not flush paper towels”

The sign itself isn’t novel. It’s not like my dentist is the only one encountering this problem. What’s interesting here is the design problem. Not with the sign itself, and ultimately not with the obscuring of the sign. The question is why is the sign necessary in the first place, and secondarily why did the sign get obscured.

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Wrong Number (Text Version)

Do you know who these people are? I don’t. I received these photos in quick succession as a text (I’m assuming by mistake). Its the first time that I’ve received text messages sent to the wrong number. I guess its not to surprising, since people dial the wrong number all the time when dialing phone numbers for voice calls, so why should it be any different for text messages?

I sent them a reply message thanking them for their photos, and letting them know they sent them to the wrong number in case they wanted to try to send them again to the actual intended recipient. I haven’t heard back yet.

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Albums of 2009

Top 10 albums I purchased in 2009. They’re not all great, but I didn’t buy that much music this year. I’m still buying albums as opposed to individual songs. I have started buying more digital music as opposed to the physical cd’s. In terms of digital downloads, I’ve been getting most of my downloads from Amazon MP3 Downloads, as opposed to iTunes. As I was gathering images for this post, I noticed that all of the albums I purchased this year have a 4+ star rating out of 5 on Amazon.

The 2009 List, in no particular order:

Wilco, Wilco [The Album]

Slaid Cleaves, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away

Ryan Bingham, Roadhouse Sun

Regina Spektor, Far

Levon Helm, Electric Dirt

Iron And Wine, Around The Well

The Dixie Bee Liners, Susanville

The Dead Weather, Horehound

The Band Of Heathens, One Foot In The Ether

Nolan McKelvey, The Sound of the Crash

The Gourds, Haymaker!

The Tossers, On A Fine Spring Evening

Bob Dylan, Together Through Life

If you want to see all the album art and some additional commentary, please continue reading this post. Continue reading…

Subtle Branding

We got a few strings of LED Icicle Lights this year from Target to put up on the house, mostly to satisfy Cooper’s holiday spirit.

I noticed the other day that the LED lights display a signature light pattern that looks suspiciously close to the Target logo. I can’t believe that the similarity is simply an accident or coincidence.

What do you think?

Then We Got Help

My friend Jack turned me onto his sister’s new web video/tv series, Then We Got Help. The premise is that Emily, a underemployed shoe model who has nursed her sister through her third divorce decides to host a regular session for couples therapy without the therapist. The twist is that it’s filmed mockumentary style (e.g. The Office or Modern Family) from Emily’s POV. A description from the site explains in a little more detail:

Hi!  My name is Emily.  I am a shoe model living in New York City.  Oh, I’m also married.  That’s important.  Recenty, I nursed my sister through her third divorce.  It’s not what you think.  She’s not crazy, or a train wreck.  It’s just…when the going gets tough…she has no idea what to do.  And Michael (that’s my husband) was like “Why does she always have to come to us?  Why can’t she just go to therapy?”  Well, not everyone can afford therapy.  Right?  Especially these days.  So I decided to do something about it.

It’s pretty good. I enjoyed the first episode and I’m looking forward to seeing where it’s going to go. Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.

Continue reading…

Driving in Ohio

We’ve been living in Ohio for about 6 months now, and I’m still getting used to utter flatness and straightness of the roads. It makes getting around pretty easy, but not so interesting. Although it does give us a little more time to see upcoming sights such as the Field of Giant Concrete Corn in Dublin, OH or the Big Butter Jesus in Monroe, OH; two sites I’m looking forward to seeing in the near future.

the Field of Giant Concrete Corn in Dublin, OH

the Big Butter Jesus in Monroe, OH

Mini Shopping Carts

I just love the mini shopping carts they have for the kids at Trader Joes.

We were out-and-about last weekend, and stopped in at the Trader Joes in Columbus. Its not very close to our house, so I hadn’t been there before. Through observation and request, Cooper ended up with a mini shopping cart and he was in heaven. It was a great modeling opportunity. He was able to model the experience of shopping in the grocery store instead of just tagging along or causing problems out of boredom.

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Retro Napkin Holder

I’ve never really been one for picking up physical mementos of trips or adventures. That changed (at least once) this summer at a train festival we brought Cooper to in Findlay, OH. I picked up this vintage napkin holder for $5 from a guy selling antiques on the side. He was peddling mostly train memorabilia, but he also had a few other odds and ends.

We easily found some napkins that would fit, and it now resides on our kitchen table. Its a fun little piece that adds some color to the room, and there’s always a napkin ready when we need one.

Signs of Inappropriate Appropriation

In general, I’m a huge fan of recombination, bricolage, and getting inspiration from other designs and other domains. It can be a great way to reframe your problem or the design you are working on. By coming at the problem from a new perspective, you may be inspired to develop a novel solution, but sometimes its just not appropriate.

Often times the direct appropriation of a solution doesn’t work as well in a new domain. This crisis of mis-appropriation is compounded when the designer is borrowing a visual language or other superficial token of the design, as opposed to borrowing an underlying insight or concept. The situation is even worse when the visual language being appropriated is well established within the cultural psyche and can’t be easily separated from the original values and histories of the original object. Sometimes designers want to play with these cultural stories and purposefully invoke their meaning, but sometimes they just shouldn’t.

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The “Cadet Man” Adventure

It was a rainy weekend and I wanted to get both Cooper and myself out of the house for everyone’s sanity. I’ve always had a fascination with “Roadside Attractions,” so I did a quick Google search for ‘Pittsburgh Roadside Attractions’ and came up with a 35 foot tall cowboy holding a hamburger. Awesome! Let’s go!

I thought it was just going to be an adventure for Cooper and I, but Kelly and Ellery joined us for what turned out to be a driving, sighting, eating, and playground adventure. By the way, Ellery picked up two new nicknames today: Elle’s Bells and Beaner. (Can you figure out the provenance of each? One is decidedly easier than the other.)

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Pecha Kucha Night Presentation

I recently had the honor of presenting at Pittsburgh AIGA’s 2nd Pecha Kucha Night.

What’s Pecha Kucha? Basically, each presenter is given 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. The presentation is set to automatic, so the slides keep moving forward whether you are ready or not. That’s 6:40 to present an interesting idea and tell a compelling story.

It was great fun, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I presented an update to a side-project I have been working on just for the fun of it: my side view mirror project. Basically, I’ve been taking photographs of drivers through their side view mirrors during my daily commutes.

Check out the video below to experience it for yourself.

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Please remove our free publicity – MIT Press

UPDATE (03-24-09):

MIT has backed off their hard line and are allowing me to excerpt a subset of the lessons. I need to rework my article and republish the revision sometime in the near future.

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Today I received a letter (email) from Pamela Quick, MIT Press Permissions Coordinator regarding a few posts (now removed) referencing 101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL by Frederick. I thought it was a great book and had written a few posts excerpting some of the principles and describing how the architectural principles applied to interaction design and design research. Everything I had written had been in praise of the book, and the posts had actually driven several people to buy the book via Amazon.

Keep reading to see the letter for yourself. What would you have done? Continue reading…

Learning To Love You More

I came across the website Learning To Love You More by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. Miranda July wrote and directed the wonderfully brilliant movie Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005). Okay, back to the website, or project, because its much more than a website. Its simultaneously a communal art project and catalog of mundane, human everydayness. Brilliant. I love it. Continue reading…

LEGO is mapping experiences

Bruce Temkin from the Customer Experience Matters weblog digs up an interesting example of customer journey mapping from Lego. Its a nice example that emphasizes the need to design for the whole experience. The emphasis here is on the “make or break” moments as well as the places/moments where additional data/information may be necessary. There are alot of things that could be done to build on this, but its a nice start.

[ via: Customer Experience Matters ]

The Elements of Islay Bottles

I came across a post in my feedreader today from one of the non-english design blogs that I follow, Below the Clouds. I don’t read Swedish, but I was immediately struck by the beauty of the bottle design. At first I didn’t realize that these were whiskey bottles. The bottles are reminiscent of medical or scientific/laboratory bottles and the labels remind me of my high school chemistry class. The Lp1, Ar1, and Cl1 are great nods to the periodic table of elements.

I would consider buying these based solely on the packaging design. Brilliant.

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Microsoft, Glimpse into the future

Microsoft, Future Vision Montage:

Microsoft released a new video with their glimpse into the future (2019).  Even though the ideas aren’t jaw-dropping innovative or orthogonal to current trends, it’s always good to get a refresh on the future and how technology might change our behaviors. I think the most interesting aspects of the video are not the technology or the concepts, but how can be used to make connections or change our behavior.

You can explore more of their ideas at the Microsoft Office Labs.

Industry trends in prototyping

Dave Cronin of Cooper Design has a great white paper about current trends in prototyping. He covers the reasons to create prototypes along with discussing popular approaches, paper prototypes (and crude physical models), and clickable prototypes. Its a good article and you should check it out here.