The Office of Erik Dahl

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.

Continue reading…

U.S. Design Policy’s Necessity video

Dori Tunstall, organizer of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative, kicks off the viral video campaign by creating and uploading her video to the U.S. Design Policy Facebook and Youtube Groups.

Between now and April 15th, create and share your own U.S. Design Policy’s Necessity videos. You’ll have the opportunity to star in the Initiative’s Design CEO’s Design Policy Support video, which will be led by IDSA.

SIXEART

I am totally digging the work of Sixeart. I would love to buy a canvas and put it in the house. I like the multilayered circuits on top of the animals. Its definitely worth checking out.

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.

Dieter Rams Designs Revisited

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Dieter Rams and his designs as well as his design legacy and impact.

Dieter Rams’ 10 Design Commandments

1. Good Design is innovative
It does not copy existing product forms, nor does it produce any kind of novelty for the sake of it. The essence of innovation must be clearly seen in all functions of a product. The possibilities in this respect are by no means exhausted. Technological development keeps offering new chances for innovative solutions.

2. Good Design makes a product useful
A product is bought in order to be used. It must serve a defined purpose – in both primary and additional functions. The most important task of design is to optimise the utility of a product.

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The Eras of Corporate Research

Interesting little video about corporate research initiatives from the head of Nokia Research.

See video below. Continue reading…

“Do You Matter?” the book

While I was on the plane out to Scottsdale, AZ, I read “Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company” and recommend it..

Physical spaces and human behavior

I’m currently working on a paper/presentation that will be presented as part of a 1/2 day session I am helping run in March. The topics I’ll be covering is how physical spaces and environments impact human behavior and role appropriation. I’ll also be discussing the role of boundaries in creating and defining spaces as well as their impacts on human behavior.

I have my own ideas on how to put I’ll this together, but I’m interested if anyone out there has any ideas of their own that they would like to share. My ears are open.

Ideas? Anyone?

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

Whitney Hess has a good article going of 10 basic misconceptions people make about “user experience design,” which is a big part of what I do everyday at MAYA Design.

The 10 items are below, but read to full article for all the details.

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design:

1. …user interface design
2. …a step in the process
3. …about technology
4. …just about usability
5. …just about the user
6. …expensive
7. …easy
8. …the role of one person or department
9. …a single discipline
10. …a choice

read more…

[From 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design]

Objectified, a new documentary

A peek at the upcoming design documentary “Objectified”, by Gary Hustwit, the director of “Helvetica”. The trailer features the voices of Jonathan Ive, Andrew Blauvelt, Marc Newson, and Karim Rashid. The song is “I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool” by El Ten Eleven.

Objectified premieres at film festivals and events worldwide starting this March, more info here: http://www.objectifiedfilm.com

Uncork your potential

The annual DWR Champagne Chair Contest is back. Create an original miniature chair using only a Champagne bottle’s foil, label, cage and cork.

Maybe I’ll get around to submitting an entry this year.

get all the details at DWR…

Chairs will be judged by a panel of industry experts and the winning chairs will embark on a nation-wide tour. Plus, three winners will receive a Morgans Chair, from our partners at Emeco, the Pennsylvania-based furniture manufacturer. This chair, a DWR exclusive introduction, was designed by Andrée Putnam for the Morgans Hotel in New York. (The chair will be available in January.)

In the spirit of the Morgans Chair (which is made from 80% recycled materials), and in an effort to minimize the mountains of packaging waste that the contest has generated in the past, submissions must be made digitally. Submission deadline is 5pm (PT) on Friday, January 9, 2009, so start assembling your materials now. Cheers!

All entries must be received, via email, by 5pm (PT) on Friday, January 9, 2009.

Amazing photography by JJ Sulin

I came across JJ Sulin’s photography and was blown away. Brilliant. I love it. I love both his subjects and his aesthetic.

You have to go to his website and check out his portfolio. You won’t be let down. His portfolio contains such categories as People and Places, Portraits, Sittings, Rodeo, Stickney, IL, Assignments, Polaroids, Nebraska, and Happy Holidays.

I had a really difficult time picking a few photos to highlight, because there were so many amazing shots. Here are just a few samples.

Wireframing with Adobe Flash Catalyst

There are 1001 ways to wireframe experiences and applications, but it seems like Adobe is coming close to finishing their offering in the wireframe arena. Below is a video presentation from the MAX conference demoing the latest developments of using the new “Flash Catalyst” for interactive wireframing.

In terms of a launch date, he said they would like to have a public beta available in the first quarter of 2009, and the product will likely launch with the next release of Creative Suite.

Check out the video if you are interested in new approaches to wireframing:

You can also view a larger version at Adobe tv.

How to Make a Graph in Adobe Illustrator

Nathan over at Flowing Data has a great post about using Illustrator to make publication worthy graphs. Below is an introductory excerpt, but click through to Flowing Data to see the full article:

How to Make a Graph in Adobe Illustrator

Most of us create graphs with actual graphing software. Maybe it’s Microsoft Excel. Maybe it’s R. Whatever it is though it’s usually specialized for analysis. What if you want to make a graphic for a publication or a presentation that’s polished and fully customized? Adobe Illustrator gives you the control you need to do this. It’s not graphing software. It’s illustration software, but once you get the hang of things, Adobe Illustrator can be a valuable tool in your visualization arsenal.

In the rest of this post, I’ll go over the steps to make the above graph in Illustrator. I used the U.S. immigration data from our recent contest.

[From How to Make a Graph in Adobe Illustrator | FlowingData]

Innovation Ecology

Recently I’ve been thinking about how the environment or the structure of a space impacts the behavior of individuals within that space. Matthew Hurst has a nice little post about creating a space for innovation.

What is innovation? I’ve been chewing on that question for a while, and a recent post from Hal has finally nudged me to write something. Hal’s post, in summary, discusses the nature of ownership in progress and breakthroughs (that was my idea!). The reason that I care about innovation is that I really care about environments that are intentionally set up to deliver innovation. While we might often hear ‘I work in an innovation centre’, or something similar, does that really have any meaning?

At best, innovation is something that we (that is to say, users) recognize, and I think this is key to understanding the nature of innovation processes in the internet space. Innovation is not just the idea (ideas are free!), nor is the implementation (often the hardest part) sufficient – connection with the user and the recognition of the value by the user is key. Thus, I think the key elements to an innovation centre are (at least):

1. smart people: to generate ideas
2. engineering excellence: to implement the ideas
3. connection with users: the people that recognize ultimately determine the innovation

The last part is the hardest as it requires some sort of faith. The reason being that one has to find the right users, a tasks which requires an interesting mixture of skills, perseverance, tenacity and luck.

One can possibly generalize the three components above. So in the case of Hal’s discussion, the issue of how freely one publishes ones research results is part of the mechanism for connecting with users. You may have solved some important problem, but if no-one knows, then there is no impact. Of course, the reason this is more complex than Hal’s post describes is the economic system. Breakthroughs in Google or Microsoft are not socialized in the same way their academic cousins.

Looking back at the environments I’ve worked in, I’ve witnessed situations where we had plenty of 1 (lots of smart people) but the company failed, and situations where the users have been breaking down the doors while we’ve been scrambling to match the smarts with the solution that would satisfy them. In addition, there are plenty of cases where 1 and 2 are clearly not a problem, but where the current behaviour of the users (driven in part by the existing solution paradigms) presents a barrier to connection.

The 3 part innovation system works at many levels. For example, the academic innovation system feeds not only academia and the public good of science and knowledge in general, but also industrial systems. Industrial R&D labs themselves interface often with academia, but also produce internal innovations to product group customers and so on.

via: [data mining]

Future Present: alternative gift wrapping

London based agency Represent have challenged the design community to develop innovative and eco-friendly solutions to the problem of wasting wrapping paper with a project they are calling Future Present!

According to their website:

Every year in the UK we use more than 8,000 tonnes of wrapping paper for our Christmas presents, equivalent to 50,000 trees. And sticky tape, being non-biodegradable, prevents us from reusing those mountains of wrapping paper.

Now we’re challenging the design community to develop fresh and eco-friendly solutions to the problem, by designing sustainable and totally tape-free ways to wrap a Christmas gift.

The twenty best ideas will feature here on our website and also in our ‘advent’ window at Represent, with a different display daily throughout December.

You can see more images on their website.

I particularly like that plain paper wrapped in cord or rubber bands. I think it would be cool to use those think rubber bands that come around things like asparagus.

What are your wrapping strategies? Traditional or alternative?

How an Eames shell chair is made.

A very cool video about the production process of the iconic Eames shell chair.

I’m fascinated by videos like this. Its so interesting from both design and production perspectives.