How big tech hijacked its sharpest, funniest critics - MIT Technology Review
How design fiction was co-opted. A piece by Tim Maughan with soundbites from Julian Bleecker, Anab Jain, and Scott Smith.
Link tags: products
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The Appification of Everything & Why it Needs to End
When your only tool seems like a smartphone, everything looks like an app.
Amber writes on Ev’s blog about products that deliberately choose to be dependent on smartphone connectivity:
We read service outage stories like these seemingly every week, and have become numb to the fundamental reality: The idea of placing the safety of yourself, your child, or another loved one in the hands of an app dependent on a server you cannot touch, control, or know the status of, is utterly unacceptable.
Exploring the Frontiers of Visual Identity… | Speculative Identities
Brand identity in sci-fi films, like Alien, Total Recall, Robocop, and Back To The Future.
This makes for a nice companion site to Sci-fi Interfaces.
The Bureau of Suspended Objects
200 discarded objects from a dump in San Francisco, meticulously catalogued, researched, and documented by Jenny Odell. The result is something more revealing than most pre-planned time capsule projects …although this project may be somewhat short-lived as it’s hosted on Tumblr.
WALL·E | Typeset In The Future
A deep dive into Pixar’s sci-fi masterpiece, featuring entertaining detours to communist propaganda and Disney theme parks.
Rams — Gary Hustwit
The newest Gary Hustwit film is a documentary about Dieter Rams, featuring plinkity music by Brian Eno.
Rams is a design documentary, but it’s also a rumination on consumerism, materialism, and sustainability.
Untold AI: The Untold | Sci-fi interfaces
Prompted by his time at Clearleft’s AI gathering in Juvet, Chris has been delving deep into the stories we tell about artificial intelligence …and what stories are missing.
And here we are at the eponymous answer to the question that I first asked at Juvet around 7 months ago: What stories aren’t we telling ourselves about AI?
Why strong sound design is critical to successful products - O’Reilly Media
From Designing Products with Sound by Amber Case and Aaron Day:
Sound eases cognitive burdens.
Sound is also a powerful brand differentiator.
Sound is emotional.
Finally, sound impacts productivity.
But also:
Not every product needs sound design.
The Future Mundane on Vimeo
Nick Foster has put the audio of his fantastic dConstruct talk together with his slides.
It’s a terrific, thought-provoking presentation, superbly delivered …and it even has some relevance to progressive enhancement! (you’ll know what I mean if you watch/listen to the whole thing)
Did Google Shutdown ___________ Yet?
A deathwatch for Google products.
See also Charles Arthur’s historical data on Google shutdowns.
The Virtual Haircut That Could Change the World | Design | WIRED
A nice profile of BERG’s Little Printer. That Matt Webb is a smart cookie. He is also a very thoughtful cookie.
Explorers of the combined territory.
Inspired by dConstruct, Ellen is going to start exploring the world of smart objects.
The Worst Things For Sale » The Internet’s most horrible items. A daily blog.
These are like chindogu, but they’re all available from Amazon with accompanying reviews.
Subtraction.com: Built to Not Last
A spot-on analysis by Khoi of the changing perception of the value in product design, as exemplified by Apple.
Design Firm Seeks to Humanize Technology - NYTimes.com
Those lovely BERG chaps profiled in the New York Times.
Russell M Davies: Make things, not media platforms (Wired UK)
A rallying cry from Russell, urging us not to rely too much on the intangible.
Ben Bashford - Notebook of Things - Emoticomp
How does an object’s character and/or behaviour tie in with communicating its purpose in life, how it looks and how it should be used?
The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine
A great article about the rising prevalence of "rough consensus and running code" in the real world.