Monday 9 March 2009
Tuesday 3 March 2009
Twitter tweeple tweet
Seems like everything I hear, read and see now is connected to Twitter. So I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and post my tuppence worth.
It was inspired by The Art of the Tweet and the mixed reactions to that blog posting. Rands describes his seeminlgy painstaking thought process that accompanies each of his tweets. Initial drafts get written on a 'canvas' (not quite a physical painting canvas but not your bog-standard web twitter interface, or any of the multitude of twitter apps). Each tweet is then crafted and edited down into a succinct form as possible.
I was going to say as clear a form as possible, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Reading some of the comments to his post seems to echo my feelings. By stripping away too much of the descriptive text you run the risk of stripping out all context.
Final thought, Ernest Hemingway's short story of 6 words:
It was inspired by The Art of the Tweet and the mixed reactions to that blog posting. Rands describes his seeminlgy painstaking thought process that accompanies each of his tweets. Initial drafts get written on a 'canvas' (not quite a physical painting canvas but not your bog-standard web twitter interface, or any of the multitude of twitter apps). Each tweet is then crafted and edited down into a succinct form as possible.
I was going to say as clear a form as possible, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Reading some of the comments to his post seems to echo my feelings. By stripping away too much of the descriptive text you run the risk of stripping out all context.
Human communication is all about social context and awareness. Striving for elegance and brevity is admirable but if a story can't be adequated told in 6 words, then consider adding a few more.BEFORE: If it’s 4am, I know how stressed I am.
AFTER: Stress is how well I know 4am.
Final thought, Ernest Hemingway's short story of 6 words:
For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn
Sunday 1 March 2009
Nice video from Microsoft
Just been reading Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences, and then came across this blog on TechCast Network with a video showing Microsoft's future concepts.
It's a perfect example of how sketching or Wizard of Oz style experiences can extend to polished videos as well as more traditional paper prototypes.
Re the future vision though, I can't quite tell if I'm excited or scared. Microsoft's video seems to epitomise ubiquity - the 'screens' are everywhere. (And I want to try them out!)
So on the one hand, fantastic! You need never be out of reach or be unable to identify a plant. But yet everything seems technologically mediated and all the interfaces look the same. Obviously it's just a vision and no doubt future technology will not resemble the video in many ways, yet it seems another step towards homogeneity.
Perhaps more attention needs to be spent on devices such as LadyAda's Design Noir prototypes...
It's a perfect example of how sketching or Wizard of Oz style experiences can extend to polished videos as well as more traditional paper prototypes.
Re the future vision though, I can't quite tell if I'm excited or scared. Microsoft's video seems to epitomise ubiquity - the 'screens' are everywhere. (And I want to try them out!)
So on the one hand, fantastic! You need never be out of reach or be unable to identify a plant. But yet everything seems technologically mediated and all the interfaces look the same. Obviously it's just a vision and no doubt future technology will not resemble the video in many ways, yet it seems another step towards homogeneity.
Perhaps more attention needs to be spent on devices such as LadyAda's Design Noir prototypes...
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