15:
Recently I presented at the Wellington Web Meetup, a monthly user-group for local professional web creatives or front-end web devs. My presentation was on the VCD Process I use for design. I was interested in presenting the process I go through to allow others to share their techniques and experiences.
The presentation went through the stages involved in the process, finishing with explaining the benefit of a process to assist a design and sharing some of the places to draw upon inspiration. I’ve uploaded it onto Slideshare to allow others to engage in the discussion and share their places of inspiration.
Whilst the amount of places to gather inspiration from is constantly growing, we all have our favourite haunts we like to return too. Here are a few of mine…
FFFFOUND.com – an image bookmarking site where you navigate by clicking on images. A great method of stumbling across a great assortment of visual goodness!
But does it float? – draws on a wide range of fascinating sources too.
Are there any similar links others find they keep returning too?
22:
The current commercial model of “CD stores” are in my opinion dinosaurs yet to realise the meteor has landed.
I was reading the other day about “Sounds” closing after its parent company collapsed. “Sounds” was the biggest national chain of music stores in New Zealand. In the article on Stuff.co.nz the company blamed a weak retail market and illegal downloading of music on the internet.
“Auckland-based Real Groovy music store manager Chris Hart said competition from The Warehouse was “huge”, the discount chain selling CDs for about $22 when the full markup price for a music store was about $35”.
Looking at the Real Groovy website you’ll find prices up there on average between $27.95 – $34.95.
Stores like the online Apple itunes store allow you to buy albums digitally and download them onto your computer through itunes. Digital hard-drives are becoming the main transportation and storage device internationally and will continue to be so. Music CDs are now mere transport devices until the user uploads it onto their computer or digital mp3 player.
With the release of the “iPod touch” and the “iPhone” buying has now become mobilised with music available for purchase from the “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store”. Not that I’m condoning the coffee, but even at selected Starbucks stores if you like the song playing at the time you can purchase it instantly (can’t wait till Peoples Coffee and Mojo get this service ha! ). It is services like this which are showing the direction needed.
I feel the current packaging model is making it even more attractive to buy or “acquire” music online. If you are committed to persuading people to buy a “hard-copy” a far better “packaged experience” could be provided. Something unique, with time and passion invested is necessary. Rather than the cheap “cd booklet” with little quality material, a more thorough and informative book combined with the cd would provide both the digital music and the physical experience.
A local company which has been exploring this “packaging” technique is LOOP Recordings. They have released many multimedia boxed sets containing a CD, DVD and a book. One of the latest examples is “LOOP Select 008: RARE VISION”. It is a “A multimedia firecracker [box set] CD/DVD/Book” containing:
-13 tunes from Recloose, Adi Dick, The Black Seeds, P-Bass Expressway, Kraak & Smaak, Nickodemus etc.
-2 hrs of short films, documentaries, music videos & motion graphics
-20+ artist work showcased.
Check out the online booklet for a taste of this stunning package.
It retails at $44.95, just ten dollars more than the “standard” $34.95 for a regular CD. Currently on the smokecds site they have it at $32.95, a bargain for the content provided.
This is another great example of the possibilities available for music companies who open there eyes, evolve and embrace the exciting possibilities of the mobilised and musical web.
12:
I just finished watching the Bill Buxton presentation from the global Expression around the Clock seminars. It is part of the webcasts from the Microsoft launch of its Expression suite.
If you are going to watch any I would recommend this and also the one by August de los Reyes, as I touched on in an earlier post. It will be interesting to see how these talented individuals impact on future user experience led Microsoft products.
The title is “Design for the Wild: Sketching experiences”. Bill Buxton is a senior researcher in Microsoft Research. Here’s an article talking about his job further.
It’s well worth the watch as he delves into his experiences into the growing importance of Human-centric design over a flawed Techno-centric methodology. He discusses that whilst technically communication and learning tools have changed dramatically since the slate and blackboard, the core social and human interactive aspects have fundamentally stayed the same.
Looking into modern communication techniques and tools he explains how recent products have started to re-engage familiar habits people use to interact, and how technology is becoming more and more invisible.
Bill goes onto provide some recommended reading:
“Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communications system” by Ivan Sutherland
“Pygmalion: a creative programming environment” by David Confield Smith
“Designing for people” & “The measure of man” both by Henry Dreyfuss
He also has in own book available called “Sketching User Experiences“. Which even has a quote on the front-cover by Bill Gates for what it’s worth (which must be even harder “than getting Arrington to link your site” ha!)
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