Month: September 2008

Categories
CraftingWithData

Damned Lies

Darrell Huff’s illustrated booklet is an oldie, but definitely a worthwhile read for anyone, especially since we’re living in the age of information. The text is comical, yet presents serious advice on having a critical eye towards the info we read and see. While each chapter runs through examples to reveal numerous points, including the importance of the different versions of the term average (mean, media, mode), sample size and quality, visual tricks, etc., the final chapter ties his message together with five basic questions to ask oneself: Who says so? How does he know? What’s missing? Did somebody change the subject? Does it make sense? What’s truly unsettling is that Huff has led me to a recent study done at Princeton University, and the average American watches 25.8 hours of television per week, and only 35.4% of what is aired on news channels is true.

How To Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff [ $ ]


Categories
DesignForEmergingPlatforms

Brief Review: Musicovery

musicovery.gif

Musicovery is a site that empowers visitors with a remote and visual map to discover music. It first attracted my attention because it offers listeners the ability to select music partially by mood, which is related to Team Carmelo’s initial concept. Beyond this, visitors have control over song popularity/personal favorites, decade, and genre. The layout of the remote feels effective. The use of check boxes for genre selection is a good choice as well. What seems most appealing is that the map responds instantly to the preferences, and there is no real need to navigate away from the interface. It is also nice to be able to listen instantly without needing to register or be too assaulted by ads or the need to purchase. On the downside, the aesthetic leaves something to be desired from my viewpoint. Overall, while Musicovery does not offer a feature rich experience, it does offer one that would bring me back. Oh, and it’s also available for some Nokia phones too…

Peep it here.

Categories
DesignForEmergingPlatforms

Social music meeting

Aram, Ran, and Ben.

We met today to share our backgrounds and ideas more extensively. We have reviewed several of the music sites including:

  • The Hype Machine – focus on story and social connectivity. For listening, users directed to purchase from Amazon, etc. Criteria/context for blogger selection is missing.
  • SP (StreamPad Beta) – definitely pre-release/beta stage. Itunes anywhere, with live concert functionality. Individual based/less social. It reaches and include image of first year ITP student.
  • Ivoon – strange financial issues welcome screen follows poor registration/login design. Notion to create playlists for existing social sites not too innovative.
  • Odeo – nice simple interface with ability to browse and download without registration, but no music.  No social or geographic elements.
  • Pandora – discussion regarding the music genom project.
  • Last.fm – user friendly and includes coverage of the creative brief’s key areas.

CONCEPT:

In our conversation of these sites, our backgrounds, and many related topics, our attention has become centered around building on a “last.fm base” to add core functionality, which would provide a relatively unique answer to the question: How do I find the music I want to hear? Currently, it seems that our target audience finds music from recommendations, friends, and basic genre selection.

Our idea, inspired by a Korean website called Bugsmusic, is to integrate emotional/situational based categories, which are informed by users and a user driven ranking system.  Bugsmusic introduces many complex and interesting theme selections (e.g.s. location, time and season, emotion/mood, genre, age, and weather). This new element would offer listeners the ability to expand and revise conventional associations related to music in a structured and collaborative way and hear songs and playlists that are relevant to their immediate mood, need, or situation.

Task are two part.

1) Identify strong and innovative pieces of the Bugsmusic design.

2) Define the best strategy for implementing these pieces into our users’ experience.

Following the group meeting, we self-assigned individual directions as well. Aram is researching devices that may include menu functions with similarities to our idea (likely produced by Asian companies such as Creative). Ran is exploring and analyzing Bugsmusic. My role is to consolidate and write up our ideas (this blog entry).

See Bugsmusic translation

Categories
DesignForEmergingPlatforms

1st week readings + initial thoughts

Preparing for User Research Interviews: Seven Things to Remember > This article immediately reminded me of the admissions role I just left with the TRIUM program. Though my experience with UX interviewing is limited, these guidelines somewhat overlap the processes for admissions interviews. While both UX and admissions aim to share information, the social dynamic between parties seems substantially different (i.e. analyzing a product or experience is different than determining a personal match). I wonder how my background and interest would translate in the field of UX. Hmm.

User Centric definition of User Research > This article was straight forward. It reminded me of Amit’s class a little — Designing for Constraints.

Social Music > I still need to determine which site to write about. I’m not approved on the Google group yet, so I don’t know which ones are available to discuss. I just registered at last.fm (for the first time!). I have used Pandora before. Both services offer streaming music and recommendations based upon tastes, tags, types…

Continue reading “1st week readings + initial thoughts”
Categories
LiveWeb

IRC and Clay Shirky’s book (chap.4)

IRC
seeing irc in class on thursday brought back memories of middle school for me. both the large number of participants in the porn and warez channels  and the hierarchy of users gave my an internal chuckle. i remember downloading software, mp3s, etc and having random conversations with strangers to pass the hours. it was a good time to explore. tinkering with different scripts and learning how the communities worked was fun and admittedly dorky for me.

today i installed ircle 3.1.2 and joined undernet for the first time in maybe 10 years. i feel old. so to report, i have very little response so far. i tried to share my kidnapping story in two semi-popular channels:

#ChitChat: mrbenjamin MaKeR MoonLight Taline Sami DarkNight mushrOOm evilmaker SuperWoman Chipsy TheJustice Disaster @X @NoobSaibot Gandulf Magician Daniella EvilGirl Super^Girl LadyWolf Queens SweetRose DraCkuLa FireDragon @Lawrence22 WereWolf +Salubri
*** End of /NAMES list.
*** Channel Mode is +tnl 29
*** Channel created at Saturday, February 16, 2008 12:57:32 PM
mrbenjamin: hey all
mrbenjamin: anyone have a good story to share?
*** Signoff: MoonLight (Ping timeout)

Continue reading “IRC and Clay Shirky’s book (chap.4)”
Categories
Miscellaneous

akg headphone fix

yesterday was my first real day at itp, and i did a little personal pcomp project (in the sense that i used a soldering iron). it was initially frustrating, but ultimately rewarding. i didn’t have to buy new headphones. i added a bling element to my daily appearance. i gained a smidget of confidence. see the pics. i had come by an article on lifehacker.com and had been meaning to do the fix over the summer. i finally bought the piece at radioshack for 3.99 and moved forward with the mini-project. it took me a little while to figure out the wiring. i had red and copperish colored wires, plus the stranded protective copperish wires. red and copperish went to either side. i twisted and tinned the stranded wire for ground. good as new. yay.

Categories
Miscellaneous

rejuvenated

today is my first day on the floor at itp since classes officially started. it feels good. with the release of my day job, i can move about with more freedom and flexibility, more inspiration and heightened senses. the creative activity, the summer heat, the style in the streets, and the feeling of possibilities are all around. on my list for the day are getting setup at the gym, getting a book, soldering a new plug on my headphones, meeting up w folks and spinning through the web. yes.

Categories
CourseDescriptions DesignForConstraints

Designing for Constraints (2008 Spring)

Instructor: Amit Pitaru

Whether we design an application for the small touch-pad of a cell phone, a game for an elderly user, or produce art through a self-defined conviction, our work is often driven by constraints – some chosen, others imposed. With digital technologies, one other constraint is our own ability to keep up with the ever-shifting tools that we use. Does this perpetual learning-curve stifle our creative process? Or in contrast, can an abundance of technical know-how cloud a simple vision? The goal of this course is to make work that is fueled by the positive constraints (our audience, our vision) rather then the damaging ones (our lack of ability to know everything about the tools we use). Through weekly assignments, we draw ideas and production techniques from art, game design, music (sound-art), cognitive science and universal-design, towards an understanding of how to carry our initial ideas through a development process, without compromising quality and clarity of vision. For a final assignment students are asked to create a project for a specific target audience, defined by age/gender/race/culture and ability. The goal is to allow oneself a space for exploration while working towards a focused result. Some ideas for projects may include simplifying an application for the growing elderly population (can grandmama really use that fancy Nokia phone?), a software game based solely on audio (ever played doom without a monitor in a dark room?), or an art-piece that clearly conveys your artistic intentions with a digital medium (think of interactive art that’s not utterly frustrating/annoying for gallery goers). In either case, we test our work early and often (starting mid semester), learn to identify problems, and solve them through an iterative design process. When needed, software examples are programmed using Processing. We also use simple p-comp modules to quicken exploration (such as custom keyboard emulators). A fair understanding of ICM and P-comp is required, as you will be asked not to spend the majority of your energy learning new technologies, but rather make best of what you already know. That’s one of the course constraints.

Categories
CourseDescriptions DynamicWebDev

Dynamic Web Development (2008 Spring)

Instructor: Chris Sung

How does one move away from creating static websites and toward building active, evolving hubs of activity? This class will cover the design and implementation of the “dynamic” website in two distinct but related contexts: the technical aspects of manipulating content “on the fly”, and the end user experience of interacting in this type of setting. Particular attention will be given to social and community-based web interaction. The production environment will consist of the MySQL database and the PHP programming language. Students can expect to develop a firm knowledge of database design and optimization, the SQL query language, and the use of PHP to create dynamic activity of both orthodox and unorthodox nature. Late-semester topics will focus on interfacing this environment with other technologies such as JavaScript and Flash, along with data population and site architecture methodology. Introduction to Computational Media or equivalent programming experience is required. Students are also expected to have fluency in HTML or to come up to speed with it outside of class. Class requirements will include homework assignments to reinforce each week’s concepts while simultaneously contributing to the student’s “toolkit” of code and design principles. There will also be a midterm project, and a final project of the student’s choosing. Given the wide range of applications that would benefit from a web-accessible database, students should feel free to use their project(s) from this class to support or enhance projects from other classes.

Categories
CourseDescriptions HybridityGlobalization

Hybridization in Culture and Globalization (2007 Fall)

Instructor: Sam Howard-Spink

This course explores the concept of “hybridization” from its roots to contemporary manifestations in remix/mashup culture, and asks if hybridity is the key to unlocking the puzzle of globalization. We rely equally on theory and examples of practice, with an emphasis on musical cultures and industries worldwide. The course proceeds along two parallel lines of enquiry: (i) cultural blending per se, in which something new is created from the fusion of two or more distinct forms, and (ii) as a current theory of globalization, which offers a way of challenging the mutual exclusivity offered by the traditional models of “cultural imperialism” versus “the clash of civilizations.” Specific topic areas include competing models of cultural-economic globalization, the modern “individual creator” contrasted with the postmodern “prosumer” (producer/consumer) in a “participatory culture,” debates over originality and authenticity, the legal and political implications of efforts to restrict (re)mixing through mechanisms such as copyright, and examples of practice including hiphop and mash-ups, Brazilian tropicalia and favela/carioca funk, Japanese anime, and Indian cinema or Bollywood.