Is copying innovative?

At home, I use a Mac and a pc running Ubuntu Linux with Gnome 2. At work, I use a pc with Windows XP.

Gnome is an odd mix of Windows and Mac OS X influences. It's a very simple interface in many ways. You can find your home folder, Internet apps, wifi with a single click. On my Acer, which is a fairly basic laptop, it's fast, stable and reliable.

It's hard to tell where any of these three interfaces copied from
each other. I've seen a post online claiming that Gnome had virtual desktops before Apple did. Gnome seems to have copied the Dock concept from Apple but Solaris and OS/2 both had dock equivalents before Mac OS X appeared. And perhaps, to be fair, Next may have had a dock as well.

Most cars work the same. Most phones work similarly. Bicycles work the same. These are all interfaces.

So, is it innovative to copy from another interface? We're more productive because we can swap from one interface to another without losing pace, whether it's a car or a computer. Commentators often call interfaces innovative but we can really say something is innovative when it's an improvement on what went before and when it's A New Thing in its own right, not just new in the context in which we see it.

PodaPoda

On a personal note...

I've been in the webmaster game on and off since early 1995 but I've never owned my own website until now. That  seems like an odd oversight, but there you go.

I launched PodaPoda.com today. It's a tiny listings site for mobile websites. Usually the ones beginning with an M. Like m.wired.com. These sites are optimised for use on mobile phones. More people have internet access through their phones than through computers, so it seems sensible to have more lists of these sites. Half of FT.com's traffic comes through mobile devices.

I handcoded the site! That took me back to early days on a vt100 terminal emulator and a 2400 baud modem. I created an institutional website doing that, using pico and lynx. It was three months before I saw the site on a graphics browser (Mosaic running on a Mac, I think).  Handcoding was quite fun. Learned some old tricks the hard way for the second time. And as it's an XHTML site, I needed to comply with xhtml-basic.

I need to do some SEO on the site next, but hopefully some feedback and suggestions from friends will help before that.

Wow. My own site. Now to be creative and innovative...

Comparative education

Thoughtful article in The Atlantic's magazine, looking at the work of Andreas Schleicher and how educational outcomes can be measured in different countries using creativity-based questions. The comments are somewhat critical but it's a good read. Found on the mobile edition, so may display a little oddly on some screens. 

m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-world-8217-s-schoolmaster/8532/

Data Visualisation: 60 seconds in the life of the internet

Mentioned on the Orange Rag: a web team in Shanghai put together this visualisation of what happens online in just 60 little seconds. Someone did quite a bit of research. Nice work, guys. 

The 100 Most Creative People in Business

FastCompany's take on who's the most creative. 

More on creative teams...

Okay, they're famous for it already but Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac suggests in an interview on The Indy that being fraught and emotional is a much better state for creativity than being happy and carefree. I blogged a BBC story last year that suggested that loneliness and depression are good environments for producing great work.

I'd love some examples of people who did great things while being deliriously in love. Is it impossible?

PS: Stevie Nicks is 63. Keep up the good work, woman. 

Leviathan Wakes: James S. A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes is the first in a trilogy of space opera novels written by "James S. A. Corey": a pesudonym for the writing team of Daniel Abraham (fantasy author) and Ty Franck - assistant to George R. R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones (note the central pair of initials, by way of homage, perhaps).

Creative writing alone is hard work.  As part of my master's in innovation, creativity and leadership I wrote a treatment with two of my fellow-students but it's not a way I'd like to work. Abraham and Franck make it sound easy in an interview on YouTube, below. Nice illustrative example of a hugely creative writing team.

Leviathan Wakes is a big, meaty read: space adventure and "detective noir". Hard to put down. Looking forward to the sequels. 

Megacities: our future, better or worse

Andrew Marr's BBC series on Megacities gives some really interesting views of how and why the world's megacities are growing. Wikipedia defines megacities as having more than 10m people. Tokyo is the world's largest with about 35m people. Most people in the western hemisphere have heard of Tokyo. Guangzhou is the second largest, with 25m people. I've heard of Guangzhou but many people won't have. That's about half the population of England - in just one city. And there are plenty of other cities that many westerners would hesitate to place on a map that are growing quickly too.

Another BBC article today has some stunning stats, graphs and thoughts.

"Cities cover 2% of the earth's crust but host more than 50% of the world's population, account for 75% of energy consumption and are responsible for up to 80% of carbon-dioxide emissions." More...

The sheer speed of building is stunning: twenty years ago, Shanghai didn't have an underground metro system. Now they have the world's biggest. If you're going to have one, have a big one.

This has been happening around the world for the past two hundred years, almost invisibly, as far as history is concerned and we are all affected by it. Wired is currently running an article on how urban living affects mental health. but so many new industries will spawn as a result. This is the future for millions of businesses. Cleaner transport, better health (maybe including mental health), food that travels less, cleaner air, better jobs, better leisure. Less sense of sprawl, maybe more sense of place and sustainable creativity. Bicycle friendly roads. City-quality jobs that aren't all in the middle of the city. Perhaps we can design environments that are conducive to making people happier or even just friendlier.

This is our future and we have to make it work. 

Are fossil-fuel cars the new typewriters?

Nissan Leaf, Mitsubishi iMiev, Ampera - they're all outside our office this week. It's the annual Canary Wharf Motorshow. My chance to see the Leaf and Ampera in the metal. Both very nice; saw the iMiev last year. 

These cars very visibly computers on wheels, now that they're electric. The Leaf has a 7 inch screen, USB, Bluetooth and apps - you'll be able to remotely instruct it to heat or cool the car before you arrive. The sales guy said they're hoping it will be able to locate the nearest available charge point. These cars will be really smart cars. Boris Bikes on wheels, scaled up. 

And if they are computers, will we be able to upgrade them? New motherboard, more ram, more disk space for iTunes music and films for the kids? Will there be wifi, so that your Ampera in the garage or drive or across the street will be able to sync your movies, music and ebooks?

Then there's software. We're all used to software upgrades. Car companies have a whole new revenue stream: charging for the latest Leaf or Ampera operating system upgrade. Sell two million cars and then sell an upgrade every year for the next five years... At £50 a time, as part of your annual service, that's another 500 million. Nice money. Add in-car apps if you want more.


There's a downside: malware. These days, it's not just kids in back-bedrooms, it's well-funded government spies in air-conditioned offices. If you want to invade a country, you don't need to nuke them. You just arrange all cars to lock down during commuting hours on a Monday morning. Easy.

The Open Car
No, not a convertible. With projects like Black Current around, all you may really need to create your own electric vehicle is a donor vehicle for the analogue parts, like steering and doors; a few parts from B&Q and a few digital Linux-powered bits and pieces. Put them all together and you have an open source car; one you can keep upgrading as new software comes out. 


Typewriters? 
Think of today's fossil-fuel cars. Once you buy one, it's obsolete. You can't upgrade it; all you can really do is replace parts. With a digital cars, much of it can be upgraded through software. The new computers on wheels will be exactly that. And we'll look back on today's cars as being as archaic as IBM golfball typewriters. 

UK Design Alliance

Wired UK's article about (and involvement in)  the Design Council's Design Summit 2011, entitled "Design for Growth" had me looking immediately at the Design Council's site. Sadly, when I looked, the link on the page to Design Summit page wasn't working and searching the site for "summit 2011" didn't provide many answers. Thumbs down on the council's website design, based on what I saw of it.

However, it did redeem itself with a link to the Design Alliance page, a list of every design body worth looking at in the UK. Everyone from the South Coast Design Forum to D&AD. Also info on grants, competitions, etc. Go now, before that stops working too.

The Beauty of Obsolescence

The previous post on Dieter Rams included an interview which featured the following ad. It is a diatribe against planned obsolescence; something I agree with strongly.


Against obsolescence from Vitsœ on Vimeo.


There's a certain beauty in obsolescence, however. This story in Wired considers how aged and loved objects do not suffer the epithet of obsolescence.

It's much the same with my first Mac, which was an iBook G3 from 2002. It's still in use. I've maxed out the ram and with a new battery, charger and a second hand hard disk, it's almost not the same machine at all; but I love using it, despite having other machines. 

In a way, once an object has been replaced with a new version, it becomes obsolete. Mostly, however, it still works and may possibly work as well or (with software upgrades or better fuel or longlife batteries) even better than the day it was bought. So it still does the same thing. 

And once it's obsolete, it stays obsolete. 

It can't get more obsolete until it either breaks and can't do something I really need (or, more likely, want) it to do. The iBook was obsolete as soon as the G4 version came out. Or possibly when Mac OS X Leopard appeared, which the iBook G3 can't run. However, it can still do pretty much what I want it to do. So it works perfectly and it's obsolete and I don't have any worries about what will the next version look like or be like because I know.

Being comfortable with "obsolete" products and objects that we can afford to replace tells us how good the design was. They're the art of the heart - the things and tools we love to use. 

An interview with Dieter Rams

Speaking of Dieter Rams (below), Alison on my degree course tipped me on fastcodesign.com's interview with Dieter Rams, spread over several video clips. Click the photos at the top of the interview page to see how uncannily Apple's designs have echoed older designs done by Dieter Rams in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm not the first to note this, obviously!

This is the first of the interviews. Click the link above for the others.



This reminded me of another interview with Rams on Gestalten TV. I have this as a podcast through iTunes, but it's also available online. Gestalten TV is well worth a visit for commentary and interviews on design, sustainability, burlesque(!) and other topics.

Design failure: getting the basics wrong

There are basic rules of design and one of them should be: "Get the basics right". Especially when it's obvious what the basics are. Washing machines should wash clothes. Televisions should show broadcast tv. Cars should provide a means of transport. Phones should be a means of communication. Getting the basics right isn't precisely covered by any one of Dieter Rams 10 rules of good design, but it's implied in rule #8.

Which is where my Sony-Ericsson Xperia X8 (an Android phone) fails. It's great as an iPod Touch competitor: it can do Kindle, music, YouTube, sync with Google... all sorts of stuff. It's beautifully made, like most Sony kit and it feels really nice in the hand. There's something really right about the hardware ergonomics. But it's a lousy phone. I gave it 2-3 weeks trial and then I went back to my Sony-Ericsson Elm (aka J10i2 - I prefer Elm), which doesn't do most of what the X8 can do, entertainment-wise - but it's a very, very good phone. As a phone.

On the X8, starting and finishing a call isn't easy. Finding the telephone interface isn't easy - it's buried under layers of other stuff. Which means plenty of missed calls. And texting: the text displays in a tiny window - the rest of the screen is wasted - and you can't easily edit it once it's entered.

Being a phone, when all came to all, was what I got it for. It's just not just me. My wife, who really knows her phones, tried it for a day before going back to her temporary Sony-Ericsson W595 (she's awaiting an iPhone).

So, message to designers everywhere: get the basics right. If you're designing a phone, make sure it's a really great phone. Because even a smartphone is still, at heart, a phone.

eBooks

Been reading "Game of Thrones" (Kindleware, on Android). Interesting problem. The e-version doesn't have a map of Westeros, which presumably the hardcopy has. I've missed having a map for the books.

Note to publishers: please include the non-text content as well. It's all the book - not just bits of it. 

Press play. Somehow...

Showing the kids of today the tech delights of yesteryear.

Don't worry. There are subtitles.



Seen on Frogdesign's Designophile blog. Thanks, guys. 

Live your life more creatively

There're plenty of "motivationals" out there (it's like being a "creative", only more kick-arse) but I like this guy's site, mostly for the bike content. And his motivation is on a human scale: like doing a simple one day bike trip, rather than plunging in. Realistic motivation is easier to listen to.

http://www.alastairhumphreys.com

The Folding Bicycle Diaries

The previous post on music and architecture came out of reading David Byrne's "Bicycle Diaries", in which Byrne talks about... Well, read some reviews here and here.

I've spent more time on my bike recently (Giant Halfway, below).



Not the best ever bike, but any bike is a bike and doing a few miles now and again is a great way to rediscover the surreal, nomadic thoughts of a younger me as well as hopefully more creative thoughts about my dissertation.

And the advantage of a folding bike is that a good one can be parked anywhere. So if you don't have a shed or a garage, you can still drop your bike down next to the sofa. You wouldn't win any races on a Giant Halfway but some of Dahon's bikes look pretty nippy. And the Halfway was a lot of fun down on Romney Marsh recently.

Folding bike advice.

David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve

Byrne suggests that the environment in which we work affects our output and that this can be viewed as a model of creativity. If you give someone a nail, he'll make a hammer. It's not a brilliant talk, but it's watchable; it's David Byrne and it's thought-provoking.