Ged Carroll

Category: design | 設計 | 예술과 디자인 | デザイン

Design was something that was important to me from the start of this blog, over different incarnations of the blog, I featured interesting design related news. Design is defined as a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, interfaces or other object before it is made.

But none of the definition really talks about what design really is in the way that Dieter Rams principles of good design do. His principles are:

  1. It is innovative
  2. It makes a product useful
  3. It is aesthetic
  4. It makes a product understandable
  5. It is unobtrusive
  6. It is honest
  7. It is long-lasting
  8. It is thorough down to the last detail
  9. It is environmentally-friendly – it can and must maintain its contribution towards protecting and sustaining the environment.
  10. It is as little design as possible

Bitcoin isn’t long lasting as a network, which is why people found the need to fork the blockchain and build other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin uses 91 terawatts of energy annually or about the entire energy consumption of Finland.

The Bitcoin network relies on thousands of miners running energy intensive machines 24/7 to verify and add transactions to the blockchain. This system is known as “proof-of-work.” Bitcoin’s energy usage depends on how many miners are operating on its network at any given time. – So Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly by design.

On the other hand, Apple products, which are often claimed to be also influenced by Dieter Rams also fail his principles. They aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly as some like AirPods are impossible to repair or recycle.

  • WWDC 2018 outtakes

    Introduction to WWDC 2018

    This summary of the WWDC 2018 keynote has been re-organised to try and provide a bit more coherence as Apple took things in a slightly different order to try and create ‘surprise and delight‘.
    WWDC 2018 highlighted how cross-platform they’ve evolved Continuity and Siri to try and make them more useful (if, not smarter). All fo the changes outlined at WWDC 2018 represent a slow and steady progression to a more programmatic world.
    I’ve made some notes in green that are designed to flag points of interest to marketers and advertising folk. 

    App Store

    • 10 years old (and the app store search is still not where it should be)
    • World’s largest app marketplace
    • 500 million weekly visitors (might be due to moving away from iTunes for app updates)
    • $100,000,000 developer revenues to date

    Swift

    • 350,000 apps coded in it (no measure of the variable quality though)

    iOS 12

    • Focus on system optimisation
    • Faster app and function launches
    • They haven’t dropped any devices previously supported by iOS 11; a nod to longer device lives

    AR Kit – v 2

    • Adobe Creative Cloud support
    • USDZ format support throughout the system including News app
    • Multi-player AR experiences (demoed with Lego). Attribute digital assets to a physical object – interesting execution

    Measure – digital tape measure

    • Facilitated by MEMs, presumably the software technology comes out of AR work. Handy hack, I could have used this when I was eBaying stuff. I could see it being nice for things like home furnishings retailers and clothing e-commerce

    Photos

    Search suggestions – tries to predict what you want
    • Searches EXIF data for locations, events etc
    • For you function is a bit like Facebook memories
    • Photo sharing – recommended what to share and who to share them with. If its going to another iPhone user it prompts the recipient to share photos that they may have taken. Implications for social photo sharing apps
    • Full resolution over Messages

    Siri

    • Shortcuts to any app. It reminds me a little bit of Apple Script. Allows you to build multi-app behaviours – drag-and-drop
    • Suggestions based on app usage, calendar, locations
    • Possible implications for app usage – content opportunities to suggest ‘Shortcut workflows’ to build. Poses a bit of a thread for IFTTT’s smarthome ambitions
    Default iOS apps
    Stocks
    • Better charts
    • Native iPad and Mac version
    • Integration of Apple news in Stocks
    Voice Memos
    • iPad and Mac native version
    • iCloud support
    iBooks renamed to Apple Books
    • Redesigned
    Car Play
    • Supports third party navigation apps presumably to try and reduce iPhone to Android migration
    Efforts to limit mobile distraction
    • Do Not Disturb – improved view without notifications during bed time
    • Can be triggered from calendar or location (meetings, going to the cinema)
    Notifications – huge pain point addressed, particularly with people used to Android devices
    • Notifications ‘tuning’ – so that you can only see the notifications from apps you care about
    • Grouped notifications: app, topic and thread
    Screentime
    • Tracks device usage for the user
    Child app usage
    • Child locks on mobile device usage

    FaceTime

    • Group FaceTime supporting up to 32 participants. Shows the speaker by making their tile bigger. Challenges to Skype, WhatsApp
    • Integration into Messages, so you can go from group message to Group FaceTime

    watchOS 5

    • Walkie Talkie – push-to-talk app – watch-to-watch. Surely it would make sense on iOS and macOS as well?
    • Web content on watchOS via WebKit

    tvOS

    • AppleTV 4K to support Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision certified
    • AppleTV as cable set-top box for (Salt in Switzerland, Canal+ in France, Charter Spectrum). OTT on iPhone and iPad as well. If cable companies move to just being media content aggregators, how will this affect DOCSIS and FTTH roll out?
    • Zero-sign on for content when part of a cable TV offering
    • 3rd party remotes will work with AppleTV

    macOS – Mojave

    • Dark Mode – dark skin of OS. Nice level of integration and easier to work with during the evening, but not exactly ground-breaking
    • Desktop stacks – arrange by date, kind or tag
    • Contextual quick actions in Finder – can include Automator actions
    • Screen capture for video should make presentations a lot easier
    • Dev tools to make it easier to move iOS apps to the Mac framework – used this time on Apple default apps, Apple will roll out to developers in 2019
    • Beefing up security including app permissions to cover your mail database, camera and microphone use
    Safari
    • Shutting down tracking on likes, shares and comments. Strong focus on attacking ‘Fingerprinting’ – making it harder to track – Macs will be harder to distinguish from one and other (its also in iOS 12). Only providing basic web fonts as data, no data on legacy plug-ins and cutting back on app set-ups
    • Favicons in tabs (this annoyed the bejesus out of me, its a small thing but I am glad to see it)

    App Store

    • Revamped App store allows more content to market your app and improve usage / engagements. Opportunities for in-appstore content marketing (demo videos, ongoing articles with tips etc)
    • Ratings and review API (which will likely be a bit annoying). This will provide an incremental benefit for app marketers
    • Microsoft Office and BBEdit will be in the Mac app store – huge boost for the credibility of the Mac App Store
    Machine learning
    • CreateML – trying to make machine learning training easier for apps
    • CoreML 2 – Improved machine learning performance using batch predictions
    More related content here. More details for Apple developers here.

  • Experience Ramadan & things from this week

    Experience Ramadan

    Via Matt’s Imperica newsletter, Experience Ramadan. A site that connects Muslim families and secular people to meet for meals breaking the fast of Ramadan. Experience Ramadan looks like a great way to build greater mutual awareness among communities.

    Artefacts and Dementia

    Boots and Ogilvy have made this film on how artefacts can spur memories in people suffering from dementia. It is amazing how things are affected by our senses. I thought it was interesting because it implies the importance of artefacts, even as we live in a digital world. We have evolved for a physical world. How would a similar type of programme be done in the future when everything from toys to culture is digital and ephemeral in nature with the cultural impact of pet rocks?

    Mercedes 190

    Great vintage Mercedes-Benz film on the development of the Mercedes 190. There is something really beautiful about the process shown. The Mercedes 190 was developed under the name W201. It was a car that was influenced by the OPEC oil crisis. It represented a more aerodynamic model design for Mercedes. Usually Mercedes innovations saw them debut on the S-class first, but the 190 brought in a number of innovations for suspension and handling. The biggest impact for me was the 190 E 2.3-16V. It was a classier hot saloon that competed with the BMW M3 and Ford Sierra Cosworth.

    Black Klansman

    The trailer for Black Klansman. Good comedy film about the Klu Klux Klan aren’t two concepts that I thought I would have in the same sentence.

    Benazir Bhutto

    BBC World Service – The Assassination, 10 part documentary – on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, great piece of investigative journalism. I can also recommend The Bhutto Dynasty by Owen Bennett-Jones which provides a good deal of context on the Bhutto family role in Pakistan.

  • Strategic News Service & things this week

    Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service; a George Gilderesque subscription newsletter, the likes of which were very popular in the mid to late 1990s. The Strategic News Service process is an interesting ‘anti algorithmic’ analysis in action. A counter point to the world that Google now represents, I don’t buy all that Anderson and the Strategic News Service says, but this is very interesting to watch.

    The synthetic voice of synthetic intelligence should sound synthetic. Successful spoofing of any kind destroys trust. When trust is gone, what remains becomes vicious fast.

    — Stewart Brand via Simon Willison. It seemed very appropriate when considering the Google Duplex demonstrations from the other week.

    It’s Nice That | Gucci and Frieze team up on major new video series, The Second Summer of Love – well worth a view

    Singapore’s utopian clean looking city and high quality Japanese animation are a marriage made in heaven. Makoto Shinkai directed this for the forthcoming Singapore Thomson East Coast Line on behalf of Japanese construction giant Taisei Corporation. More Japan related content here.

    This would usually be the part where I would talk about how I am looking forward to Deadpool. But I won’t. I wanted to marvel at the collective hullucination of Deadpool marketing. Deadpool marketing isn’t trying to get you to go and see the film, but instead brings elements of the film to you. Once you are properly tuned in, it then makes perfect sense to see the film. The problem is that there are so many fragments from DVD rewraps to teasers and TV appearances that it would be impossible to capture or choose a favourite.

    Instead I am going to share a video of the Korean show King of Masked Singer, where Ryan Reynolds preformed Tomorrow from the musical Annie in a unicorn mask.

    Fans in show panel and the audience lost their shit

  • Bullshit job + more news

    Is Public Relations A ‘Bullshit Job’? | Holmes Report – If you find yourself in a company that doesn’t use public relations in a way that you find meaningful, and even occasionally inspiring, you’re in the wrong place. That doesn’t mean public relations consulting is a “bullshit job” but it may be an indication that you’re working for a shitty organization. – when I started in agency life I wondered if my new career was a mistake: was it a bullshit job? It didn’t help that I was working with a bunch of dot com startups and enterprise software companies.

    I’d previously worked in industry formulating plastics and in the petrochemical industry. The chances are that if you drove a car from the early 1990s to the 2000s, I’d either helped develop part of your car, or helped provide the road surface that you drove on. 

    Agency life isn’t like that. It took me years to become comfortable on whether I had a bullshit job. That came as I started to see the difference to businesses that my work did. More related content here. 

    Folli Follie folly | FT Alphaville – interesting read, QCM used the companies own store finder function on their website – in order to determine that Folli Follie’s distribution wasn’t as healthy as claimed

    The Brazen Bootlegging of a Multibillion-Dollar Sports Network – The New York Times – interesting article on how Saudi Arabia is bootlegging live sports content as part of its conflict with Qatar. More worryingly it is spreading its piracy into other franchises because it can

    Apple’s Jony Ive discusses his ‘best friend’ and the origins of the Apple Watch – Business Insider – interesting that it is ‘un-Jobsian’ as a product

    The Great Disappearing Act of the ‘Most Downloaded Woman in the World’ | Mel Magazine – when adult entertainment led the way in profitable business models for the web

    Swiss Watchmakers Are Targeting Teens | News & Analysis | BoF – the challenges of dealing with customers too early for brands is an interesting one

    Instagram quietly launches payments for commerce | TechCrunch – makes perfect sense

    Facebook’s Double Standard on Privacy: Employees vs. Everyone Else – WSJ – just a little bit of old school geekery exists in the Facebook yuppie farm with ‘Sauron’ technology that lets FBers know if someone else has accessed their accounts

    Keeping your account secure | Twitter Blog – Twitter dropped the ball big time

  • River Elegy & other things this week

    River Elegy

    River Elegy (河殇) is a six-part documentary broadcast on China’s largest TV station CCTV1, in 1988. River Elegy is a landmark documentary, a more innocent naive Chinese viewpoint that emerged as the country opened up. China and its civilisation has existed around the Pearl and Yellow rivers for 1000s of years, rather like the Rhine and the Elba in Germany.

    China had started to open up to the world after the cultural revolution and intellectuals started to learn about how different the west was. River Elegy compares the old ways and Chinese gains in civilisation over thousands of years, with the modern world. In retrospect the River Elegy attacks on traditional culture and Confucianism mirror the rejection of tradition in the cultural revolution. The River Elegy series spurred debate and was seen to be criticism of what the creators perceived to be a slow-moving communist party.

    At the time, intellectuals in China were avidly reading the works of western thinkers like John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler who provided a vision of a rollercoaster centrist techno-utopian future. I get the attraction to young intellectuals. In the 1980s, the future looked bright and technocratic.

    The thing that I find most interesting about it is the use of music, imagery and editing is almost psychedelic in its effect. It must have been mind blowing for the audience who tuned into it.

    A couple of people involved in the production of River Elegy whore about how it was created in Deathsong of the River – which is a great read. It is interesting to reflect how far this series is from the China of today. It overs an interesting contrast to Xi Thought in both content and presentation style.

    China and the World

    From a retro futuristic vision of China in River Elegy to the current day: China and the World: Recalibration and Realignment – YouTube. I put this on the background, its almost three hours long but very informative.

    Tian Jinqin – electronic instrument pioneer

    1980 Video of Tian Jinqin, “Originator of Chinese Electronic Music” | RADII China – China was slower on the uptake electronic music because of the cultural revolution. Tian Jinqin developed some interesting instruments based on traditional Chinese instruments as well as keyboards.

    NeXT logo

    NeXT logo presentation, by Paul Rand, for Steve Jobs | Logo Design Love – Steve Jobs on Paul Rand. The interesting thing for me is how Jobs talks through the brief in an interview. It was the model for client agency relationships with a high level of trust.

    Larry Levan

    Maestro – BOILER ROOM – great documentary about DJ/producer Larry Levan and the Paradise Garage. Levan is one of the people who shaped the modern dance sound. The film does a really good job of setting up the context from disco to house and goes on about other New York clubs like The Loft and The Gallery. It has a great soundtrack and some of the interviewees are fierce.