Twitter Digest for Week Ending 2011-12-25
- RT @infosthetics: Comparing Human Development of Countries through Star Plot Shapes http://t.co/Csix9g0W (work by @littleark, post by @d … #
- RT @jamescrabtree: A friend writes: "So Kim Jong Il, Havel & Hitchens are waiting outside Heaven's door…." Sounds like the start of a … #
The Design of Lego Friends
Two interesting bits in this Businessweek article about the new Lego Friends product line targeting girls:
Lego confirmed that girls favor role-play, but they also love to build—just not the same way as boys. Whereas boys tend to be “linear”—building rapidly, even against the clock, to finish a kit so it looks just like what’s on the box—girls prefer “stops along the way,” and to begin storytelling and rearranging. Lego has bagged the pieces in Lego Friends boxes so that girls can begin playing various scenarios without finishing the whole model.
And:
The key difference between girls and the ladyfig and boys and the minifig was that many more girls projected themselves onto the ladyfig—she became an avatar. Boys tend to play with minifigs in the third person. “The girls needed a figure they could identify with, that looks like them,” says Rosario Costa, a Lego design director. The Lego team knew they were on to something when girls told them, “I want to shrink down and be there.”
Once Upon
Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied created 1997 versions of Google+, YouTube and Facebook, optimized for Netscape Navigator 4.03. (via)
Apps and the Apple TV – David Barnard:
[A] remote screen is much less interesting when you can directly manipulate objects on a touch screen. The two most obvious conclusions to draw from that statement are: 1. All screens should be touch screens 2. Remote screens will go away because direct manipulation is more compelling. But I think there’s a third, more likely conclusion: TVs and other remote screens will be limited-use extensions of our mobile touch screen devices.
NY Times profiles BERG
Historically, design has associated itself with utility and problem-solving, but we prefer the landscape of cultural invention, play and excitement,” Mr. Schulze said. “When technology is infinitely complex, and our attention increasingly finite, producing something you can act on and observe at a human and cultural level is hard.”
Design Firm Seeks to Humanize Technology – NYTimes.com.
Christmas Cards by Dentsu London
Jason Johnson, The Illogical End:
We exist in a curious state, where rules and reason underlie everything we do, but are the furthermost things from our minds, and have tenuous connections to the things that matter most, like attending a best friend’s wedding, or falling in love. In college, I fell for a blonde I met in lit class who looked like Nico, and then slowly watched as my naïve misconceptions about love slipped away. I never once considered the role of my physiology and genetic code, because they are found in an entirely different realm from the day-to-day happenings of human affairs.
The rules of the universe and the meaning of the universe are helplessly irreconcilable. While mathematics and computer science can explain all sorts of fascinating details, they can never explain why any of it matters in the first place. This is because meaning comes from culture—the human practices that people do day in and day out for no good reason. What we make of the world is ultimately determined by our familiarity with our habits.
Bringing the London Bus Network home, James Darling:
A service involving 8,500 GPS enabled busses and many servers is very impressive, but it really comes into its own when it doesn’t show off.
Videorative Portrait of Randall Okita
Ink Calendar
Designed by Oscar Diaz. The ink will slowly color each day of the month as time passes by. (via)
