Recently I was having a conversation with my mother that got me thinking again about cars. She mentioned that she and Dad are thinking about getting a bigger vehicle, like a small pickup truck, because they’ve both started to have trouble getting in and out of small cars.

This led me to wonder if, given the current aging trend and people’s tendency to stay healthy and driving longer, there might not be a developing market for vehicles that are specifically tailored for older folks.

For example, as mentioned above, many older people have trouble getting into and out of small cars, and prefer vehicles that sit high off the road. However, too often the only alternative for a higher vehicle is a huge, inefficient gas-guzzler. I wonder if we might not see a growth in vehicles that are designed to sit high off the road, but are still relatively light and fuel-efficient.

Since many older folks have a fixed income, the reduction in fuel costs could be very beneficial. (And of course, it would also help reduce carbon emissions.)

Another possibility is that we could see options and add-on packages specifically dealing with accessibility.

For example, just as you have large-print books for to folks with poorer vision, maybe you could have a dash with larger numbers and simplified displays. That would be an interesting problem in information design, figuring out how to fit the necessary information, while making it as readable as possible. Maybe some information, like RPM, gets moved to somewhere else, and the key information like speed and fuel is made much larger in the display. And maybe there are added notifications if, for example, you exceed a certain speed.

Additionally, many seniors have trouble with fine motor control. What if you could upgrade your car to have larger, easy to grasp dials for the stereo and climate controls? Again, this may require the rearrangement or removal of less-important buttons and features, but in the case of many seniors that might be worthwhile for greater ease of use.

Many of these changes would not only improve the driving experience for seniors, they would also make the road safer in general, by decreasing the potential for distraction, such as fumbling with small buttons to change the radio, or increasing the rate of access to key data, such as fuel levels and speed. And with increasing numbers of seniors on the road, that could only benefit everyone.

BTW, I hope to start posting more regularly again. (Of course, that’s always easier said than done.) Coming soon: some thoughts about larger computer screens and how they change the use of full-screen mode. Also, happy New Year!

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I guess this past month hasn’t brought a lot that’s new, at least not in my professional or creative lives. It’s largely been about wrapping up my information architecture rotation at work, and finishing some freelance programming work in my spare time.

Today was the first day of my new rotation as a [title yet to be determined]. Seriously, the job that I’m doing right now is so new in my department that they haven’t even decided on a final job title yet. Some of ones that I like are Interaction Developer, Design Engineer, and Design Technologist. All of which basically mean that I know how to code, and know something about design as well.

My personal thought is that the role might as well be called Design Translator. Because sometimes it seems like designers and developers really are speaking 2 different languages, and my job is to know as much of each one as I can, so that I can translate between the two and help them understand each other. That’s how I see it, anyway.

I’m pretty excited about trying out this role. I’ve always been drawn to interdisciplinary work — just look at both of my college majors for proof. Something about my brain really likes being able to look at something from multiple angles at once. And it’ll be nice to finally get to use some of my programming skills, and hopefully develop them even further by practice and by studying new technologies. I started working on a little project today, just basic HTML and CSS to get myself back into practice; but the day just flew by. I think that’s a good sign.

I think that my goals for this rotation are to learn Flex, to further develop my JavaScript / AJAX skills, and to become skilled at Illustrator and Flash. (I’m self-taught in Flash, but I’m sure there’s a lot that I still don’t know.)

1) The Arcade Fire’s interactive music video

SO. FREAKIN’. AWESOME.

2) Jonathan Yuen’s portfolio site.

This has to be one of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen. The whole interaction is just so calm and serene.

3) A LOLcats Bible? Really???

If you live in or near Philadelphia, you should go visit the new Perelman Building at the Museum of Art. When you go, you should especially check out the modern design exhibit, because there’s some neat stuff in there. (The sculpture room and some of Stieglitz’s photography were also quite nice.)

And you should do it before Dec. 31 of this year, because admission is free until then.

And after you visit the museum you should stop in at Brigid’s, which was my favorite neighborhood bar when I lived in the area.

And that’s what you should do.

So lately I’ve been trying to get better about money and budgeting and stuff. And I was thinking, one of the big things that gets people in trouble is that they use their credit card or debit card for everything (seriously, no one my age writes checks), and then lose track of how much they’ve spent. So I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to always be able to get an up-to-date view of your account balances? After all, the banks already have that information, and it’s available through any computer.

There are two ways that I could see it work. The first way is if some sort of small display were incorporated into the card itself, that displayed the balance and updated every time the card was used. The big advantage of this is that you wouldn’t have any separate thingy to lose, and you couldn’t avoid seeing the display every time you used your card. However, it also severely limits the display (if not making it entirely unfeasible) because the card still has to both fit into your wallet and be swipe-able with a current device.

The other way to do it is to have a device that’s separate from the card. I’m thinking, something like the keychain RSA token that I carry for work, so that I can access our systems from home. Something about that size, with a similar display, could easily display the balance of any credit card or bank account, or even toggle between multiple accounts. And it might be easier to integrate something like that with current systems, because you wouldn’t have to change all of the card readers or cards.

That way, it could start out by just working with people’s home computers, and then maybe spread to ATMs or merchants. (Merchants wouldn’t be as likely to offer it, in this case, unless some sort of incentive was built in, and right now I can’t really think of anything. On the other hand, ATMs would seem like a natural fit, as an extension of their current services.)

[EDIT: And smart phones/PDAs too. Yes.]

This would be a case in which design (of a product) could potentially affect people’s behavior, by making them more aware of their spending and less likely to go over budget or overdraw their account.

Just a thought that I had.

ACCIDENTALS

Don’t ask how he found her. He just did, okay?

It was the type of bar that you’d expect, and she was there. Sort of punk. He liked that. Went up to talk to her. She blew smoke in his face, and he bought her a beer.

He was in the mood for tragedy. He wanted something that he could sell, or inject. He had a guitar, blah de blah. Cliché. He didn’t care though, he just wanted to write a goddamn song about something and maybe get on with his life.

At first he thought they were flies. Those dark tracks on her arm. She looked away, and got up to leave. He saw then that they were music notes.

Her skin was a staff, with spidery lines wrapping around eighths and sixteenths. It was beautiful, a counterpoint trailing off onto the soft part of her inner arm. Scattered with accidentals.

All of a sudden, he couldn’t think. Asked if he could take a picture of her tattoo. It was so beautiful, like nothing he’d seen. She actually smiled, like the act was unfamiliar. She said it was okay, so he did.

He went home clutching his camera in his arms, a picture a song, alone. He didn’t need anything else.

Already forgotten her name. This would keep him distracted for awhile.

THE END

First short story in awhile. Did I delete words mercilessly enough?

This interview is awesome.

There were three reasons why I found it fascinating:

1) One is the fact of applying design tools such as ethnographic research in a medical environment, where one might not normally expect to find designers at work.

2) The second is the widely diverse nature of the problems they study and the solutions that they recommend. “Our solutions focus on the areas of people, process, content, space, and technology.” Sounds like it goes beyond look-and-feel to me. (Not that look-and-feel isn’t important, at all.) The type of design they’re doing is fascinating to me for the breadth of its scope. I mean, it sounds like their job is to look at practically any aspect of the Mayo Clinic and figure out ways to make it better. Damn, that’s awesome.

3) The third is their overtly stated interest in “designing for emotion”.

Emotion is such an important element to talk about in relation to designing compelling service experiences. In a healthcare environment, emotion is often at its peak levels, mostly because of the nature of the situation that patients are in when they seek healthcare services.

It seems like this is a huge difference from most hospitals and healthcare facilities I’ve seen, where the environment and processes seem designed to suppress or ignore emotion as much as possible. I’m not even quite sure what he means by “designing for emotion”, but it sounds like a good idea to me.

Is “design” more like invention, or more like decoration?

According to Wikipedia, “to design” refers to the process of originating and developing a plan for a product, structure, system, or component. That sounds more like invention to me.

But then you have Michael Beirut bringing up the other side:

Perhaps design is the field of mindless prettiness. But hasn’t it always been so? After all, most of us entered the profession not because we’ve determined after long thought that it represented a more effective way of influencing the course of world events than, say, law or medicine. Instead, somewhere along the way, we discovered we liked making things look good, and that we were better at it than other people.

(I won’t lie, this quote threw me for a bit of a loop. And it’s funny, if I did “become a designer”, his not-reason would be exactly why.)

Or is it just that they’re using the word design to mean two very different things?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

I seem to be developing a habit of doing some kind of year-in-review post around the time of the Fall Equinox.

It’s interesting to read what I wrote last year, from the perspective of a year later. I mean wow, what a time of huge changes that was. I wonder if there will ever come a time when I’ll look back on the year past and think, “yeah I’m pretty much the same person I was then”. I don’t think it’s happened yet…

Anyways, onward to This Year in Sentence Fragments.

Work: 2 rotations down, 1 to go. Learning SO much. Figuring out what I want to do and how to best apply my talents, in the short-term. Thinking about the longer term too, but not doing anything about it yet. Am I a designer, a programmer, or both? Bought a car, which then got broken into. Relationship stuff. Performed with Spiral Song, took a break, then came back. Continuing to grow with largely the same friends. Moved from my city full of lovely old things and crime, to a small town full of lovely old things (and less crime). Not living with J anymore — an adjustment, but good. Sister’s wedding. Moved from focusing heavily on writing to visual art. Drawing class. Freelance work for AYSO. Trip to Missouri. Figuring things out.

Yeah, if I had to put it into one sentence, this might have been the year of Figuring Things Out. And also becoming more settled, although I still don’t really have roots.

We prefer to be called Buccaneer-Americans.

(For those who are confused right now: International Talk Like a Pirate Day.)