I decided to make a color study as a landscape. I think of it as a particularly African landscape.
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Technology and the Arts Special: Art All Night Trenton 2013
Category: professional experience
These are profession related experiences that I wanted to bring to light for your perusal.
Factor of safety is about preparing for unknown flaws in a design, even though the issue may never arise. In the interest of preventing system failure, a designer can make more safety elements than are necessary. In general, it is the act of adding more elements than are strictly necessary in a design to prepare for situations that may or may not happen. In graphic design, you might add restatements of an idea to make more sure of the delivery of the message. In structural design, you might add more beams to the underlying structure. In urban design, more roads and parking, and so on.
I decided to illustrate the most common expression of the factor of safety that I can think of: “belt and suspenders”. In other words, you might say “belt and suspenders” in response to someone bringing a USB key with their materials to a presentation even though the materials available online. In the event that Internet access is down (e.g. the belt breaks) you’d still be able to present via USB (e.g. suspenders).
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One of the most lovely things that I have enjoyed as a part of my design and consulting practice is the ability to stay fairly stress free in the effort. Because of the flexibility afforded by consulting, I am able to step back, look at the entire spectrum of the work, and let it flow. There is a certain kind of joy in doing work that you are good at, enjoy doing, and are compensated well for. I have been lucky enough to have a few jobs like this, mostly longer term positions, and the reasons that I left had more to do with leadership, staff, or situational variables. Never the work. The work is joy. The work is the light of the day. The work is the thing.
In this illustration of the idea, I wanted to focus on a minimalism approach, one in which there is just what is called for and nothing else. I illustrated a quote from the Tao te Ching (the book of the way): Act without doing; Work without effort. It speaks to me as an ideal of work: work that is not work at all.
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Geofencing
In the last week or so, I was contacted by a team leader about developing marketing tools and social media to support a new mobile app. The startup (we’re still working on the name and brand) focuses on Geofencing. Geofencing is a technology that uses the sensors on your phone (cellular, wi-fi, and GPS) to decide if you are in a certain specific area, and then do something with that information, often automatically. Some great apps exist that make use of GeoFencing. Two that come to mind are Smart Places Checkin for Android and Tasker for Android.
Existing solutions
Smart Places Checkin for Android allows me to set up geofencing zones and then automatically check in to those places on Facebook, along with stats. It’s beautiful, and I have several zones set up. However, it’s difficult in my opinion to set up those zones, and the UI could use some work. What’s more, it only does that one singular thing: share my location with Facebook. I want that functionality, but I want flexibility to do other things too.
Tasker for Android is a superb application that allows you to do everything you could imagine with the sensors on your phone, and as a result, you can set actions to be performed with your phone based on your location. Tasker is brilliant, but especially difficult to use for the uninitiated. The UI, in particular, could use an overhaul, or a “light” mode.
Our idea
What we are proposing started as simply a geofencing coupon app. It was like super-local groupons that pop up when you are near a deal. But after seeing what the app is capable of, we are looking to be able to do that and a lot more.
If we incorporate gamification features, a social layer that allows tie in to Facebook, Twitter or G+, sharing IFTTT style recipes between users, and other features related to Geofencing, we could really have something. People can choose to create scenarios like those below and share them for customization by others. Consider the following examples:
- Use the app to create geozone based easter eggs, and create a reward (for businesses, it might be a discount, for others it might be a badge) for collecting all the ‘eggs’.
- Use the app to create awareness of location between you and your significant other or children so that you always know where each other are.
- Use the app to design a tour of a campus, lab, city, or route, with messaging related to placemarks.
- Use the app to create one-off or repeating reminders to yourself or others that while you are near the Post Office, drop off the mail; While near the grocery store, pick up eggs.
- Use the app to track your movement along your path for later review.
- Use the app to give yourself points or a badge when you visit a friend’s house or some other task that you want to encourage yourself to do more often, and share the recipe with your friends to encourage them to do the same. Automatically share your points or visit with Facebook.
I could list another 10 examples, but I imagine that you have your own examples that you are thinking about. When this was just a geofencing coupon app, I have to admit, I was not as excited. But with the potential flexibility and extensibility of this, I could not be more so. Stay tuned for more on this as it develops!
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Creating smarter apps with geofencing
Frencer: A Free Android Geofencing App
Self-Taught Developer David Richard Harnesses the Power of Geofencing to Create a New Type of Local Network with His New Mobile App JaVu
Keep a watchful eye on your kid with the Trax wearable sensor
Price Point design principle
When considering pricing your product, you are considering more than the cost of the parts + some percent for profit. You also have to consider the other factors at play. For instance, what is the value in the mind of the consumer, regardless of your costs? What is the perceived value in the consumer’s circle of colleagues and friends? Do the consumers have experiences that might degrade their perceived value of your product? You have to choose the price that the consumer is after, the one that they can justify for themselves or others.
$35 is the new $19.99
I’ve noticed a trend that reminds me of my younger years. I remember watching commercial after commercial for products offered at the magic price of $19.99. But recently, there seems to be another magic price, one that no one would blink at. $35.00 is the new $19.95, it seems, and I have some examples to show what I mean. I gave a presentation at Cherry Hill Public Library recently where I talked about these, and so they were fresh in my mind. I included the presentation below.
Successful Examples:
- The ChromeCast – Google’s smart TV in a dongle, sold out about a day after its announcement. Google is particularly sensible about pricing generally, though I think the Chromebook Pixel may be an exception. ChromeCast offers the ability to run app content from apps like Netflix and Google Play Music on your HDTV with the great surround sound, and allows you to control it from your phone, tablet, Chromebook, laptop, or desktop. I use it all the time, and often bring it with me as a backup for presentations, since I can run presentations on it using Google Drive.
- The Raspberry Pi – This is a $35 computer, very simply put. You’d need to BYO keyboard, monitor and mouse, but once you have those, you have a rich, powerful desktop machine. You can also use it as a headless server, with remote access. You could set it up as a design workstation, with apps like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus. You could use it as a media server complete with a navigable interface in the form of XBMC. You could use it as a security system with a motion sensor, and camera. The possibilities are endless, and what a great price point.
- The Arduino Uno – The Uno is a great electronics learning and testing platform from Italy. It is less than $35, often available for as little as $25. The Arduino has a higher learning curve than the others here, but also potentially has the greatest flexibility and rewards. You can use Arduino for home automation, light shows, and any other electronics project you can think of. You use an open source programming language called Processing to make sketches to direct the inputs, like switches and sensors, and outputs, like LEDs. It’s products like this that allow you to “scratch your own itch”.
Here is my presentation on these devices.
And here is my presentation on Context, Connectedness and the self, a look at the ways that sensors are increasing in importance.
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Teach a Man to Fish
Give a man a fish, he eats today. Teach a man to fish, he eats forever. This rather common phrase is a core part of my philosophy in consulting. This is sort of a stretch as a design principle, and the first time in this series that I am straying away from my sources for design principles, but I use this one in every consulting situation.
Also notable was that this is the earliest known appearance of the analogy, written by Anne Ritchie in Mrs. Dymond in the 1800s. “He certainly doesn’t practise his precepts, but I supposed the Patron meant that if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.” ~ Give a Man a Fish Phrase – Proverb Meaning and Saying Origins – https://knowyourphrase.com/give-a-man-a-fish
As I said, I use it in my work. For example, if you have consulted with me, we might have started with you asking me to have a seat at (drive) your computer. I likely gently declined. The two positions (driving and guiding) define the difference between repair and teaching. I’d far rather teach, even when repair is involved. By having my clients go through the motions of the issue, research along with me, and act on our findings, they can learn the ways to resolve their own issues at that level. The benefit for me, aside from an enlightened client, is that the next problem we work on will probably be far more interesting for both of us. Also, if we consult over video chat with screen sharing, I will likely ask you to share your screen and guide you. From time to time, I might jump on my browser to resolve an issue, but most of the time, it’s all you, with my help.
It also, strangely, is a big part of why I love open source, the software equivalent of getting a great dish with the recipe, as opposed to just the great dish. So, chances are when we work together, we both work. Unless you just want it taken care of, in which I’m pretty happy to do that too. 🙂
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