No changes, no chances

Part 2 of "The infamous (software) design/development process tree-swing comic"

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:28:21 +0200

Today, someone posted a comment underneath my post of the design/development process tree-swing comic post I made in 2007. He claimed to be the owner of the image.

update, 2011-07-24
Mike Wilkinson, CEO of Paragon Innovations Inc, replied! He informed me on the particular image I used in the blog post of 2007 and I have updated that post. After 2007 I finally know the owner of that image.

I did a quick Google search on the topic, since it had been so long that I've tried to find more info on it. And it turns out that people claim they've seen the tree swing comic around offices in the 1960s (!!), as businessballs.com writes in their article regarding the search for the origin of the comic.

.... caution, long sentence coming up ...

What strikes me is that
(allegedly) in the 1960s people already knew
and
the Interaction Design study I did taught people (since around 1990)
that end users should not be left with some piece of something that could have been suitable to them way better if only they were approached in the design process
and that
in 2011
there are still gazzillion of (software developing) companies that work with no or hardly any user centered design research and design process,
wasting their own time and energy, causing hours of user frustration,
because User Centered Design is .. [pick any of the 13 common objections from this article written in 2000]

2011 .. Still a long way to go ...

Recovering deleted photos from your memory card

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:02:56 +0200

I've been searching for a free tool to recover files from a Compact Flash card, from which I thought I had already downloaded all files to my harddisk.

I found PC-inspector but somehow it did not work for me .. I however did read that it worked for others ..

Next, I found Photorec .. It works like a charm and I can see the recovered files pouring back into the folder I selected .. The user-interface however, is almost command-line-like .. So if you feel comfortable with an MS-Dos window textual interface it's great .. If you like a windows interface, you'd better try PC inspector ..

Happy recovering!

Canon Pixma ICC profile codes explanation

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:15:08 +0100

I hardly ever blog but when I am looking for information and get frustrated by the search, I post an item after finding information .. Today, the item is about Canon ICC profiles when printing (in my case from Lightroom) ..

I bought a second printer, to use as less expensive solution next to my 9500 Pro - the Pixma IP4700 (apparently the IP4600 is quite similar) .. So, I wanted to make a test print from Lightroom and the moment I opened the Print tab, I realised it would be hell to find the correct ICC profile for the paper .. I wanted to make a test print on the 10x15 (4"x6") "Photo Paper Plus Glossy II" (yep, that's the name of the paper) a.k.a. PP-201, that Canon delivered with the printer ..

The pp-201 is newer paper, apparently so the info I could find about profiles was not useful, since the ICC profiles I could choose from Lightroom did not seem to resemble what I was looking for ..

I happened to find the best amount of info after searching for the codes (MP2, PR1, GL3, PT2, SG2, SP1, etc etc etc) .. info that was useful for me were these ..

MP = Matte Photo Paper
PR = Photo Paper Pro
SP = Photo Paper Plus Glossy (PP-101)
GL = Photo Paper Plus Glossy II (PP-201)
SG = Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss
PT = Photo Paper Pro Platinum

These codes are followed by a number, which indicates the quality .. 3 is lower than 1 and it resembles the number above the slider in the software driver under print quality ..

Luckily I usually print on Ilford Galerie (professional inkjet photo range) Smooth Pearl paper .. Ilford is so sweet to help you find the correct profile for their particular type of paper for your particular printer .. Unfortunately the IP4700 was not listed yet (not a surprise since the printer is quite new and I can not find it in the Dutch Canon's paper-choise list itself!) - so I guess I will go for the IP4600 ICC profile .. The nice thing about the Ilford ICC profiles is that they come with a PDF file, which are instructions for the correct printer settings for your printer .. yay!

More on Canon ICC (IP4500) here at Dave Bartrum's blog
Find Canon paper/printer combination info here
Also the Canon ICC Profile guide is a useful source of information but it needs an update for their newer papers
I haven't read any of these but at a glance, these tutorials on printing from Adobe (Photoshop, Lightroom) seems quite helpful, if you are not custom to printing with color callibration and color management ..

Whenever I find more on this, I'll add it to this article .. any extra information is helpful!

New Mutts site in User-centered design

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:11:36 +0200

On March 17th, the new Mutts site (www.muttscomics.com)was launched. But it was not until today that I noticed. I happened to browse to the site to send my colleague a link to the daily strip subscription page.

Guess what? The HOMEPAGE is now the subscription page! I am probably not the only one that never views the site but does enjoy the daily comic strip in my mailbox. How's that for user-centered design!

It features a logo and some high-lighted links to the shop and the news, that are pulled out of the main navigation. Beneath that you see the simple yet well functional main navigation in a horizontal bar. Underneath it they placed a fairly large main visual of Mooch and Earl (the two main characters of the comic series) with a short review comment by a paper or writer or client on top of it.

Beneath that, there's the daily strip for the current day. Here's a good thing: the strip shows up halfway the page-fold on a resolution of 1024x768 (with a clearly visible yet subtle link to the past daily strips). Only in 800x600 it might be missed by the visitor but hey - 800x600 in 2009 ... ;) Thus, the majority of the visitors will have to scroll down to see the entire strip - which gives them great chance to end up at the call-to-action underneath it: the Daily strip subscription. Well done! Perhaps the subscription-field could have placed in the lower-right corner of the main visual, so it shows up above the fold.

I think it's great that Patrick McDonnel acknowledged the needs of his site visitors, instead of wanting to tell all about all the stuff that HE thinks are important at first.

Make the world a better place

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:16:27 +0100

Look, we in Holland know all about making compromises .. it's THE country in the world where everyone needs to be happy and no-one may have any slight sense of feeling hurt .. Of course sometimes this results in endless meetings, discussions and the end result is some uninteresting solution that no-one is really happy with but to which all agree ..

Sometimes you just need to take a stand .. Just use your power and make the world a better place, because you actually know what's better .. Don't be a Plato and whine about it - take action .. The developers of Tortoise SVN, a tool that enables multiple people to do software programming work on one single project, understand how that's done:

Pocket gravity

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:29:57 +0200

My HTC Touch Diamond phone just got more fun! I am totally addicted to Pocket Gravity .. Since the phone has an accelerometer (it detects when it's tilted) there are heaps of new fun games being programmed for it ..

Pocket Gravity is one of those .. By drawing cubes and circles, which you can interconnect you can play with gravity and build things that fall, roll, collide, etc .. The longer you play with it, the more ideas you get, and you start building chain reactions .. here's some images of saved scenes (by others):

Great fun! Highly addictive ..

Webmonkey's search box

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:27:51 +0200

I hadn't visited Webmonkey in quite a while but today I did .. I wanted to use the site search and was happily surprised with a neat usability/design improvement ..

Webmonkey's search box

Apart from prettyness, nothing special seems about this everyday web thingy .. But wait! Hover over it with your mouse and a little bit of neat magic happens:

Mouse hovered over the search box

The section-filter pops up as little tabs above it - nice! The good thing about this design choice is that having it in view permanently might very well clutter the screen(design) and I think (especially considering Webmonkey's target user group) no one is scared sh*tless with a feature popping up like this after an action - future feedback is not always needed if you ask me, if it is replaced by a happy surprise :)

I myself would maybe have left the selected tab visible .. Also it could be an option to make the tabs pop up when you hover over the area where they appear, other than when I hover over the search field itself .. But still, I love this thingy :)

My photo was published!

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:31:44 +0200

Picture of my photo in the mag

Photos deserve to be printed on tangible matter .. and when that tangible matter is part of a magazine, it is even better!

Lucky was I, that the next issue of Digiphoto Pro would be all about reviewing lenses .. Adding lens tags pays off! The editor of Digifoto Pro (Dutch magazine) found my image on Flickr, by searching for a lens tag .. So they asked if they could use my photo to be placed with the review of the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 .. :) .. Not my sharpest shot, but they liked enough nevertheless ..

Here's the photo of the little bugger in my photostream .. Thank you for being so cute little fella! ;)

Automated eye tracking?! lol! ..

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:09:36 +0200

Sometimes, you see interesting things on twitter .. This one was interesting in a sense that I personally think the site is really, really, REALLY .. uh - I can not find the right word for it .. let's just say I don't think it is a particularly good product ..

Check this out; AUTOmated eye tracking .. I'll repeat that for you: AU-TO-MA-TED eye tracking: "Feng-GUI service is an automatic alternative to eye-tracking" .. Eye-tracking, a method/tool that is used for the testing of HUMAN-Computer-Interaction design, is being conducted by a computer itself .. I mean .. is this serious? This must be some kind of a hoax ..

I myself have problems with eye tracking for starters, it feels a bit like an outdated marketing tool for selling other user centered design services to me .. I have not yet really seen the need for using the method, but I could be proven wrong about this ..

My entire Master thesis was about interpretation of images by people versus the non-ability for computers to do that, creating the semantic gap .. In other words, computers are unable to properly retrieve images that we are looking for, without us first telling the computer exactly what is in the images in its database, and what we are looking for, and even for what reason - for better results ..

What I am trying to say is that computers can not act, react interpret, interact, think, consider, [fill in more words that are typical to human behaviour here], like people can .. so they certainly can not scan a page like we would .. I am a perfectionist and when a tool like this only provides us with some so-so results, based on mathematics and statistics, I am not convinced of its use .. Unless we adopt to the computer's way of interpreting by thinking in strict algorithms, these kind of tools will never work the way they should ..

Oh yeah - FYI - the site does not work in Firefox ..

New phototoys!

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:52:55 +0200

Lomo Lubitel 166B, Polaroid 1000
click to view larger

Oh yess! New photo toys!

Via an auction site in the Netherlands I payed Eur 21,50 including postage (approx. US$ 34) for these babies :) .. It's a Lomo Lubitel 166B twin lens reflex (to accompany my Lomo Smena 8M and my Lomo LC-A :p) and a Polaroid Land Camera 1000 .. Now I hope to find some reasonably priced Polaroid film for the Polaroid 1000 .. The film for the Lubitel should not be that much of a problem I reckon ..

ripping nights into the day

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:33:30 +0200

on flickr

I had the sweetest dream .. I usually never remember what I dream about ..

Inspired by Kurt Halsey .. I can however not draw and paint the way he can ..

Could not wait to work this thing in my head out into a photo .. this'll have to do ..

Happyard receives wildcard in GameJam Japan 2008

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:24:11 +0100

GameJam Japan 2008

"Oh! .. Tomorrow!?" was the reaction from everyone when the team for the GameJam Japan 2008 was assembled last minute, friday evening march 7th .. Although more people responded with great enthusiasm, five could actually make time to spend a weekend for non-stop brainstorming ..

The assignment was to create a game concept for mobile phones in Japan, to promote Holland and Dutch creative competence ..

Team O!

Everyone's first reaction "Oh! .. Tomorrow!?" seemed nice inspiration for the name name of our ad-hoc formed team "O!" :

- Florus van Beek
- Joost Broersen
- Rick Companje
- Ralph Kok
- Matthijs Rouw

We were connected via each other but did not know each other in person yet .. It's an HKU/Uni Leiden combination and a great way to meet new and interesting people, and during the weekend we've had heaps of laughter ..

After two days of brainstorming and some serious crunch-time on Sunday evening our game Happyard ended up with the final three! However, the Dutch jury decided to choose the two other games to continue in the competition ..

Happyard nominated by Japanese jury

On march 14th, the organisation of GameJam Japan 2008 sent us a mail .. We were picked by the Japanese Jury (quote: 'game development and industry experts from Cell and Taito') as finalist! Here's the Jury report:

"... the game development and industry experts from Cell and Taito strongly advice/urge us on the following two points:

1 - Happyard should be allowed to be finalist number four. As an exception increase the number finalist with one, or have two numbers three.
Argument for Happyard: "The nature theme works well, the design and scenario are very promising and the game is truly innovative and we very much also desire to see the demo of this game. Right now the game is technically too complicated and the controls do not seem intuitive (motion, gps, camera) but we are very curious to see a demo of this game when the developers for example only use two of the technologies mentioned, like the weather."

Happyard mentioned in Japan Times Online

March 19th, the official press release was sent out .. An article in the Japan Times Online wrote the following about Happyard:

"Originally the contest was intended to only have three finalists, but both the Utrecht and Japanese juries decided that "Happyard" from O! had so much potential that they deserved a wild card entry. The game integrates real world parameters with a virtual garden environment and sets the player about hunting animals for their collection."

Working on the demo

Needless to say, we are using almost all of our free time to meet-up and work on the demo, since the winner of the competition gets to develop the game, which will be presented at the Tokio Game show ..

Maybe, just maybe .. we might be spending summer in Japan!

Oh, yeah .. we claimed happyard.nl and happyard.jp since we came this far already ..

Also read teammates' blog items about this:
Item by Ralph Kok
Item by Florus van Beek

I used to be a Spaceman

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:03:36 +0100

As a kid, I used to have a light blue jacket with a detachable hood that had the shape of a helmet .. One of my friends had the same jacket, in dark blue .. we used the hoods while playing Spacecraft ..

We had a staircase with open steps, so we could sit with our face towards the steps, our legs dangling down, from between the steps ..

On the higher steps in front of us, we then placed wooden toy building blocks, which we turned into panels with controls, buttons, sliders and gauges by drawing on them with markers ..

The building blocks still have the drawn spacecraft interfaces on them and my mother still has them .. My nieces and nephews play with them - they serve as regular building blocks again ..

Amsterdam Flickr meetup was a succes

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:49:25 +0100

Flickrites @ the NDSM warf in Amsterdam

Some of the Amsterdam based Flickrites thought it would be nice to organise a meetup, so I made a posting in the designated forum thread (oh I mean 'discussion' - as Flickr calls them :p) .. A nice group of people said that they could attend at feb 16th, so we set the date and time to meet at the Amsterdam NSDM wharf, in the IJkantine ..

I missed the ferry so I came in a tad later, to see ..... that more than 20 people had joined! I thought that in the end (like often with meetings like these) less than expected would show up .. It turned out that more people came than those who had responded in the discussion .. awesome ..

I did a lot of talking and less shooting .. But that's ok, I went back the day after on my own :)

Liked the old Hotmail better than the new slow windows live mail?

blog@thingsdesigner.com (Matthijs Rouw) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:52:45 +0100

I hate the new Windows Live mail .. It is slooooooow and annoying .. I do not want the new slick features, I want to mail .. I fooled MS back when the Netherlands was the first to be forced into Live mail, without a way back by changing my nationality into German .. In Germany, Live mail was beta back then, so I could go back to Hotmail and just not opt-in into Windows Live mail .. But then the day came that we all had to go Live .. :-S

A while later, I got myself an HTC touch .. I browse the hell out of that thing, and also hotmail .. Web applications/site especially developed for palmtops and smartphones like the HTC touch are way more simple than the regular versions of the sites, since these handheld computers lack memory and processor power (and screen and browsing functionalities and ....) ... And so is Live mail for the PDA .. :)

So, if you want the simplest version available of your Windows Live mail (it's even less bullshit stuff than Hotmail used to have!), just use your PC to browse to the mobile / PDA Windows Live mail site:

Webmail for Windows Live mail

Once you're logged in, you can even disable the icons - that's a 100% textual single-page mailing application .. Web 3.0 I tell ya! :p

Happy fast and bullshit-less mailing!