Somebody recently shared with me an article from Fast Company magazine about a winery that’s replaced their traditional glass bottles with more forward-thinking recyclable carton packages. The resultant environmental affect claims to produce a carbon footprint ten times smaller than traditional glass bottles once the savings for weight, shipping, and disposal are all tallied in (the cartons can be placed in ordinary recycle bins). Additionally, the new solution offers 33% more wine, making it the smart choice for the ever-demanding train-hitching vagrant segment.

If I were to peg the purpose of this concept on my design chart, I’d say it fits squarely in between desire and utility. In hindsight, these relationships do seem to flow into one another without much conflict. Then again, I’m beginning to think that desire is the herald for all other design purposes, so maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise. The greatest undrelying tension I can see, and the one that I would venture to say can significantly affect adoption on a wide scale, seems to be a matter of well-known convention. The practice of using glass cylinders to hold wine spans throughout time for, oh… a millennium. So why the packaging doesn’t incorporate more natural “winey” gold and red colors or nudge to the time-honored affordance factor of a more crafted container is beyond me. It’s possible this was a conscious design decision borne out of feedback from customers or the product of some other synthetic analysis of environmental factors. At first blush (pardon the pun), it really does read more like a carton of O.J. then a fine French wine.

Regardless of my two-cent visceral reaction to a couple of screenshots for a product I’ve never used, volumes of discussion could yet be had concerning the practical long-term benefits of re-thinking wasteful, yet culturally entrenched design conventions like the glass bottle. The part design will play in revealing these shortcomings, and in conjuring entirely new solutions, will surely be significant.

Me: Oh, yeah? For what?

Pregnant Lady: For my mouth. Is that a good enough answer for you?

Me (absorbing howls of laughter): That’s going on my website. Your name’s going to be “Pregnant Lady.”

Mike Schindler
Curtains 1995
Ink on Died Canvas
78¼ x 51½ inches

Thirteen years later, I still consider this piece to be one of the most significant breakthroughs of my early artistic development. It was made in 1995 through a process of hand dying raw canvas, which was then brushed with ink. Titled Curtains, it’s an overtly political work which solidified my tendency to map imagery into adjacent relationships and unlikely contexts.

At the time it was created, academia was still trying to explain the collapse of the Soviet Union. Having read several books by Michael Parenti and becoming more and more influenced by the obsessive drive of artist Robert Gober, I set out to do a piece that tied together (quite literally as it turned out) some thoughts on politics, media, and culture.

There are four repeating images on this loose canvas, which when hung properly could appear to be working curtains to a non-attentive passerby. On the left hand side in red is a recognizable portait of Stalin set against the backdrop of the Sputnik satellite. On the right in brilliant blue is a map of a country with a legend that reads Panama, 1989. It’s checkered by a bottle from the popular sitcom I Dream of Jeanie.

It dances around, tumbling and emitting smoke as if to foretell a future spelled out in mystery, war, and deception.

In 1983 my grandfather suffered a debilitating stroke which rendered the left side of his entire body non-functioning for most purposes, including his brain. Because of his paralysis, he was robbed of speech for the remainder of his life, limited only to a few non-sensical words.

In his health my grandfather was a gifted musician who could play any instrument, from banjo, to drums, to piano–you name it. He operated in high command of his creative right brain for the better part of his time on earth. Part of the tragedy of his stroke was the thought of never seeing that side of him again.

Having visited him so often while he was in private care, I had witnessed many days when his inability to communicate clearly frustrated him, at the same time revealing his conscious sense of sadness. Then one quiet day, when my family got together for a special occasion, perhaps on his birthday, he gave us all a surprise. My aunt, who was also talented at the piano, decided to play a familiar song for my grandfather. And without hesitation, seemingly out from nowhere, he started to sing for us. In perfect clarity. Forming perfect words. Perfect melodies.

It was simply one of the most spiritual and at once scientific experiences I have ever encountered. It fascinates and inspires me beyond my own powers of articulation. One day we may come to understand the consciousness of being. Until then, we’ll slowly be informed by these tiny little awe-inspiring surprises.

…

And because it simply cannot be missed, here is Jill’s recent talk.

Given the semantic nature of the argument, I’ve tried to avoid splitting this hair. But I’m started to see an important distinction between two very similar words which are often used to describe a user’s potential behavioral motivation–desire and intent.

While these two words appear to have the same meaning in certain contexts, I think they probably have very different origins. It may be anecdotal and even difficult to demonstrate, but I believe there is an argument that while the two concepts may lead to the same end result (i.e. behavior), they’re really two separate devices which often facilitate a user’s decision making in combination with each other, like two spinning cogs.

Let’s take a look at the definitions.

According to New Oxford the word desire means, “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.”

The word intent, on the other hand, means, “resolved or determined to do (something).” And according to Merriam Webster this something is “usually clearly formulated or planned […]”

So, intent then seems to require some level of forethought, whereas desire requires nothing but a longing. I’ll take it a step further and say that within interaction design intent usually takes a specific action. This action is usually rooted in a basic need (i.e. to do something),

Meanwhile, desire has more to do with a thought process rooted in a basic want (usually to know something). Perhaps this is oversimplifying a bit, but I think the two ideas are isolated enough for closer examination.

This distinction can manifest itself in many ways within a typical human-centered design. The easiest example I can think of are the everyday links found on many e-commerce sites to either “Learn more” or “Buy now.” While it could be argued that both are intents (or desires), the link to learn more is usually designed to precede any decision-making by a user. Therefore, if we accept that intent requires forethought or planning, the learn more link becomes much more about the fulfillment of the user’s on-demand desire (and if I’m honest, to instill enough confidence into the user for them to ultimately have the intent to purchase).

Of course, desire can lead to other decisions, insights, or navigational paths, while intent is usually more directed and orchestrated by a specific design or process. Again, I may be simplifying an already gray area, but I think this contrast may reflect a basic design tension in and of itself and can be used to resolve designs that require various levels of decision making by an end user.

The patent for this invention takes 65 paragraphs to explain a design that’s utterly, if not painfully, obvious in hindsight–the square taco.

The self-standing taco shell makes it easier to prepare multiple tacos at the same time. This advantage is especially desirable in fast food, cafeteria and party environments where multiple tacos are being prepared at one time.

Still another advantage of the present tacos is that even if taco breakage occurs along either connection between flat base and sidewall, the flat base and remaining sidewall forms a ledge minimizing loss of the added fillings to allow for consumption completion with reduced mess.

Also, another advantage of a taco made using the taco shell of the present invention may be presented for consumption in an upright and filled orientation.

Some low-level testing at dinner validated this premise. Soon afterward, Mrs. Usability was heard saying in a self-satisfied tone, “It’s about time.”

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University showed people drawings of five tools (hammer, drill and the like) and five dwellings (castle, igloo …) and asked them to think about each object’s properties, uses and anything else that came to mind. Meanwhile, fMRI measured activity throughout each volunteer’s brain. As the scientists report this month in the journal PLoS One, the activity pattern evoked by each object was so distinctive that the computer could tell with 78 percent accuracy when someone was thinking about a hammer and not, say, pliers. CMU neuroscientist Marcel Just thinks they can improve the accuracy (which reached 94 percent for one person) if people hold still in the fMRI and keep their thoughts from drifting to, say, lunch.

As always, the results have to be replicated by independent labs before they can be accepted. But this is the first time any mind-reading technique has achieved such specificity. Remarkably, the activity patterns—from visual areas to movement area to regions that encode abstract ideas like the feudal associations of a castle—were eerily similar from one person to another. “This establishes, as never before, that there is a commonality in how different people’s brains represent the same object,” said CMU’s Tom Mitchell.

If what your brain does when it thinks about an igloo is almost identical to what mine does, that suggests the possibility of a universal mind-reading dictionary, in which brain-activity pattern x means thought y in most people. It is not clear if that will be true for things more complicated that pliers and igloos, however. “The more detailed the thought is, the more different these patterns get, because different people have different associations for an object or idea,” says Haynes. “We’re much closer to this than we were two years ago, but still far from a universal mind-reading machine.”

Eventually, I would like to share with you the design theory I’m working on (I may even have settled on a name for it), but for now allow me to explain a small part of it which at one point served as the theory’s main catalyst.

During my work as a user experience designer, I’ve become increasingly convinced that an interesting parallel exists between the two cerebral hemispheres of the human brain and two common deliverables associated with interaction design practices–specifically the development of low-fidelity wireframes into highly detailed visual designs (sometimes also referred to as visual comps or mock-ups).

This observation pronounces a fact that is usually assumed as a common goal among practitioners looking to build a strong user experience design team; find candidates who are well-rounded and possess strengths in analytical know-how and creative conceptualization.

It could be argued, as I’ll start doing now, that the need for this specialization is never more apparent during the life cycle of a design then at the transition point from wireframe (when the design is defined by boxes and mostly black and white text) to visual design (when the design is alive with color, graphics, and seductively shiny buttons, or other aesthetic elements). At this critical turning point, while the fundamental design goals still underly similar tensions, the designer(s) involved in defining and resolving these different artifacts often–although not always–derive their solutions from opposite ends of the cognitive playing field.

So, presumably then, if one is to design user experiences (or any product, such as cars, clothing, or computer animations, for that matter) by focusing wireframes into some other creatively articulated end result, it makes sense to be cognizant of how different operations get started within the brain.

Consider the widely known and somewhat diametrically opposed functions of the left and right brain hemispheres.

While these attributes may not have a one-to-one relationship with each deliverable on any design project, there should be enough cause to consider a somewhat clinical hypothesis–sensitivity to and explicit focus on left and right brain functions during the design process can serve to optimize certain aspects, if not design decisions, in a predictable fashion. After all, these elements are digested by a consumer in the same cognitive way once the design has become a product.

As best I can tell from my own experience and from working with others in the design industry, specific attributes which determine the ultimate success or failure of these deliverables fall along similarly opposite sides of the fence.

There are, of course, many other deliverables such as storyboards, as well as offshoots of other design methodologies that muddy the water of this split. Adaptive Path’s advocation of sketchboards is a good recent example. I’m not suggesting practitioners follow a rigid form of design by any means. I think communication formed in any artifact which tries to engage both sides of the brain simultaneously is a good practice and probably very necessary for certain kinds of problem solving or even within the confines of a given project.

I’m only observing that certain results are highly predictable and can serve to enhance design decision-making or touchpoints, if you will, within their optimal spaces because the very nature of human brain chemistry supports it.

By isolating functions performed almost exclusively within each of these deliverables a more relevant definition of design becomes apparent. It first takes on a rational form, which is adapted and synthesized into a final product. Examining this structure overall can amplify design decisions and help further delineate touchpoints within that assumed structure.

CNN’s Election Center 2008 delivers not only a monumental amount of well thought out data-driven design, information architecture and Flash/AJAX wizardry, but the site itself may quite possibly represents the largest lesson in politics that’s ever been delivered to the American public in one full sitting.

Think about it.

Newspapers have tried in the past, but they’ve always been a day late and a dollar too much–not to mention totally degradable. Television, at the risk of being cliché, just reduces everything into meaningless sound bites. And radio can’t even come close to the the level of granularity needed to compare data as contained in multiple charts, graphs, and interactive widgets. While I’ve taken issue with the way CNN has egregiously presented visual data in the past, I think the job they’re doing with Election Center is for the most part exceptional.

Where else can you learn that Tom Hanks gave Barack Obama’s campaign $4,600, while only giving Hilary Clinton $2,300? Or that the process of using delegates is completely different between parties. After digesting a good chunk of the visualized information on CNN, it’s become apparent to me that I still have a lot to learn about things I just assumed to know.

This kind of instructional reach should be especially encouraging to future generations. Ultimately, it’s their gain should they continue to consume and expand upon the Internet as it’s being used today. Because as they become more informed about the government through simple methods of user interaction and experience, they might also become inspired, if not empowered, into changing it one day.

I’m not exactly sure why, but more people than usual have been asking me about my Christmas card this year.

This one started with some direction from my wife, which she stated plainly enough to me one evening, “You’ve never done a Santa before. You should do an old-fashioned one with rosey cheeks.”

I suspect that I’m actually way off the mark of what she was thinking, but somewhere in-between what she said and what I was feeling at the time, the image of a man playing a banjo kept appearing in my head. I don’t know why, but it made perfect sense to me. And when that happens, I just follow through.

I used this photograph as a referential base, which I found simply by searching for “banjo player” via Google images. It’s actually the first image in the results, but the best one I found after scanning several pages.

The racial ambiguity of the “Santa” like figure was intentional. Also somewhat key to the delivery was my recollection of work by Jack Levine. Other than that, the actual rendering was done rather quickly with ink wash on painted wood (the same board I use every year for texture). The result was then scanned in and colorized via Photoshop. Some embellishments, such as the patterns on the suspenders were layered in, but no filters (nor any harm to small kittens) were used in the making of this card.

As always, the most pain-staking process in making my cards is the hand-deckled edges I compulsively tear from the edge of each and every card, which then get glued on the front of card stock.

It’s a labor of love, and one I couldn’t stop myself from doing even if I tried.

Where I thought I’d find the time to start or finish a book, I don’t know. But in the tradition of sharing my dashed dreams and aspirations with you (do they really count if I don’t remember them?), here’s the pitch I was apparently going to send the publisher.

Mac OS X Web Design

The Vision
The vision for Mac OS X Web Design is to act as an inspirational and technical catalyst for beginning, intermediate, and mildly advanced computer users, which targets academics, hobbyists, and creative professionals—people who Apple has traditionally marketed towards, but specifically people who are either new to the Mac OS platform or web design in general. The book is a solid foundation for modern web practices as they appear in Mac OS X (Aqua-themed screenshots of popular web design applications are plentiful).

As Apple’s Switch campaign called out for new converts to the platform, more and more curious individuals are purchasing Macintoshes and running Mac OS X everyday. This is a wildly new experience for most people, even for those who have worked in the creative industry using pre-Mac OS 9 for many years.

The growth of Mac OS X users along with the web design capabilities hidden therein has the potential to grow exponentially, yet to date its knowledgebase has gone practically unanswered in book format. There simply is no definitive work for Mac OS X web design. Yet, as more and more website bloggers and interactive designers continue to follow Apple’s successful marketing lead, which challenges status quo computing, many Windows and Linux are finding themselves at a pivotal turning point.

Modern Operating Systems have started growing up.

And more often than not, the one that stands out above all is Mac OS X. Using my skill set as a professional website designer and consultant, this book instructs the reader how to use Mac OS X client as part of a new craft.

The Audience
Mac OS X Web Design looks to court the people who’ve decided to try something different. Using the power of positive affirmation and a readiness to tackle a sophisticated experience, the book will educate the user on specific areas of interest—from design basics to web standards, from designing a prototype website to scripting server side technologies—this book wants to get the reader up and running and doesn’t waste time with unnecessarily complex details.

For the beginner, who may simply be a student of music who’s lured in by Apple’s new GarageBand application and looking for a way to set up their web presence, the book is a springboard for participation and a solid foundation for an achievable skill set.

For the hobbyist, who may already be an established blogger who’s new to the Mac OS X platform, the book spotlights technologies they’ve already grown accustomed to and puts them into a new Aqua skin.

For the advanced user, who may already be a working professional using a Mac, the book offers validation for staying with the Mac and is a voice of passionate inspiration. They want and need to recognize Mac OS X as a powerful platform too.

I’d like to focus on being an inspiration, but I’d like to teach in a practical way also by using “Workshops” which will actually get the reader started in the process of dynamic website building.

The Pitch
I do not have aspirations of becoming rich from this book. However, I feel that there is a definite void in the market today for any book of this nature—using this topic or this approach—which has thereby convinced me that it will succeed in a high number of sales. Traditionally, Mac users have been creative types and Apple has made tremendous strides in capturing their hearts and minds. I hope to do the same with this book.

I find it difficult to evaluate the movie American Gangster without some kind of compare and contrast to 2001’s Blow, which I also felt compelled to say a few words about.

Both are period films about drug smugglers, considered by some to be innovators during their time. Both are based on real-life stories. Both sport top-notch actors in some of the worst outfits ever retro-designed from a 1970’s JCPenny catalog.

Yet, one of these movies gets the highest rating I’ve ever issued for a film on this site, and the other gets the lowest.

And I think it all has to do with perspective. Where Blow failed at providing anything but a tunnel vision portrayal of a sophomoric exploiter-cum-big-time-player, American Gangster succeeds at telling an epic rise-and-fall story, all the while examining each side with intelligence–from the hooked mothers overdosing in front of their children, to the crooked cops profiting off of prohibition’s forced demand.

This movie bleeds perspective at just about every turn.

It’s a testament to director Ridley Scott’s experience that proper restraint was used in telling gangster Frank Lucas’s unique story. After reading The Return of Superfly, a 2001 interview with the ex-con, which the movie was largely based upon, it’s apparent that more could have been told to provide Frank’s character with sympathetic overtones. Instead, the filmmakers pinpoint their focus towards an unrelenting two-sided coin portrayed on one side by Denzel Washington as Frank, and Russel Crowe as Detective Richie Roberts.

It’s a cat and mouse story between two characters representing good and evil, but as obvious as this is, both possess qualities that break down the polarization between them. While bad guy Lucas can be at times charming and sincere, Detective Richie is hardly irreproachable in private. He regularly womanizes and struggles with being a father.

The ethical rift between them becomes even more tense as details of their social status are compared, making the most pivotal scene in the movie all the more poetic. Set against the backdrop of a historic boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, a foreshadowing is cleverly suggested as the stakes at each side grow higher and higher.

Two sides will clash. But only one will win.

Power. Corruption. Greed. Class. Race. So much is explored and executed so flawlessly that I think Ridley Scott may have one of the best movies of his career on his hands.

As for that other movie, it just goes to show that anyone can hustle an audience with a real-life story using a few cheap dramatic devices. But only the truly great can make a story as gripping and thought provoking as American Gangster.

One morning during my Junior year of college, my sculptor professor, a scruffy-looking curmudgeonly man, who also happens to be one of the most well-spoken individuals on the topic of art I’ve ever met in real life, led our small group through the art building’s court yard area.

We must have been doing a class critique of some student work, when we came across an old, torn-up mattress that had been abandoned next to the art building and seemingly staged for display. On it somebody left a piece of paper with some words scrawled on it.

“This is art. Smell my fart.”

For a minute, I saw the stunt for what it appeared to be on the surface–a prank begotten of laziness, opportunity, and a few too many beers by some asshole fraternity members wanting to get rid of some old junk–and I probably even chuckled to myself at the culprit’s audacity.

But as I stood there debating the delivery of a sardonic comment that never came, it soon sunk in that this was something of a test for me.

At that time, I had just begun accepting the fact that I would be dedicating part of my life to making art, or at the very least something of creative value for others and myself. And here were people telling me how worthless it all was–belittling my peers, my institution, and what I thought at the time was my purpose. In fact, they were willfully acting out against the idea of art itself and I couldn’t help but to take it personally. At the peak of this moment of college self-discovery, I knew there could only one side for me to stand.

When my professor read the note, he didn’t seem surprised. But his disappointment couldn’t be contained either. He later recalled to us his own story of a public sculpture piece he created as a young artist, which repeatedly fell victim to a local vandal.

“That’s when I learned,” he said in his usual deadpan, “that some people can’t handle creative expression. They’re so intolerant of any point of view that they don’t understand or simply don’t agree with, that they’ll try to destroy it.”

This unrehearsed bit of wisdom still resonates with me today. It reminds me to expect the unexpected. And it helps me understand that creative expression can sometimes speak powerful words to people who are too closed minded to simply sit back and listen.

But there are two outstanding paintings, which have left me breathless during the past few days — both for different reasons, however cumulatively similar their effect may have been. The first is Antonio Mancini’s Il Saltimbanco — a nearly seven foot tall stretched canvas of remarkable execution. This Italian-born painter and contemporary of John Singer Sargent may be lesser known than his friend to popular art history, but he’s certainly acheived a similar greatness as a painter. Known for his portaits of homeless children and street performers, a closer inspection of Il Saltibanco shows the artist’s remarkable technique, which embraces a poetic realism along with an expressionistic tendency far ahead of his time.

Standing a few feet away reveals the artist’s use of reflective gold and thickly applied paint. From this distance as my eyes weaved around the composition of the various staged props, I immediately gained a profound respect for Antonio Mancini. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has recently acquired over 40 works by the artist, which will be exhibiting in October. If his other paintings are anything like Il Saltibanco (and I’m convinced this one has to be an exception), the show should not be missed.

Antonio Mancini
Il Saltimbanco (detail) 1877-78
Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Another remarkable piece, which could easily be passed given it’s diminutive 5 inch size (and especially in comparison to the Mancini), is Jan Van Eyck’s rendition of Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata. This extraordinary work is a technical marvel to be seen. But be warned–a recent trip to an optometrist is probably required before viewing.

Although a provocative examination of it’s true identity has recently been articulated and despite the existence of an identical, yet four times larger, duplicate of the painting in Turin, Italy, the Philly version is no less a significant achievement. Indeed, as I looked at the four centuries old work with my own eyes, I felt forced into some kind of awe struck concentration–engrossed at the pain staking realism, which is hair-painted into such a small area. Save for the curious misplacement of the iconic figure’s feet, it is executed to near perfection.

Jan Van Eyck
Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata c. 1438-40
Oil on vellum on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Both these works are exquisite in their own ways and I find their dichotomy in scale to be particularly charming. If you’ve never had the chance to run up the Philly museum’s front steps, I recommend making a point of doing so at some point in your life. And after you’re done posing like Rocky (dont’ worry, you undoubtedly won’t be alone), I recommend going in to see these master works. They are among the best that have ever been created by human hands.