the soupmenu

i LOVE my iphone. I recently realized that i should go and download every TEDtalk and throw it on there for viewing the subway.

the thing is…IT’S ANOTHER SCREEN. All day I’m looking at screens. They are everywhere. Laptops, TVs, and now even advertisements and Menus (in defense i love them at rice to riches). All of this means that we are focusing extremely close to our faces.

The physiology of looking at things close to the face is that the eye muscles must contract. The converse is that by looking further away, our eye muscles relax. While studying anthropology way back when, I remember hearing about how our eyes were actually best at tracking movement at great distances (hunting in Africa) but in recent generations that skill has been fading.

So the longer you stare at something close up, the longer your eye muscles must contract. A simple comparison is to hold your arms out straight in front of you…in small bits it’s fine…but try not moving them for 10 mins….30 mins….2 hours(some bootcamps like this game). That same strain is comparable to what your eyes feel after 8 hrs in your cube. In today’s world, we are straining our eyes more and more. To and from work and throughout the night when we are looking up directions, watching movies, or simply changing the song in our portable devices, we are straining our eyes.

Eye strain is already a big issue, and as we stare at more and more screens, it’s only going to get worse. The really scary thought though, is that this is all muscle related and until we discover a way to grow or transplant eye muscles, there will be no true cure. We can only increase our contact prescriptions to stronger and stronger levels as we age.

So the human race is at this horrible void where it would take generations for our eyes to adapt to our new world of screens and close focusing, yet technology has not found a better solution to aide us as we grow old.

But at least there is an eye trainer for DS
I guess I just need to get one for my iphone…or just keep the phone in my pocket more

Here is a nice and motivating motivating article about design and innovation from Tim Brown at IDEO.

This is why IDEO is so good….or at least why the world thinks that they are so good. Every article that comes out from their people is not about innovation or business or design. It’s about their process…it’s about their culture….it’s about why they think they are the best.

They have really mastered the ‘project-dropping’ approach of writing where they bring up a concept them provide only their in-house projects as perfect examples of their concepts.

Their process is ‘human centric design through working within the organization’. While there is no set person responsible for their innovations, they emphasize how the front line people are so important to their insight. Basically what they do is work with companies to help their people innovate and then they take credit for the innovation and then use that to promote themselves further.

I am by no means saying that IDEO is not brilliant…but perhaps their brilliance is from the realization that the innovation is already within these companies, and it’s simply up to them to bring it out.

Perhaps these companies need to realize that they may not actually need IDEO if they create an innovative environment.

Here’s how I saw the final moment of American idol this year…

Yes, kinda comical. But I was not the only one. By a quick survey of friends, it seems a decent percentage of people had the same problem. Basically if you DVRed the show with Comcast or Brighthouse and watched it more than 15 minutes after the show ended, this is the experience you had. What a failure of service and product by these companies. While I believe Brighthouse has gotten better at having an up-to-date menu system, I constantly have misinformation now that I’m at a house with Comcast. These companies need to develop an active system where the DVR receives a notification when the show is complete so that when a show runs late, all is not lost.

You would think this would be a priority to these companies as the experience of missing the climax of a show due to bad interactive design is horrible. Immediately it has people jumping up and down cussing about your product and service. If that’s not enough bad marketing, think about where the viewer will then go to see the end of the show…..YOUTUBE. The biggest threat for digital cable is online video, and here digital cable first gives a horrible experience, and then immediately sends their customers to their main competition to remedy the situation.

Here is the full ending of the show…thank you youtube for a great experience.