the soupmenu

 Good Article from Bruce Nussbaum

I really enjoy the concept of a ‘design democracy’.   With the world in general becoming more design orientated, the basic individual has a better knowledge base of design. Especially with the internet, many people are already in control of the design of everything from websites to avatars in their online world.  Then there is the increased modification of everything from cars to video games which proves how unsatisfied people have become with modern design.

Perhaps we are moving to a world where we do need to eliminate the ‘middle man’ of design.  It is possible to simply provide the user with the tools to build what they want. While there are areas where it is vital to have one solid design image, there are areas where personal design and customization should rule.  This is a concept that I had for our last project:

Take the normal cell phone and tie a growth algorithm to the menu choices.  (Similar to a tag-cloud)  Therefore, the more a person uses a function, it will grow in size.  Over time the user will receive graphical actual information of what functions they use the most.  Then the user will be able to customize the location and size of these functions so that the interface is fine-tuned for their own habits.

In areas, such as this, designers will never be able to truly design properly for everyone who could possibly use the product.  By giving the user the tools to design their own interface, they will be happier with the end product.  Perhaps a fitting analogy is a messy room.   While my room may be disorganized to some, I know exactly where everything is, because at some point I put the object there.  I also always make sure that key devices (cell phone, wallet, camera) are always in the same place so that I can retrieve them quickly.   (Great video with Rob Haitani proving that point) Now if someone came in and cleaned my room, I would spend the whole day trying to figure out where everything is according to their organization methods….not mine.

So why do we let cell phone designers organize our rooms?  They suck at it.

I finally have taken a look at tumblr.(i am getting sick of anything that’s missing e’s or has existential i’s)  It’s been taking over the web recently.  I do like it…I did make my own.  Bookmark it, as i am already addicted to posting things to it.  In fact I have been looking for this exact thing.  A few months ago I really wanted a way to just post links on my blog without full posts.  I also wanted the links to be separate from the normal blogs posts.  I really don’t like digg or delicious, so there really wasn’t another viable option.  I was going to go ahead and install a stripped-down version of wordpress on this site…..well guess what tumblr is?

perhaps i should start acting on some of these ideas.

I realized a fun thing over here.  Each section of the world centers itself on the world in a sketch.  Ask a person to draw their world, and they will give you a unique picture reflecting their background.  I decided to go around my class and have people draw their world…..

I also had them draw their home country….just for fun….

Most people complained because countries are a hard thing to sketch. Go to my flickr to find out what they are supposed to be.